synchronicity and doubt

I read a post linked to from the Community Dish Yahoo group where fledgling playwright Natalie Wilson talks about the period shortly following a successful reading. She describes it as a kind of post-partum depression.

I’m ashamed -- I feel like if I haven’t landed anything then it must not be that good. Or at least that is what people must think, because the only way to know in the arts that something you have done has merit is if other people give it a stamp of approval. Without the mark of commercial success on something, what you have created (or what talent you may possess) is all so much drivel. At least that is how I feel. I can say my play is good until I’m blue in the face, but without an external stamp of approval no one else has any reason to believe that.

You know what? I know exactly how she feels because that's where I am right now. Brian M. Rosen gives a fantastic response about the difference between success and merit:

I think the trick for the emerging creative is to keep a rock solid wall between the concepts of merit and success. You need to be able to look at your output and see its merit without the coloration of success (or lack thereof). It’s the internal voice that defines your creative output, not the external. That’s the voice that will make decisions, this note or that note? Transition to a new section or keep repeating this idea? Who speaks next? What do they say?

That’s the voice that needs to look at your work and say, “Yeah. This is good. I need to make more of this.”

That's a sentiment I can definitely get behind. Nevertheless, I can't shake the feeling that it's not quite getting to the core of the playwright's dilemma. Natalie presses the idea when she says (bold mine):

We've all known those artists/performers/writers who think they have this amazing talent, but they just... don't.  I can think my play is great, but if no one wants to hear it, or if when they do hear it, no one responds to it, then I don't think I can really call it great.  I do rely on what other people think - not to the exclusion of own instincts, but along with - because my goal is to create art that speaks to people, that touches people, that causes them to look at something in life a bit differently than they did before.  To me, my instinctual feeling that my work has merit can only be validated by achieving that goal.  Which I can't know unless I put it up in front of an audience and observe their response.

To which I say: exactly.

Am I the only one in the theatre blogosphere who has anything to say about my play? This is not hyperbole. I mean this is all seriousness. Is my time better spent talking via e-mail with the handful of people who will respond to me as opposed to putting everything out here and making myself look like the homeless person talking to herself?

questions and answers

Mariah has a bunch of questions for us playwrights and admin types, which means I should probably answer since I follow 2AMt on Twitter and spam them with my stuff.

1. Playwrights: have you ever had a play produced as a result of submitting it to a theater with an “open submission” policy? (And if you submitted it to Theater A, and Theater A did a reading of it, to which a rep from Theater B came, and Theater B produced the play, that doesn’t count.)

Nope. Every play I wanted to do I had to put it up myself. I explain why in more detail below.

5. Playwrights: how vital do you consider readings and workshops to your process? Do you feel it actually improves your play? When it works, why does it work? When it doesn’t, why doesn’t it?

I consider readings an important part of my revision and rewriting process. There's something about hearing the words out loud and seeing the action in real time. I wouldn't say it improves the play so much as reveal it. Until some actors get their hands on it, I don't have a firm idea of what I'm really working with.

7. Playwrights: do you agree with Itamar Moses that it’s more productive to get artistic directors, rather than literary managers, to see your work? Or have literary managers/departments actually been responsible for your work getting produced? Or have both been the case at different times?

As far as I'm concerned, gatekeepers are gatekeepers. I believe it's more important for those gatekeepers to be aware of what they're bringing to their understanding (or misunderstanding) of particular works and how that impacts what they consider stageworthy. My solution has been to ignore them altogether and pursue self-production because, based on what the people who'd be able to open those doors have not been telling me, it'd be a waste of my time to bother with them.

10. Playwrights: do you find that doing rewrites in rehearsal/preparation for a reading or workshop is preferable/more productive to doing rewrites in rehearsal for a production?

Generally I prefer doing rewrites between performances (of whatever type). Each of the 3 readings of Tulpa had a VERY different script. For me, that works very well because it's easier for me (and people who follow my stuff) to follow the evolution of a particular play.

