Gwydion Suilebhan's Posts - TheatreFace

In Defense of the Well-Made Play

2011-04-20T12:00:00.000Z

Not long ago, I chanced upon a Tweet from a woman—I’ll protect her reputation by keeping her anonymous—extensively deriding a piece of work as a “well-made play.” I realize that historically speaking, the term “well-made play” has been used pejoratively during certain periods… but the more I think about that, the more foolish and short-sighted that seems to me.

Before I go any further, let me set forth the definition of the term on which my argument relies: a well-made play is one that relies at least primarily on a traditional plot-driven dramatic structure: introduction, rising action, climax, etc. I’m not referring, to be extra-clear, to a play that has literally been made well—a play that has smoothed out its rough edges and feels, to its audiences, neat and tidy and wrapped-up… though I do think those qualities are typically true of well-made plays.

Okay: there’s the definition. Now, the question: what’s wrong with well-made plays?

When I inquired of the woman in question, she seemed to suggest that well-made plays were passé and that their time had come and gone. My theory is this: they may be passé for her, and perhaps for other theater practitioners, but you can be damn sure they’re still the best game in town for most of America.

In fact, I suspect that most Americans—the ones who aren’t going to theater, though we wish like hell they were—really LOVE traditional dramatic structure. That’s why they watch television and see movies, both of which serve up one well-made story after another. Audiences know how to “get” that format.

We Americans expect traditional structure, and when we don’t get it, and we have to adapt to the rules of a more non-traditional storytelling style, theater can often (but not always) begin to feel like work.

Theater should not be work… at least not most of the time.

The problem is this: we’re all clambering all over one another to try to make more and more inventive plays with more and more experimental styles, and all the while we’re getting farther and farther away from the audiences who might be seeing our work. We blame them for not taking an interest, but what’s really happening is that we’re not telling the kind of stories they want to hear. Sure, maybe they could stretch themselves further from time to time; couldn’t we all? But they don’t want to have to do that every time they walk into a theater.

What this means to me: most of the plays we make should still rely on traditional dramatic structure. When they don’t, we should have a good reason for deviating. We should meet our audiences where they are, then carry them forward into new territory from there. We should be making theater for the people who aren’t watching it at all, not simply for each other. If we do that, we’ll have a great many more well-made plays, not fewer.

Whatever your artistic impulses, though, one thing is clear: there’s no reason to deride other artists for the choices they’ve made. If you don’t care for well-made plays, fine; we do still need experimentation, so please, experiment and discover new territory for all of us. I do it myself from time to time, and it’s exhilarating and wonderful. But I’m not “better” or morally superior for trying something new, and neither is anyone else.

You Say You Want a Revolution?

2011-04-13T12:00:00.000Z

Not long ago, on Twitter, I posed the following question: what was the last technological innovation that led to a revolution in theater?

One historically-minded friend answered “When Thespis stepped out of the chorus,” which struck me as part wisecrack, part wise. After all, isn’t acting one of the two essential technologies of theater? (The other, of course, is writing; without either performers or a script—even an improvised or movement-based script—there is no play.)

Another, thinking along similar lines, suggested the rise of the director, but almost everyone else offered more traditionally technological answers: computerized lighting and sound, the incorporation of video into theatrical storytelling, and the use of the printing press to enable mass distribution of scripts, for example. All of them, you must admit, are interesting answers worthy of lengthy discussion.

Eventually, a couple of folks did suggest what I thought would have been everyone’s first answer: the internet. It’s hard to imagine virtually anything theatrical—outside of an actual performance—happening without the internet any more. There can’t be more than a handful of theater companies that don’t have even rudimentary websites. Increasing numbers of tickets are sold online. Scripts are submitted via email, headshots are distributed electronically, and press releases are issued digitally. Production meetings are held via Skype, productions are promoted via YouTube trailers, and invitations to opening nights are extended via Facebook. A significant percentage of the business of theater is moving online; this makes us just like the rest of the world and is not particularly surprising.

Only one person in the conversation, however, suggested the answer that was literally sitting right in front of us—the technological innovation that led me to ask the question in the first place: Twitter. In a forthcoming article on HowlRound.com, I've argued that Twitter is in many ways upsetting the theatrical ecosystem. I also tried to convince my readers here to join Twitter several months ago. (Have you done it yet?) Twitter is definitely my candidate for Most Likely to Lead the Revolution.

What's yours?

What Humana Did Really Well

2011-04-06T12:00:00.000Z

With a smidgen of distance now from my visit to Humana, I am surprised to find that what’s really staying with me—more than the lovely people I met, the jaw-dropping plays, and the beautiful Actors Theatre of Louisville itself—are the Festival’s immense audiences. Outside of almost every sold-out performance, long lines of patrons hoped to snag last-minute tickets; inside of every theater, those same theatergoers happily stood behind the last row of seats to be let in on the action, and those of us in seats offered standing ovations more often than not. Even the tribute to the late Sandy Speer, former executive director of the theater, was so well attended there weren’t enough chairs by half.

When was the last time you saw any theatrical event that enthusiastically attended? The closest I can come in my recent memory is the Taffety Punk Theatre Company’s bootleg production of TROILUS AND CRESSIDA, which filled the Folger Shakespeare Theater beyond capacity and turned away a great many patrons besides. That was only one show, however, and only for one night: Humana is orders of magnitude larger and more complicated. (And if you know the bootleg productions I’m talking about, that’s saying a lot.) The fact that so many people were so fiercely determined to participate in the Festival speaks volumes about its ability to incite, inspire, and invigorate audiences… and in the end, isn’t that what we’re all trying to do?

