During a dinner conversation my mom mentioned that when I was 14 I wrote a play that was produced at The Market Theatre. It was a morphed award winning school play that my teachers decided was almost good enough to be done professionally. The "almost" part meant a rewrite that was supposed to make it better for a paying largely adult audience.

The consequence was Disaster. The cast had to learn new dialogue very similar to the old without enough time and very little rehearsal; cues were different and more precisely timed with lighting and sound effects by professionals with much higher expectations than teachers and the paying audience expected something polished.

The original play would have been charming however unsophisticated. The revision was a trial by purgatory for audience and cast.

The lesson: success can be punishing as a stimulus to hubris....