Food for thought

On the heels of reading bell hooks' Black Looks: Race and Representation, I came across this speech by Theresa Rebeck.

I have been told so many times over the years that theaters and foundations are interested in “diversity” but that doesn’t mean women.

At the time, I couldn't figure out why I winced when I read that. Then I remembered something I'd read in "The Oppositional Gaze" in Black Looks:

Feminist film theory rooted in an ahistorical psychoanalytic framework that privileges sexual difference actively suppresses recognition of race, reenacting and mirroring the erasure of black womanhood [. . . ] many feminist film critics continue to structure their discourse as though it speaks about "women" when in actuality it speaks only about white women.

To be fair, Rebeck herself outright states that she was not deliberately pushing a feminist agenda, so critiquing her comment along the lines of a theory she plainly says she isn't pursuing would be problematic to say the least. However, I do find her comment illuminating simply because of the things I've been addressing with intersectionality.

Native Star comments that:

I would throw into the discussion that as dismal as these stats are for ‘women’, what happens when we address the silence of women of color?

While we are often expected to root for team womanhood in unison, far too often the diversity of what it means to walk this planet as a woman is lost when all are expected to gather and worship beneath the great white tent.

I have no firmly held opinions on the matter, only my own observations from what life has taught me so far. Without turning this into a thesis project, the idea I'm considering is that the commonplace association of Blackness with masculinity and femininity with Whiteness almost guarantees the erasure of Black women from the mainstream theatrical landscape unless cultural gatekeepers actively resist that tendency through learning more intersectionality.

I'm not sure I can really investigate this more fully. To be honest, I hope someone else can see where it goes.

Is a playwright's work ever done?

Matt Freeman asks some pretty interesting questions to us playwrights over at his blog. A few things to mull over:

Finished.

That's not a phrase I hear very often, in the collaboration heavy/development happy world of theater. A playscript can often feel, unless it is published, in a constant state of flux. During any production of a play of mine (I don't mean workshop, I mean production) I will receive unsolicited advice quite often on what the next draft of the play should look like, what could or should be changed. The assumption is, I believe, that a play is a moving target, and is never truly finished. I think playwrights have, more often than not, accepted that view of their work.

I'd love to see the term "finished" used more by writers and by those who work in development. There is no piece of work that can satisfy all eyes, all audiences, all metrics. But a writer, and those that he or she trusts, can find a point where they say...not "this is good" but "this is finished."

I also think it's healthy for playwrights to say "this is a finished work." Then, the discussion can evolve. The lectures and lessons from laypersons and professionals alike can end, and a discussion of each play as a fully formed piece of art can emerge.

Yoink! Playwrights and artistic power

Isaac tries (and fails -hahahahaha!) to raise hell by suggesting that the way we think about plays focuses too much on the text/writer. Isaac, perhaps you should try referencing the spontaneous growth of genitalia. At the very least you can insist that not agreeing with you make you un-American - which means you are a terrorist.

Anyway, part of what I like about theatre (as opposed to film) is that it's more democratic than other art forms. There isn't (or rather, doesn't have to be) a central authority figure who makes all the "important" decisions about the play. I like not having complete control over the process. I like the unpredictability of it, how the story and characters in my head can be given a life I never imagined while still using the same base ingredients (my words on the page - whether dialogue or stage directions).

When I write, I deliberately leave space there for an actor, director, or designer to play with. Sure, the story and the words are mine but the performance, the play? Not so much.

I'm inclined to imagine that this sort of "demand" for knowing who's boss at all times comes from the fact that for most of us born in the latter half of the 20th century, film (including television) has been our default dramatic medium. That world is extremely hierarchal and authoritarian, with the director wielding the most power over a performance. I'm certainly not making any sort of value judgment whatsoever about that since film is what it is - a completely different medium that demands different things from its creators and audiences. But the fact remains that, in film at least, it's a medium that puts directors on top of the creative process.