I do have to note, of course, that I was attending the festival during one of its industry weekends, which means that most of the people in attendance were theater practitioners in one way or another: directors, playwrights, artistic directors, board members, critics, and so on. As I understand it, however, this was (by Humana’s own standards) an extremely well-attended festival; Sean Daniels, Associate Artistic Director, told me they actually sold out the entire weekend for the first time this year. Let’s be clear about what that means, mind you: two theaters running back-to-back shows all day long for three days in a row. That’s a lot of tickets to sell no matter who buys them.

What did Humana do well? I ask because I buy the argument (offered most recently by Chip and Dan Heath in Switch) that “cloning the bright spots” is a smart way to bring about change: find what’s working well, then imitate those models. If the Actors Theatre of Louisville can draw record crowds to the Humana Festival when other theaters are struggling to sell tickets, we should ask ourselves: what are they doing right, and how can we learn from them?

The first bright spot I want to call attention to: they never went dark. Not literally, of course, but for every reasonable hour of the day, there was something going on in the theater: a breakfast meeting, a gala, a lively bar, a tribute, a press gathering—and, of course, the plays. The sense of action in the space was palpable; even the non-professionals must have felt it. The Actors Theatre of Louisville was the place to be. That has tremendous appeal for people, and it can be implemented in a thousand different ways. (If you’re inspired, here’s an excellent blog post on the subject.) I’d love to see this idea adopted more widely.

The most important bright spot, however, has to be the work itself. (As Michael Kaiser has said, the key to success is “great art, well marketed.”) For the most part, the plays I saw at Humana were well-crafted, engaging, and ambitious pieces of work. Jordan Harrison’s MAPLE AND VINE was tight and insightful and funny. Molly Smith Metzler’s ELEMENO PEA was riotous and sharp and rebellious. A. Rey Pamatmat’s EDITH CAN SHOOT THINGS AND HIT THEM—the best two hours I spent in Louisville—was smart and tender and vital. (I’ve read that there were standing ovations after every performance; I do not doubt it.) Three plays that wonderful rarely appear in the same season, let alone the same weekend; if they did, we’d have more standing room only audiences everywhere.

What I also noted about those three shows in particular is how (generally) conventional they were in their storytelling. Each had (gasp) a clear plot, characters with clear internal motivations and desires, rising action and conflict, a few Aristotelian unities, and so forth. Sure, there were a few moments of direct address, but they didn’t try to be clever or impress anyone with gags and tricks or insert random dance breaks or require impossible stage directions. For the most part, they were just ripping good yarns, told with verve and crackle. If you ask me, we need more of that in the theater, too.

I can hardly wait until next year.

Humana, Day Three

2011-04-04T03:07:39.000Z

I spent the whole morning of day three much like I spent the evening of day two: curled up in a feverish ball in my hotel room willing myself to get better quickly without much luck. I could almost feel the festival going on without me: people having fun breakfasts together, making grand plans for the theater they want to create, reveling in the shows they’ve seen, and recovering from last night’s gala. (If so, I hope they feel better than I do; I heard they were passing around flasks of “whin,” which for those who haven’t seen Peter Sinn Nachtrieb’s play BOB is whiskey plus gin.) With tickets for a noon show, however, I was determined to rest as much as possible and at least try to make it through one last production. I rallied as best I could and stumbled out of the hotel.

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Here are the two things that saved me: 1) the kind bartender at the theater who handed me a can of ginger ale and five saltine crackers and told me to feel better, and 2) a damn fine production of a damn fine play, which carried me utterly away for a good two hours. By the standing ovation—the third such expression of gratitude I’d experienced all weekend—I felt a great deal more like myself.

With a good half hour to go before the shuttle left for the airport and my spirits greatly renewed, I made a series of whirlwind goodbyes: my dear friend David Loehr of 2am Theatre; my friends from HotCity Theatre; Polly Carl and Sean Daniels, the Associate Artistic Director of the Actors Theater of Louisville (and yet another person I’d only tweeted with prior to the festival); and the gracious marketing staff that made my trip so amenable. There were a few others I would have liked to have said farewell to, but I had a plane to catch…and given how sick I still felt, I was not about to make the same miss-my-plane mistake twice.

As I took my seat on the shuttle, I was immediately saddened by how quickly the whole experience seemed to have come to a close… but I should have known better than to assume it was actually over. Within minutes I was deep into a conversation with the two women sitting behind me, one of whom happened to be a playwright I’d emailed with a while back, the other of whom serves as a board member for one of my favorite theater companies in DC. We chatted about the plays we had seen, our opinions of the work largely in agreement, and shared our genuine admiration for the festival. Traveling with them was a treat: it made me feel as if I was coming back to DC with at least two other people who would understand what the weekend had really been about.

Then again, perhaps the whole point of coming to Humana is to experience a sense of belonging within the larger American theatrical community, not merely one’s own home city. Even with my time at the festival severely compromised, I managed to meet and befriend people, to renew existing relationships with people all over the country, and to broaden my theatrical perspective a bit. I also saw more than enough outstanding work to make me feel invigorated and inspired by the diverse and talented voices being nurtured at Humana.

Did I end up feeling like I’d made the most of the weekend, career-wise? In the end, I believe I realized that “networking” isn’t what Humana is about, or at least it shouldn’t be—not for me. What really mattered was being surrounded by so much passion for theatrical storytelling and so many well-crafted stories brilliantly told. The level of excellence was astonishing: an inspirational kick-in-the-pants that made me want to come home and make the very best work I’ve ever made. Sure, I might have met a few new people I’d like to work with… but what really matters is the renewed energy I have to create. For that, and for surviving a rocky three days, I am very grateful.

Humana, Day Two

2011-04-03T13:16:52.000Z

Day two began, I am irked to report, with yet another snafu: my hotel room alarm clock had not been “sprung forward,” which means that the hour of email checking and tweeting I planned to enjoy suddenly became ten frantic minutes of showering, getting dressed, and hustling across the street to the theater. Clearly, I’m just not in synch with the space-time continuum.

