A blog by a playwright who wrote a play about a famous actress coming out of a TV, with a few thoughts on diversity, social justice, and indie theatre.
November 1, 2012
You don't need to know why
Why did you write this?
Why Anne Hathaway?
Why does this character say that thing on page whatever?
As a playwright, I get a lot of "why" questions from actors and directors. I usually answer them because I know people are curious and want to understand where my work is coming from. Sometimes, though, it puts me in the position of explaining or defending my artistic choices rather than exploring or illuminating what's going on in the play I actually wrote.
Yet, in the rush to psychoanalyze me through my play, I often wonder if what gets lost are the things that transcend the psychoanalysis. Rather than expanding and enriching my creation, it shrinks it and dries it up. It makes it easy to dismiss the story and the characters as mere symptoms of my own neuroses as opposed to being reflections of a greater truth.
Here is the irony: in this drive to answer all questions except the most essential ones, you can actually undermine the truth of my work.
This is why I'm such a big fan of Practical Aesthetics. It takes the focus off of what's going on in my head and puts it where it belongs: making choices about what's happening on the page. What's happening right here, right now? What this character trying to do in this scene? What does it mean if they do or don't?
Everything else is either something I can't say, something I refuse to say, or something that doesn't need to be said.
I would love to be part of a process that allows me a chance to sit with the director and actors and use Practical Aesthetics to do a scene analysis of every scene in the script. That would be amazing. That would go further in creating a rich, textured performance of my play than any number of questions aimed at excavating all my secrets or summoning all my demons.
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I'm a big fan of Practical Aesthetics myself, but the other side of THAT coin is a no-questions-asked acceptance of universality. Don't you believe that there's a lot of cultural context to your work? If so, where does that end and your personal biography begin?
ReplyDeleteDon't you believe that there's a lot of cultural context to your work? If so, where does that end and your personal biography begin?
DeleteSure, and grasping that context is part of being able to understand what's happening in a script I write.
As for a line, I admit it can vary from piece to piece, but in general, once the line of inquiry goes from the story I wrote to me as a person, I think that's when things start to veer off-course.
"... once the line of inquiry goes from the story I wrote to me as a person, I think that's when things start to veer off-course."
ReplyDeleteThat answers a question I was going to ask. I can see not wanting people to reduce what's going on to whatever you can remember about the thoughts and feelings that came to you as you were writing the play, or to trivialize it with amateur psychology, but I was thinking that your thoughts and feelings in writing the play, and ultimately even your whole life, could be part of the story, and what some people at least might need to know, to plumb the depths of its meaning for them.
If I'm understanding you right, you aren't excluding that possibility. You're only objecting to the reductionism and trivialization that seem to be associated with a lot of the questioning. Is that right?
"I would love to be part of a process that allows me a chance to sit with the director and actors and use Practical Aesthetics to do a scene analysis of every scene in the script."
Can you ask for that? Do you see any possibility of it happening?
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Thinking about all that gave me an idea. I've seen people reducing and trivializing religious scriptures in those same ways. What do you think about using Practical Aesthetics in studying religious scriptures? Do you see any other ways that ways of learning and benefiting from plays can be applied to learning and benefiting from religious scriptures?
I was thinking that your thoughts and feelings in writing the play, and ultimately even your whole life, could be part of the story, and what some people at least might need to know, to plumb the depths of its meaning for them.
ReplyDeleteIf I'm understanding you right, you aren't excluding that possibility. You're only objecting to the reductionism and trivialization that seem to be associated with a lot of the questioning. Is that right?
Precisely.
Can you ask for that? Do you see any possibility of it happening?
When I was in NYC, sure. In Richmond, not so much. :-(
What do you think about using Practical Aesthetics in studying religious scriptures? Do you see any other ways that ways of learning and benefiting from plays can be applied to learning and benefiting from religious scriptures?
I think approaching religious texts from a variety of angles is always beneficial.
But to answer your question, I can't say for certain right now how Practical Aesthetics would work on religious texts.
As for the value of applying theatre to religious study, the first thing that comes to mind is how theatre can make visceral what is usually understood only as literal.
Exactly. I've been studying up on Practical Aesthetics, and I was especially struck by the wonderful things that might happen, if people applied the "as if" in their study of their religious texts.
ReplyDeleteThat's from an actor's point of view. I realize that what you said about making it visceral might be from an audience point of view. Speaking of an audience point of view, have you ever seen or heard of anyone approaching the stories in the scriptures as if they were plays? I know that many people take them allegorically and metaphorically, but what I'm thinking goes farther than that. I mean something like reading it and visualizing it as if we were watching a play.
I haven't given much thought to it, but when I imagine the people who originally told those stories, I often imagine them acting that stuff out instead of just saying the words.
DeleteI never thought of that before. That makes sense.
ReplyDelete