So, I see Isaac's point, which I want to refine a bit. It's not that there's too much focus on the script. It's that people expect the script to do too much. Several comments in response to Isaac's post hint at that, particularly J. Holtham (99 Seats):

I never really understand why we need to parse it out so much, to what end. I was just talking to Matt Freeman about this the other day and he quoted the old saw about being a playwright and how, if everyone loves the play, they'll credit you, but if no one loves the play, they'll blame you. Every play changes in rehearsal, in performance, has limitations that are fixed by the actors or directors, sometimes in the actual words on the page, sometimes in the performing. We all know this, we've all gone through production, but the attitude is still it's all about the playwright. Which, I think, puts undue pressure on playwrights and adds to the frenzy for The Right Play.

As a writer, I've never understood the "need" to create "actor-proof" or "director-immune" scripts. As far as I'm concerned, I'm just there to get the damn story on paper. My duties are pretty simple. Let my collaborators know who is doing what onstage. That's it. Whether that takes the form of a coherent narrative with more-or-less natural dialogue or is a shifting series of images and/or sounds is anybody's guess. But as far as I'm concerned, that's all I'm there to do.

Voices from the grave

I sacrificed an unbaptized male infant to so I could talk to August Wilson. Apparently, Mr. Wilson isn't too keen on that kind of thing, so while I held his soul prisoner, he only told me to read The Ground on Which I Stand. So I did, and you should too. Here are a few nuggets (bold = "Hell, yes!" and "Fuck, yeah!"). 

In one guise, the ground I stand on has been pioneered by the Greek dramatists—by Euripides, Aeschylus and Sophocles—by William Shakespeare, by Shaw and Ibsen, and by the American dramatists Eugene O’Neill, Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams. In another guise, the ground that I stand on has been pioneered by my grandfather, by Nat Turner, by Denmark Vesey, by Martin Delaney, Marcus Garvey and the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. That is the ground of the affirmation of the value of one being, an affirmation of his worth in the face of society’s urgent and sometimes profound denial.
[..........]
[...] it is difficult to disassociate my concerns with theatre from the concerns of my life as a black man, and it is difficult to disassociate one part of my life from another.[...]The need to alter our relationship to the society and to alter the shared expectations of ourselves as a racial group, I find of greater urgency now than it was then.
[..........]
[...] black theatre in America is alive … it is vibrant … it is vital … it just isn’t funded. Black theatre doesn’t share in the economics that would allow it to support its artists and supply them with meaningful avenues to develop their talent and broadcast and disseminate ideas crucial to its growth. The economics are reserved as privilege to the overwhelming abundance of institutions that preserve, promote and perpetuate white culture.

That is not a complaint. That is an advertisement.
[..........]
There are and have always been two distinct and parallel traditions in black art: that is, art that is conceived and design to entertain white society, and art that feeds the spirit and celebrates the life of black American by designing its strategies for survival and prosperity.
[..........]
This second tradition occurred when the African in the confines of the slave quarters sought to invest his spirit with the strength of his ancestors by conceiving in his art, in his song and dance, a world in which he was the spiritual center and his existence was a manifest act of the creator from whom life flowed. He then could create art that was functional and furnished him with a spiritual temperament necessary for his survival as property and the dehumanizing status that was attendant to that.