The press breakfast at which I managed to arrive, fortunately, with plenty of time to spare, was simply lovely. I sat with Kory Kelly, Marketing Director for the theater, and gabbed about everything from iPad application and web design to the brutality of winters in Chicago, where he and I both once lived. He surprised me by reciting the range of countries from which various members of the press had traveled for the festival: Germany, Italy, Guyana, Venezuela, and Great Britain, among others.

At breakfast I also chanced to meet a woman I had only ever emailed, tweeted, and Facebooked with before the festival: Polly Carl, the Director of Artistic Development for Steppenwolf Theatre and the editor of the online journal HowlRound, for which I’ve just begun to write. It’s a much-lamented fact of modern life that so many of our relationships are digital, but I’ve learned to appreciate the ability to get to know someone virtually before meeting them in person. I wasn’t the least bit surprised to learn that I enjoyed Polly’s company.

After the press breakfast—and a quick stop to line up interviews for the following morning—I went in search of a quiet place in which to gather my thoughts. I sat myself down in what I thought was a quiet corner. In short order, however, I was joined by a playwright from NY; a quick conversation revealed a few shared acquaintances. Humana seemed to be hell bent on proving the idea that a stranger is just a friend you haven’t met yet.

My new friend and I were interrupted in our chat by the unexpected arrival of a woman with a microphone: a reporter from NPR doing two stories for Morning Edition. We were both interviewed—I felt a bit awkward having the tables turned on me, but I also got a small thrill out of it—and I hope I was at least reasonably eloquent. I did the best I could to avoid embarrassing myself.

The parade of visitors continued with a playwright friend of mine from St. Louis; we sat and had a good long catch-up chat, interrupted only by a quick visit with Marc Masterson, the outgoing Artistic Director of the theater. This is how much fun it is at Humana: you have to work hard to avoid the company of fascinating, friendly, smart people.

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The afternoon began beautifully: a production of the most enchanting, uplifting, well-constructed play I’ve seen in a long while. I was seated next to an Artistic Director from San Francisco, with whom I had a terrific chat about the demands of a cavernous theater space, and we both couldn’t believe what a beautiful production we were seeing. My joy was almost enough to help me ignore the fact that I was starting to feel a bit poorly: actually, really poorly.

Inertia carried me from one play right into the next, but as soon as I sat down, I feared I would have to get up in the middle of the show. As it happened, I made it to intermission—though I’m quite certain I missed half of what was happening while willing my stomach to settle—but only barely. I hustled back to my hotel room as soon as I could and proceeded to succumb in a big way to the virus I’d helped my son get through in the days before I left for Louisville.

Here’s what I missed, in addition to the second act of the play I had to leave: the ten minute plays that are central to Humana Festival, the big gala, and countless new connections. I’ve also missed the interviews I scheduled this morning; I’m using what energy I have to file this blog post instead. I’m feeling very much like a failure, for all of the struggles I’ve lived through, and I’m not sure how I’m going to rescue my experience here. I hope like hell I can.

Humana, Day One

2011-04-02T06:17:13.000Z

Any playwright will tell you: it’s really hard to get to the Humana Festival at the Actor’s Theatre of Louisville. This playwright will tell you, much to his chagrin, that it’s even harder if you miss your flight. Technically I was actually on time for my flight; I just wasn’t in the right airport. Like a minor character cut from Don DeLillo’s just-this-side-of-unbelievable VALPARAISO, I went to Baltimore-Washington airport instead of Reagan National. Quite a rough start to my journey, I hope you’ll agree.

This is not as silly a mistake as it seems; close, but not quite. I live equidistant from both airports… and, to make matters worse, from Dulles International as well. I’m not exaggerating: BWI is 29.3 miles door-to-door, Dulles is 29.7, and National (if I travel around the Beltway and avoid the city) is 26.5. As a result, I never fly out of the same airport from one trip to the next. Throw in the fact that I was up with my sick 11 month-old son the night before my 8 am flight, which meant leaving the house at 6 am, and you can see how it might happen, can’t you? (Please say yes.)

In many ways, my difficulty getting to Humana is emblematic of the challenges I face as a playwright. I have been, in more ways than one, late to the party. Although I attended Northwestern, a university with a notable drama program, the only visits I made to the theater were to build sets and run light boards and see shows. I majored in poetry and worked as a poet for a decade after I graduated. I didn’t even consider writing a play until I was 33 years old, and though success came quickly when I finally started, I was still several years of experience behind my contemporaries before I even started. My master’s degree wasn’t just from the “wrong” school—I attended the poetically prestigious Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins—it was in the wrong discipline.

Now, at 42, I’m older than I “should” be for an emerging playwright. I’m not “pedigreed” in the right way, either, and I’m still making the adjustment to writing while helping to raise a child, a change that might ideally have come later in my career. Frankly, getting to the Humana Festival feels impossible; getting my son’s diapers changed and getting through my next production—my play BUGGY & TYLER opens in DC in less than two weeks—feels hard enough.

But I can’t dwell: my new flight leaves in a few hours. Must keep pushing on if I’m going to get anywhere… literally and figuratively.

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Things picked up immeasurably right when I landed. The incredibly generous Humana Festival staff was waiting at baggage claim to whisk me into Louisville, and my company on the ride from the airport was none other than Adrien-Alice Hansel, the Actors Theatre of Louisville’s former Director of New Play Development, who moved to DC in November to join the staff of the Studio Theatre. A 15 minute conversation about kids and theater and life in DC was all it took to make me feel less anxious about my first visit . That and (I must admit) dropping my bags off at the hotel before heading to the theater.

I arrived just in time to slip into the back of the crowd at the memorial for Sandy Speer, the former Executive Director of the theater. A veritable parade of folks gave both moving and funny tributes to Speer, about whom I knew very little before I arrived, and everything I heard made me wish I’d known the man. I was, however, just a touch distracted by the fact that sitting not too far away from me was the drop-dead handsome Noah Wyle…at least until he got up to give his own eloquent and moving tribute to Speer, who happened to be his uncle.

After a quick dinner—I have a feeling I’m really going to like Kentucky in that regard—I saw my first show of the weekend: Jordan Harrison’s MAPLE AND VINE. My ticket had me sitting between a New York and LA-based director and an associate artistic director, both of whose names I’ll decline to drop. I had great conversations with both of them… so great, in fact, that it never occurred to me to try to “network” in any way. Luckily, they both asked to read my work of their own accord, and although I’ve been wrong on this front before, they both seemed genuine in doing so. When I’m back in DC, I will have to screw my courage to the sticking place and send them what they asked for.

At intermission, I noticed a good friend across the theater; one huge hug later, we’d agreed to watch the 11 pm performance of THE END together. A brief jaunt back to the hotel to drop off my swag bag—during which I ran into the entire staff of the HotCity Theatre, where I workshopped my play REALS last year, and arranged a get-together for the following afternoon—and my friend and I were seated back in the same theater. His company at an hour during which I would typically be sleeping, if I were at home, was very welcome.

And with that, the first day was done. I don’t know whether I made the most of it—whether I should have introduced myself to more of my fellow Festival-goers, for example, or had some sort of great revelation—but I did what I could.

More tomorrow.

Writing Under the Gun

2011-03-30T12:00:00.000Z

About once a year or so for the past ten years, I've had the good fortune to participate in a variety of play-in-a-day festivals of one kind or another.

A few weeks ago I joined a local company here in DC -- a director and three actors with whom I was largely unfamiliar -- in what I'll call the "traditional" speed-production format: you pick a theme, a prop, and a line of dialogue out of a hat, and 24 hours later the curtain goes up on ten or so minutes of whatever those things inspire. I've participated in similar events on a few other occasions as well. Twice now I've written for a slightly-extended play-in-a-week festival; instead of eight or so hours to write, I had a full day, followed by two days of rehearsals and revisions, leading to a full production after a full week had passed. I've been "mashed-up" with a choreographer for whom I had eight hours to write text to inspire a dance, and I've also participated twice in the 48 Hour Film Project a couple of times. It's all been good fun.

To be honest, I'm not sure that any of the resulting art was particularly brilliant; there have been flashes, here and there, but most of time everyone's work reflected the fact that we were all under really restrictive deadlines.

You would think that, having done so many of these things, I might have quit by now, exasperated by mediocrity... but the truth is that I don't do them to make good art. I do them for exercise.

I'm a slow writer. I write a few pages one day, then begin the next day by re-writing those pages before adding more to the scene. The third day, I start at the beginning and do it again. By the time I have a first draft completed, it's not really a first draft: the opening few beats have been edited and revised dozens of times at a minimum.

Writing under the gun, however, gives me a reason to break out of that pattern. There's no time to go back and edit (at least not much). You have to keep pushing forward, all the way to the end of the play, just to make sure you've got a complete first draft by your deadline. If you're lucky, you get a chance to edit a bit here and there... but it doesn't always happen.

For a good while after the event, I find myself writing more freely, without concern for my internal editor. Writing is easier, more free, and perhaps even a touch more fun. I'm not excused from the need to return and edit things, but I don't have to edit as much WHILE I'm writing. It's nice.

All of which is to say that if you have an opportunity, I recommend you give it a shot... and, if you like it, that you find a way to do it again on a semi-regular basis. You might just find it liberating, even if the quality of what ends up on stage is somewhat poor. I do.

Tempt Me to Submit

2011-03-23T12:00:00.000Z

The following is a description of an actual submission opportunity for a theater in a major American city. All identifying information, including the name of the theater in question, has been redacted:

For 20 years, the [name of theater] [name of festival] has provided playwrights with the unique opportunity to see their work leap from page to stage, with the help of some of [the city’s] finest theatre professionals. Out of the hundreds of entries submitted to [name of theater], between three and six of the strongest contenders will be selected to receive productions in [name of festival].

What does this say about the opportunity in question? To me—a playwright who actually gave this opportunity about three minutes of consideration—it says that the theater in question has no idea what motivates me as an artist. In fact, it actually says “please do not submit your work” in the clearest and loudest possible terms.

You see, the theater has described this “unique opportunity” in terms that merely suggest I’d be fighting an uphill battle to have my work be selected; that there are hundreds of people vying for a small number of slots, and that if I was lucky enough to have my work be selected, it would be produced by people who have no more innovative thoughts about what they’re doing than that they can make a play “leap from page to stage.”

In other words, ho-hum.

What if, instead of using such a generic call to action, the theater had instead laid out a vision for what they hoped to achieve with the festival? What if they told me something about their mission, the kind of work they like, their audiences, or their community? What if they talked about the questions they were interested in asking with the work they produced, or their aesthetic preferences, or the people I might be collaborating with? Now THAT would have made the opportunity genuinely seem “unique.”

I fear that the impulse to speak in such blandly positive terms about opportunities—festivals, reading series, evenings of short plays, and so on—arises from a desire to sell playwrights on the importance of the theater in question. If you have to work that hard to convince me your opportunity really means something, I’m afraid that my first response will be to think that no, it probably doesn’t mean much at all.