I stand myself and my art squarely on the self-defining ground of the slave quarters, and find the ground to be hallowed and made fertile by the blood and bones of the men and woman who can be described as warriors on the cultural battlefield that affirmed their self-worth. As there is no idea that cannot be contained by black life, these men and women found themselves to be sufficient and secure in their art and their instruction.
[..........]
We cannot share a single value system if that value system consists of the values of white Americans based on their European ancestors. We reject that as Cultural Imperialism. We need a value system that includes our contributions as Africans in America. Our agendas are a valid as yours. We may disagree, we may forever be on opposite sides of aesthetics, but we can only share a value system that is inclusive of all Americans and recognizes their unique and valuable contributions.
[..........]
It is inconceivable to them that life could be lived and enriched without knowing Shakespeare or Mozart. Their gods, their manners, their being, are the only true and correct representations of humankind. They refuse to recognize black conduct and manners as part of a system that is fueled by its own philosophy, mythology, history, creative motif, social organization and ethos. The ideas that blacks have their own way of responding to the world, their own values, style, linguistics, religion and aesthetics, is unacceptable to them.
[..........]
We are not ashamed, and do not need you to be ashamed for us. Nor do we need the recognition of our blackness to be couched in abstract phases like “artist of color.” Who are you talking about? A Japanese artist? An Eskimo? A Filipino? A Mexican? A Cambodian? A Nigerian? An African American? Are we to suppose that if you put a white person on one side of the scale and the rest of humanity lumped together as nondescript “people of color” on the other side, that it would balance out? That whites carry that much spiritual weight? We reject that. We are unique, and we are specific.
[..........]
So much of what makes this country rich in art and all manners of spiritual life is the contributions that we as African Americans have made. We cannot allow others to have authority over our cultural and spiritual products. We reject, without reservation, any attempts by anyone to rewrite our history so to deny us the rewards of our spiritual labors, and to become the culture custodians of our art, our literature and our lives. To give expression to the spirit that has been shaped and fashioned by our history is of necessity to give voice and vent to the history itself.
[..........]
From the hull of a ship to self-determining, self-respecting people. That is the journey we are making.

We are robust in spirit, we are bright with laughter, and we are bold in imagination. Our blood is soaked into the soil and our bones lie scattered the whole way across the Atlantic Ocean, as Hansel’s crumbs, to mark the way back home.
[..........]
The true critic does not sit in judgment. Rather he seeks to inform his reader, instead of adopting a posture of self-conscious importance in which he sees himself a judge and final arbiter of a work’s importance or value.
[..........]
I believe in the American theatre. I believe in its power to inform about the human condition, its power to heal, its power to hold the mirror as ’twere up to nature, its power to uncover the truths we wrestle from uncertain and sometimes unyielding realities. All of art is a search for ways of being, of living life more fully. We who are capable of those noble pursuits should challenge the melancholy and barbaric, to bring the light of angelic grace, peace, prosperity and the unencumbered pursuit of happiness to the ground on which we all stand.

After that, I ate the baby and went to a movie.

Sound familiar?

I was in the Penn Station Borders this afternoon. While I was hitting up the race and racism books (a strangely thin selection, considering the month), I came across A White Teacher Talks about Race by Julie Landsman. Let me share a selection of quotations in light of what I've been talking about lately. I bet you'll notice that some of this sounds awfully familiar.

I'm really tired of playing "Is it or isn't it racist?" Anyone who's passed Racism 101 with at least a C- knows that racism infests theatre just as it does every other industry. Rather than set up this post as a challenge against which White theatre artists and organizations must defend themselves against (which I find incredibly boring), I'm more interested in bringing the issue closer to home - to you and what you do right here, right now. Not in some abstract and nebulous realm called Diversity.

Now for the quotes . . .

1. Paradoxically, it is often not in appealig to universals or abstract principles that change happens. Rather, change comes about in smaller contexts [...]
2. I believe that white people too often want solutions to be quick and easy. They want something they can follow and in a few months, a few years at the most, the problem will be solved. At the same time, I believe people of color have known it will not happen this way. It will happen over decades, as our hearts change, our laws change, our responses soften, our minds open. [...] It will happen when we have lived with each other side by side, when we have heard each other's stories [...] It will happen when compassion and politics are not longer considered opposites.
3. I can seek out those in the communities where my students live [...] I can begin to form alliances.
4. [...] when students are hungry or their boyfriends are after them, it is expedient to meet these students right where they are, this morning, this afternoon. And to meet students right where hey are must involve an understanding of the racial history they have lived, as well as understanding our own racial history. It involves moving fast, to get a shelter bed, a college application, or even teh right poem, the right story to read aloud to them.
5. Right now I want to work with adults who want what I want: the greatest possibilities for young people. I will join parents, sudents, and teachers, both of color and white, to resist classrooms that are boring and that only provide European curricula [...]
6. My friends of color are skeptical of those of us who are white and talk about change and diversity. We have made mistakes over the years: have promised action and stayed with discussion. We have atched our own backs first and those of our colleagues or friends of color only after we have made sure we have gotten what we needed. Many of us have come to the table with the paternalistic idea of "helping the oppressed," of bringing our beneficence to the struggling masses of common folks. We have done this n the polite guise of community change, of foundation aid, of board membership, and we have done it imagining that we are bestowing great good on those incapable of getting it for themselves. We have come with condescension, false promise, and little follow-through. We have come with limited time to work things out, to disagree, or to argue. Rather, we often comei n a hurry to bestow and get out, go home, head back to our own neighborhoods.

Indeed, the most consistent failure of White theatre artists throughout this and similar discussions has been their insistence upon talking. Talking to, talking about, even talking over. There's a lot of worry and lamentation and righteous anger going around, but it all seems to be so much pissing in the wind because I rarely see - at least on the theatre blogosphere - any real engagement with the very people affected most by the state of things - theatre artists of color. I see a one-off post every now and then, expressing the appropriate amount of progressive ideas, but no real effort to connect with us. What, are we not important enough? Too small potatoes? Our work lacking artistic sophistication? For real, I've been more or less begging for some of you to listen to me, to respond to me, to engage with me. I don't even need all the fingers on one hand to count the number of people who have done so, whether online or in real life. Seriously, what am I to make of all this talk and invisible back-patting when the closest examples in my own life all too often illustrate the very points they're making?

And you wonder why we don't believe you.

If I haven't made things absolutely clear, no one is on trial. This is not a cross-examination. Nobody's casting anyone as heroes and villains. In fact, it's just the opposite - I want you to be better Good Guys. To do that takes going beyond earning a little bit of good karma here and there. It takes creating a new way of seeing and existing in the world - and that's not a comfortable place to be in.

Even me. At some point in the future, I'm going to address how a lifetime of living in a White supremacist society has really affected me in virtually every aspect of my life. Later, though. How much later depends on how vulnerable I feel like being. Writing Anne&Me has opened me up to things I'm still wrestling with right now. Between dealing with that and exploring this other thing, I'm not sure if I'm up to putting that on display (which, for reasons I've discussed before, is really fucking shitty).

What I'm calling for is self-examination. Yes, it can make you uncomfortable if you recognize yourself in some of the things being said here. Yes, this particular line of inquiry is difficult for most White people since what they're taught about diversity and inclusiveness is woefully inadequate for practicing it. I'm not so much interrogating you as I am giving you a more honest way to reflect on yourself and what you're doing, using the best real-life example I have: my own experience. If you're satisfied with where you are, if you believe the point of this is to prove how you "colorblind" you are, to proclaim how you don't have a racist bone in your body, you're reading this wrong.

That's not to say your thoughts and feelings aren't important. It's OK to be shocked, confused, sad, angry, hurt, and everything else. But making your shock, confusion, sadness, anger, and hurt the center of this (and every other) conversation about race - is a good way to fuck up.

I probably made a mistake posting this. But it's more tiresome bottling it all up and letting it eat me from the inside - which is exactly what's been happening when I began writing Anne&Me.

Another one of us down in the trenches

Kent is self-producing too. Poor schmuck.

Name our group

Remember when I told you about that playwrights' group I'm forming? It's gaining momentum now. We even got mentioned on a couple of blogs (like InfiniteBody and Emerging Playwrights).

And by the way - you can now follow me on Twitter.

What I'm doing now: forming playwrights of color group

Via our Craigslist ad (h/t LaSmartOne):

Are you a playwright of color with little or no production experience?