If you happen to be running an event like the one I’ve described, and you recognize a bit too much of your own description in the one I’ve shared, take a step back for a minute. Assume that what you do is valuable, not only for playwrights, but for audiences. You’re eventually going to invite people to come see the work you’ve selected, whether in full production or as part of a reading festival. With that in mind, what would you like to be able to say about it? What kind of work do you think will excite them and interest them? What sort of festival or event are you trying to create? What’s special about it?

Tell us those things. They will charm us into sending you our work. And let us know, in a specific and actionable way, whether we’ve really got the kind of work you’re looking for. Because the ultimate benefit of being specific will be that you’ll receive fewer submissions... but more of them will be likely to appeal to you. Your job in programming your event will get easier and more enjoyable. What’s not to like about that?

Playwriting Software Review

2011-03-16T12:00:00.000Z

Hey, playwrights: what software do you use to write your plays?

I’m not asking because I need advice: I’m asking because I’m wondering whether you’ve ever asked yourself that question. I’ve known so many playwrights over the years who simply use Microsoft Word (or an equivalent Mac-based program) without ever asking themselves whether there are other options to consider.

Believe me, there are other options to consider.

Of late, I’ve noticed several playwrights using a program called Celtx. Its primary distinction seems to be that it’s free, though I’m sure it has lovely features that distinguish it from its competitors in some other way, too. There’s also ScriptSmart, a free plug-in offered by the BBC, and a variety of screenwriting-centric software packages that can be made to work for plays, too, like Scripped Writer and Movie Outline and Movie Magic Screenwriter… but none of them are exactly what you need.

What you need, really, is the king: Final Draft.

I’m talking to you, Playwright Who Uses Microsoft Word. Listen up.

All of the things you struggle with in Microsoft Word—tabbing over to where your characters’ names need to appear, aligning actions correctly, keeping lines of dialogue from spreading inappropriately across pages, and a lot more than that besides—are all handled for you in Final Draft. In a few short minutes of practice and fumbling around, you’ll be writing more quickly than ever. Your scripts will look good effortlessly—and as someone who has read scripts for more than one theater, let me tell you, a script that looks good definitely makes a more favorable impression.

But it’s not just about looking better and writing more efficiently; there are a great many more powerful tools you can learn to use in Final Draft that will make you a more professional colleague for the directors and actors you work with. (I am reminded of the fact that for the first few years of Microsoft Word’s existence, 85% of the people who used it, worldwide, limited their interactions to four functions: typing, deleting, saving, and printing, or roughly those four. No underlining, no copy-and-paste, no graphics, no tables, no mail merges, no nothing.) With experience, you will learn how to use Final Draft to manage script revisions during rehearsals, for example… a feature that in my experience has proven to be worth the entire cost of the software just by itself.

Speaking of which: yes, it does cost money. A lot of money, it might seem: $249 for a new copy. But if this is the ONE big investment you need to make to work as a playwright (aside from a three-hole punch, some wire brads or script covers, reams of paper, and ink for your printer), isn’t that fairly reasonable?

No, I’m not secretly a Final Draft rep; I paid for my copy like you will, and I don’t get a cut if you buy. Save up for it. Ask for it for your birthday. And deduct the cost from your taxes, too, if you can.

You’re worth it. Your career is worth it. And your collaborators will thank you.

A Pause for Applause

2011-03-09T13:00:00.000Z

Why do you clap at the end of a performance?

If you hoot or stand or whistle at the stage when a show’s over, why do you do it?

I’ve been thinking about the phenomenon of applause lately: not the inherent oddity of the fact that we bang our hands together, of all gestures, to express ourselves (at least in the United States), but the question of what it is, exactly, that we’re expressing.

There’s never been a single performance, even those I’ve absolutely detested, after which I didn’t offer at least moderately enthusiastic applause. I’m not special in this: we all do it. (Aside: I’ve never actually been in a theater to witness an audience boo or hiss. Have you?) It just feels polite. It’s the right thing to do… but why?

I mean: I’ve really hated goodness-knows-how-many shows I’ve seen over the years, as I’m sure we all have. Wretched performances, unforgivable design choices, terribly-written plays, and immense overall dullness. For every single one of those shows, however, I sat in my seat, clapping my hands, and expressed no negative sentiment in any way. For some I even stood and applauded, simply because everyone else was doing so.

Is that dishonest? Should I have booed or hissed, or at least not applauded?

The answer, of course, is no: but why?

I think the reason why is that applause isn’t, or shouldn’t be, a measure of our assessment of the work we’ve just seen. The loudness or duration or enthusiasm level of our clapping and hooting shouldn’t be the equivalent of the number of stars on a critic’s review.

Instead, applause should ideally indicate our gratitude for the work that’s been done for us, whether we liked it or not. It’s sort of like thanking your grandmother for cooking for you, even if she’s made the same boiled chicken and over-steamed broccoli for 45 years.

In other words, no matter how much we loathe what we’ve seen, we still owe the performers (and the playwright, the scenic designer, the lighting designer, and so on) a round of thanks. After all, they’ve worked hard for us. Extra enthusiasm as in response to something genuinely inspiring is fine… but we should never let our clapping go below a minimum level.

I should like to know whether I'm alone in this understanding. Do you withhold praise on occasion? Have you found cause to show your displeasure? Why?

The Ideal Playwright Education

2011-03-02T13:00:00.000Z

My very first post on this blog questioned the value of MFA programs for playwrights, at least indirectly. Some of the commentary on that post, both here and on Twitter, left me wondering what an ideal playwright education might look like. To be honest, I’m fairly certain there isn’t one clear path all young playwrights should follow… but I do have some general ideas that I think are worth considering.

I begin with the assumption that while one might have been interested in theater as early as high school, if not before then—and may have even written a few plays, here and there—the earliest one should probably begin a focused education in playwriting is after one has obtained a general American education (of whatever variety: public, private, or parochial). I’ll not debate that point: either you value the broad understanding of general knowledge one gets from the K-12 education system (disreputable as it is) or you do not. I do.