A new weekly or bimonthly playwriting unit of 4-6 writers is forming with the objective of assisting in the development and critique of new work and to collectively explore avenues of production.

Once or twice a month, we will have an in-depth discussion of your script. This group will not only provide the accountability you need to get your first script on paper, but also feedback from other writers on perceived strengths and weaknesses, applications of drama theory, writing ideas and more. Occasionally, we may network with established writers and theater professionals. After a few months, we would like to self-produce a night of readings or a series of small-scale staged productions. We have full-time access to rehearsal loft space in Brooklyn.

We would prefer to work with writers on the more experimental/avant-garde scale. As of now, the group's plays deal heavily on the social and historical dynamics of race and racism but this isn't the only topic that interests us. Please, no Tyler Perry/urban drama/gospel plays. We welcome writers who take inspiration from the likes of Adrienne Kennedy, Suzan Lori-Parks, George C. Wolfe. We also welcome beginning and established playwrights writing traditionally structured plays like those of August Wilson, James Baldwin and Lorraine Hansberry. You should be queer-friendly but all sexual orientations are welcome and sexuality does not have to be a focus of your writing.

We hope you will join us in helping to build this collective. With dedication and directed energy to each other and to our craft, we can broadcast our voices and ensure each other's success.

 And wouldn't you know? We had a few people contact us, and we got our ad posted on InfiniteBody too!

Black writers, White theatre

See, this is what happens when you check out of the theatre blogosphere for a while: You miss going to stuff like the Black Playwrights Convening. I'll have to make do with what's been posted at the New Play Blog and Twitter. In other words, I'm officially pissed that I didn't get a chance to go.

In any case, the fact that I wasn't physically present doesn't mean I don't have to reflect on and respond to some of what did come out of it, particularly from Isaac and Adam, but I'm still looking for other blog posts about it (for obvious reasons).

Amongst some other really interesting things, there are a couple of things that really stood out to me about what came out of the Black Playwrights Convening. But in particular, Adam Thurman (The Mission Paradox Blog) said:

It became clear to me that there are a thousand different paths to "success" that these playwrights could take and that it would be important from them to not only pursue their path but to help others with their own journey. "My father always used to say to me 'Don't sleep on your brother's dream'", said one writer. "As long as we share vision, we can support each other's dreams."

It's really interesting to come across this right now. It's somewhat reassuring to have some of the things I've intuited and experienced validated, if only obliquely. I especially want to address what Adam's talking about here because it deals with one of my main frustrations with trying to get anything started in theatre and how that relates to Blackness and femininity.

Let me start with something you ought to know about me.

Despite the overall shittiness of my previous living arrangement, I learned something very important about myself: I'm an extraordinarily generous person. I freely give time, energy, and even money to people without thinking twice about it and sometimes against my better judgment. I've taken huge risks for acquaintances that would give close family members pause, and I've done it at the drop of a hat -- despite intense misgivings. I've learned to be more discriminate and judicious with my generosity to prevent being taken for granted or taken advantage of. Nevertheless, when someone I know needs something, my first instinct - even if never expressed - is to give whatever I can of myself.

Let's apply this to theatre, for a minute.

LaSmartOne is someone I know of through the Stuff White People Do blog. Both of us comment there fairly regularly. Very recently, LaSmartOne e-mailed me about joining or starting up a playwrights' group. I didn't know this person. I never met this person. We don't have the same social or professional circles. This person simply liked a few things I said, knew I was a playwright, and chose to e-mail me. What was my first response? Set up a time and place to meet. No expectations. No agenda other than reading a bit of each other's work. No angle. Nothing to prove. Just two people who have something in common trying to figure out where that can take us.

Here's what I think is very interesting. LaSmartOne, like me, is also a Black playwright. We both love theater and hate the mainstream media portrayals of Black stories and Black characters (aka ghetto lit and Tyler Perry - we never talked about the Wayans Brothers). We both grasp the intersections of systems of oppression and want to see this reflected in media. We both want more variety in the presentation of LGBTQ characters and relationships (no more Queer Eye bullshit).

Neither one of us comes from a theatrical background. Yet, in a two-hour meeting in the Starbucks at Union Square, we both decided to establish a writing group geared toward producing works by (presumably new) playwrights of color. I'll post a link to the Craigslist ad once it's up.

I don't think those details are incidental. In my experience, Black people are more willing to help people this way than White people. If I'm very honest with myself, the people who have taken the most interest in my development - whether personal, professional, or creative - have been Black. That's not to say that White people have not done me favors or been kind to me, not at all. But when it comes to mentoring and sharing  resources, the person doing that has almost always been Black.

In contrast, my experiences with White people have been confusing, uncomfortable, frustrating, and exhausting in this regard. I can't quite put my finger on why, but I always feel a kind of pressure to perform around White people. It's like I have to prove I'm worthy of their presence. It's proven very difficult to get a White person's attention, especially a White man's. It's even harder to maintain it for more than about 15 minutes. And if you're White, and you met me in person, I'm probably talking about you.


This experience points to very different modes of existing in the world. I'm not judging one way or the other. I'm certainly not alluding to racial separatism. But I will say that, as a Black artist and professional, I cannot wait for White people - including my friends and acquaintances - to decide when what I have to offer is worthy of paying attention to. In the time I'd spend trying to impress these people, I could be working on my craft, building relationships with people who are truly interested in me, and consolidating resources with others who share my passions and goals and concerns. I didn't pick up and move from Richmond to New York to do the same shit I can do over there. I wanted a change, and I wanted a chance to make real opportunities.

As the New Play Blog states:

Out of the frustrations, though, one of the major themes of the weekend began to emerge early: self-reliance. We would come back, again and again, to the idea that a black artist needed to find their own audience and bring them into the institutions. At least one person said there was a crisis in marketing to black audiences. So much of that affects the audiences and so much of that falls on our backs. There is work there, and an obligation, but also a lot of control and empowerment. We can and should develop our own audiences, know who they are and how to reach them and bring them along with us.

 That's what I'm talkin' about.

Richard Nelson's speech

Read it here. (H/t Isaac at Parabasis.)

The whole thing is worth reading, but here are some gems:

• The profession of playwright, the role of the playwright in today’s American theater . . . is under serious attack. Some who attack are simply greedy, some ignorant, some can’t understand why theater isn’t TV or film. But perhaps the greatest threat to the playwright in today’ s theater comes from . . . those who want ‘to help.’

• . . . I am not saying that a playwright should avoid and ignore comments and reactions to his work . . . But I am saying that our mindset toward playwrights should be this: 1) the playwright knows what he is doing, 2) perhaps the play as presented is as it should be. So that the onus for change is not on the playwright but on others, on the theater . . . How to improve a play should be the domain of the writer, with the theater supplying potential tools, a reading say, or a workshop with clearly delineated goals. These are tools that should evolve out of a need, as opposed to being a given.

• . . . I have watched actors and directors approach classical plays that have massive contradictions and address those plays not as works to be fixed, but rather to be solved. So I am arguing for a theater where the mindset is not to fix new plays, but to solve them.

• Rules for writing plays. My god. One hears young playwrights being told what a play ‘must do,’ or ‘how a play works.’ One hears writers being told that a character’s ‘journey’ isn’t clear enough, or that the writer needs to determine a character’s ‘motivation.’ One hears how a play has to ‘build’ in a certain way, or how ‘the conflict’ isn’t strong enough. These are terms that seem to suggest a deep understanding of what a play is and how it is put together, but in fact they tell us very little. Perhaps a particular play might be helped by one of these suggestions, but they (and other ‘rules’) are too generally prescribed . . . The playwright doesn’t write out of ‘motivations’ but rather out of truth and reality, out of people and story and worlds he or she wishes or needs to create for us.