When a young playwright is ready to begin learning, half of his or her academic attention—this is important: only half—during the first few years should be spent doing two things in great quantities: 1) reading plays and discussing them, trying to figure out how it is they work, and 2) seeing plays in production, then having the very same discussion. Yes, there should be some reading in theater history, and of course a few regular but modest writing exercises, the results of which might be read aloud by one’s fellow students and talked about—but the consumption of plays, on the page and in production, should be the main event.

And what about the other half of these few early years? They should be spent learning another trade entirely, or two other trades, and exploring as many other intellectual and non-intellectual passions as possible: sushi, rugby, Indonesia, plate tectonics, ballroom dancing. It does not matter. Students should have love affairs; travel; fail at things; meet people; dance and make music and eat; protest something; campaign for something: they should do all of that and more. They should be unstructured. They should wander. They should grow their souls.

They should never give up this half of their daily routine for as long as they live. The more they learn, the more they will have to write about. Speaking of which…

In time, the reading and seeing of plays will prove to be insufficient; the moment will arrive for different students at different times: when they are ready, not before. I won’t say how long it takes. When it does arrive, the balance should shift: less reading, more writing, and writing longer plays. There should be more discussions of fellow students’ work, and perhaps even an opportunity to involve young acting students in a reading or two (though it can be hard for young playwrights to separate the flaws in their work from the flaws in a raw performance).

Next, the time will come for a test production: a simple set, with young actors, and a small audience. Writing will by then have become a mixture of creation and revision, endless revision, until it becomes easy to cut beats and rearrange scenes, or as easy as it ever manages to get, which is not easy. Again, much discussion about what one has done and seen… failures pored over for learning opportunities, successes largely ignored, because they’re probably only accidental. Praise, as always, should be granted for effort, not for results.

And in all this, the young playwright should still not give up learning to juggle, working as a carpenter, providing pro-bono counseling services, running for office, working in public relations, or whatever callings he or she has discovered.

That initial production should then become two, and with the second, the playwright should begin learning to self-produce as well: how to print tickets and take tickets and work with an online ticketing service; how to make posters and postcards and programs; how to find a director and work with producers and write playwrights’ notes and all the little things that go into getting a play off the page and on the stage. And then the playwright should probably do that again once or twice, just for good measure, and to develop a healthy respect for his or her eventual collaborators.

And then, that being done, the playwright should return to just writing plays, at least for a while, and forget about all those other things, lest they crowd the mind overmuch while one is sitting and trying to tell a story.

This may be the moment to consider what one might call experimentation: participating in a devised theater project of some sort, or collaborating with a choreographer in development a movement-heavy piece of theater, or some such similar endeavor. If the urge is there, indulge it; if not, one can always experiment later in one’s career. In fact, one should probably never give up experimenting at all.

And one should till never give up the work in the hospital, the visits to Sunday school, the freelance graphic design jobs, the plot of land in the community garden. This is the stuff of stories, and stories are a playwrights’ business. This is also the stuff of survival, of health insurance and mortgage payments and children, none of which can be ignored. These hours will make the young student a better playwright—and help that playwright survive in the unforgiving financial world we live in.

By now, it will have been some years since the young playwright began learning: maybe four, maybe six, maybe even longer… but the education is not yet complete. The time has come for what I call the deepening of the playwright’s work. Long, long months and years of drafting plays, re-drafting them, scrapping them as failures, picking them up again, refining one’s voice, experimenting with structure and genre and character, until the playwright finally begins to have some idea what he or she wants to be doing and how to go about doing it.

This, too, may take years; the sum total of the education may require 10,000 hours of practice, to refer to Malcolm Gladwell’s understanding of what’s required for expertise, and one cannot put in that many hours—working half-time, I remind you—in less than a decade, and perhaps even longer than that.

But the time will have been worth it, and the young playwright will have been made.

Now… I must close by saying that of course nobody’s education looks like that. My own development as a writer could not in many ways have been more different. This is the path, however, that I wish I’d been able to follow. It is a path that I believe would yield not only a good storyteller, but a storyteller with a deep rootedness in the world, connected to the potential audiences for those stories, because of his or her many devotions to other passions and pastimes. It is still, though, only one path among many, and I hope that if you’re looking for one, you find it.

Submit! Four Rules to Help Playwrights Share Their Work with You

2011-02-23T13:00:00.000Z

An artistic director friend recently asked me for advice about what sort of stance he should take with regard to playwrights submitting their work. I wrote him a long response, then realized I could boil my advice down to a few key rules -- the four "S's" for submissions -- that every single theater in the country should follow... at least if they want to be responsible and thoughtful about their new play development efforts.

1) State your intentions clearly and publicly. If you don't want to accept unsolicited submissions, fine; just say so. If you do, but only during certain times of year, say that instead. But say SOMETHING. Don't leave us guessing. All it takes is a simple sentence or two on your website.

2) Set expectations. If it takes you six months, on average, to respond to a submission, let the world know. If you only plan to respond to queries you're intrigued by and will summarily delete the others -- it's rude as hell, if you ask me, but you wouldn't be the first to put forward that plan -- you've got to admit it. Don't leave us wondering when we'll ever hear back from you.

3) Show up. If you tell us we'll hear back from you by August 1 about the contest we've submitted to, DO NOT FAIL to respond by that date. Hold yourselves accountable. Live up to your promises. Be responsible and adult. It's not that hard.

4) Standardize. Listen, theaters of the world: you're going to have to get together on something. What materials do you actually want with your submissions? One of you asks for a ten-page sample of a script; the next wants only five. Some of you ask for bios; others want resumes. Some want scripts with character breakdowns, some without. Some want title pages with names, some without names, and some want one of each. (Seriously?) Frankly, I'm thinking a ten-page sample, a synopsis, and a bio or resume ought to be good enough for all of you, no matter how special you think you are... and if you don't fall in line, I'm going to start a movement. No kidding.

So that's it: four rules. Please follow them. You'll be doing us all a service, at least until the real revolution begins and the whole nature of script submission gets utterly disrupted by new technologies... which is really where we need to end up before too long.

Revision

2011-02-16T13:00:00.000Z

I’ve been thinking a great deal about Claude Monet’s paintings of haystacks. If you aren’t familiar with them – and cannot be bothered to click the link I’ve just given you because, well, that’s HARD – Haystacks is a series of impressionist paintings of, you guessed it, stacks of hay. Monet painted them in the morning, the afternoon, dusk, dawn, and from different angles… because he wasn’t really trying to capture images of heaped-up dry grass. His subject was nothing less than light, and it was important enough to him to devote a great deal of work to considering it.

What I find myself wondering of late is whether Monet ever determined that he had finally mastered his subject. Did he consider the very last haystack painting a final draft of sorts? Was the transition from painting to painting a process of revision, or was the subject simply too big to be explored on a single canvas?

Although I think it’s probably the latter, I wish it was the former. I would like to think that with each successive canvas, Monet got closer and closer to some ideal expression of his soul – perhaps without ever really reaching perfection – until he finally abandoned the project, realizing that he couldn’t do any better than he’d done. My hope is that his last haystack painting, or perhaps one of the last few, was his most masterful engagement with the subject, the one after which he finally decided he need go no further. An art historian can probably answer the question for me; I’d rather not ask so I can keep my hopes up.

This, I think, is how playwrights ought to approach the process of revision. With the first draft of a play, a playwright depicts her subject from a certain angle, in a certain light; with every subsequent draft, she tries a new angle, a new slant of light, exploring it further and further. The word “revision,” after all, literally means “to see again” – so if each new draft doesn’t involve a legitimately new way of looking at the play, it isn’t really a revision.

So many young playwrights think writing is supposed to be easy: you take your first draft, which is written in a blur, and you tinker with it thereafter. There’s no discipline for a longer engagement with a play, a more in-depth wrestling… and the resulting work is thin. If you aren’t asking yourself tremendous, difficult questions – even if you’re having a blast doing it – you aren’t making the kind of work audiences really care about.

Theater in the Raw

2011-02-09T13:00:00.000Z

In my last blog post, I suggested that what might have addressed some of the problems faced by both the initial production of Tony Kushner’s The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures (affectionately known as iHo) and Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark is a new culture of openness: inviting, allowing, and expecting audiences to engage with work before its finished and polished. Such transparency would help us learn about the plays we’re developing by watching how audiences experience them; they would also build loyalty among audience members, I believe, because we’d be involving them in our work’s evolution.

The traditional model for new play development doesn’t easily allow for that sort of engagement model. Oh, it supposedly does: that’s why we have previews, after all. In my experience, however, previews are usually only previews in name only. The tickets are a bit cheaper, and the performances may not be fully realized, and the play’s technical elements may be a bit unresolved here and there, and there may even be minor script changes… but all of that doesn’t really amount to much in practice, at least not often. The last preview performance and the first performance of a run are about as similar as they can be… for good reason: they are only, at most, a few days apart. If we want to be open, we need to push ourselves further.

How, then, can we expose audiences to what I’ll call theater in the raw? How can we share with them a story still in development, a set unfinished, costumes imperfect, and performances roughed-in? And how do we do that, furthermore, without ignoring practical realities? I would like to suggest one option: putting previews BEFORE rehearsal, rather than the other way around. Allow me to explain.

The Taffety Punk Theatre Company in DC (full disclosure – I am the company’s resident playwright) has a several year-old tradition of putting on what it calls “bootleg” productions: usually Shakespeare, but also (beginning with a play of mine last month) contemporary work. Actors show up for rehearsal at 10 am having memorized their lines on their own. They block the entire play from 10-3, taking a quick break for lunch; do a run-through from about 3-5, then get notes, all while various designers are arranging a few simple costumes and props and lights and sounds; and the production goes up at 8 pm. Actors occasionally call for lines – the stage manager stays on book – and there are one or two stumbles… but the audience knows to expect them, and nobody really cares, because the story gets told.

So… what if this was how the production process began? What if we paid actors for their time memorizing lines – that’s the first week of rehearsal – did a bootleg (or two or three), then spent two or three more weeks evolving the script and the artistic decisions that were made that first day? While we worked, the word of mouth from those who bought tickets to the bootleg shows – assuming they showed promise – would be helping to sell tickets. Heck, we might even sell tickets to some people who come to the bootleg and end up wanting to see a more realized production, too?

The difficulty, of course, would fall on playwrights and directors and actors to enter the process willing to discover things during the bootleg that might require significant course-correction during the ensuing two to three weeks. Better than having the need for such changes reveal themselves during “previews,” though, right? A mere few days before opening? With no time to make significant adjustments? Speaking as a playwright, I’d take two or three weeks over two or three days every time.

Unfinished (Show) Business

2011-02-02T13:00:00.000Z

In recent weeks, much has been made of the fact that the producers of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark have been charging what some are calling unforgivable sums to see previews of a multi-million dollar spectacle that still seems as if it has more than a few demons to wrestle with. Everyone knows by now about the acrobatics that have proven to be tragically dangerous. According to several commentators, furthermore, the story’s still a hopelessly jumbled mess. How dare they expect people to pay big bucks for a show that’s in such a shambles?

Rather than wade directly into what have proven to be somewhat heated discussions on the subject, however, I’d like to approach it from a slightly different angle.

In 2009, my wife and I managed to catch a performance of what has begun to be affectionately referred to as iHo: The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures, the newest Tony Kushner opus. We’re both unabashed fans of his entire oeuvre, and we felt (on arriving at the theater) as if we might be about to witness the birth of the next Great American Play.

That’s probably because we hadn’t heard any of the scuttlebutt about the production before we arrived. Stories about the playwright feverishly delivering new scenes hours before curtain, re-writing and re-writing trying to make things work: the sort of classic images that bring Moss Hart’s Act One immediately to mind. By the time the 3.5-hour show was on its feet, I understand, even Kushner had begun referring to it as a workshop production.

My wife and I didn’t need even one of those hours to agree with him. What we experienced was nothing short of a big hot mess. It was full of possibility, but very little of its potential had been realized. The problems, furthermore, were not part of the production: they lay in the script itself. Given that the play will now be going up at the Public Theater more than a year later, I can only assume they’ve been addressed; I hope to be able to see the show and find out for myself. He had, as far as I could tell, his work cut out for him.

Here’s the thing, though: never once did my wife or I resent the fact that Kushner had shared his work when it was still in such a bedraggled state. The man is an artist; he’s not a factory, churning out one play after another that works in the same mechanized perfect fashion. He has to be expected and allowed to fail. I want him to fail, in fact, if only because I assume he’ll learn from his failures and go on to do bigger and better things. I’ll even gladly buy tickets to watch him fail. His worst work is still more instructive and entertaining than others’ greatest efforts. He’s Tony Kushner, after all.

What I do have trouble with is the fact that the show was actually presented as a finished piece of work. Ticket prices were appropriately high. The scenic design was absolutely lavish. Everything about the experience contextualized the play as perfected, or at least as perfected as any piece of art ever gets. I wish that hadn’t been the case. I’d rather the Guthrie had charged me less, spent less on design, photocopied the programs, and (in sum) changed our expectations. I’d have enjoyed it a lot more.

Of course, the Guthrie almost certainly didn’t know the script was a problem until it was far too late to make such decisions. By the time any issues emerged, all they could probably do was soldier on and make the most of what they had… so I forgive them as well.

Which brings us back to Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark. For some reason, it isn’t as easy for me to forgive in this instance. I think what I’m struggling with is the perception that the show seems to be more spectacle than story; more web-slinging than the intricate web of narrative. (No one would make a similar claim about iHo, which contains few if any of the more dream-inspired elements familiar to fans of Kushner from Angels in America.) The whole enterprise feels a bit hollow, if bejeweled: a pink plastic Easter egg, perhaps, when what is wanted is something more hard-boiled and nutritious. My inclination is to be more kind to theater that feeds us.

And yet… what the producers of Spider-Man have definitely done right is to call the show what it is: a run of previews. Nobody’s calling the musical finished, not by a long shot. They have more than another month, in fact, to rebuild the missing story and address the technical and safety issues. For that, if for nothing else, they deserve a pass… at least until opening night.

What might have helped both shows, however, is some sort of “in-between” option: a way to cast both iHo (in its original incarnation) and Spider-Man as workshop productions without diminishing the interest in both plays or conveying anything less than pride in a work that – so what? – is still in progress. What is wanted, really, is a culture of openness and transparency: a willingness to expose our work as it develops, rather than waiting for it to find its level, and a curiosity among audiences to engage with a story before a bow has been wrapped around it.

How to begin to arrive at such a state? I will save that consideration for my next blog post…

Play Readings as a Marketplace

2011-01-26T13:00:00.000Z

Every Labor Day weekend in DC, the Kennedy Center becomes the temporary home of a tremendous gathering of new plays. The Page-to-Stage Festival offers about 40 different local theater companies the opportunity to hold staged readings of work they're currently developing. It's a showcase for audiences, and audiences do come. They get to see work-in-progress, contribute to a discussion about its development, and get excited about the eventual full production to come... all for the price of a free ticket. By every measure, the event is a rousing success, year after year.

Of late, however, I've been daydreaming about a slightly different version of the same event: a weekend of readings held by playwrights and directors designed to interest theater companies in their work. The general public would still be invited -- naturally, so that local artistic directors could see how the work would play in front of live bodies -- and audience members would still have the same experience of encountering work-in-progress. The resulting weekend would serve as a kind of marketplace for new plays: a chance for playwrights to really strut their stuff, without having to work super-hard to convince the right people to come to a random reading on a random Monday night.

Assume for the moment that the Kennedy Center only has the ability to offer 40 slots in a long weekend. (Don't worry, though, Kennedy Center: we'll do this one on Memorial Day instead.) Those 40 slots could be doled out first-come, first-serve, or playwrights could enter a lottery for them. Playwrights would be responsible for finding their own directors and casts and putting in as much or as little rehearsal time as they wanted -- but that wouldn't be hard for us to do, would it? No advertising would be necessary, or ticketing, or renting a space -- it would all be handled by the festival.

In time, stories could be told about how such-and-such play was discovered by such-and-such literary manager at, say, the famous 2014 festival where such-and-such playwright made her debut. Or perhaps similar festivals could be held quarterly -- sort of like cattle-call auditions -- and become part of the regular way that theaters choose new plays... not only in DC, but around the country. Audiences would flock to the festivals, I'm sure of it -- and might even be willing to start paying for tickets -- if only for the reality-show element of wondering which plays are going to survive and advance. At least... that's how I imagine it.

My guess, though, is that theaters are going to continue to prefer the less-than-transparent ways in which plays are currently chosen... at least for the time being.

What Do You Read?

2011-01-19T13:00:00.000Z

I've been feeling a bit guilty about something lately: I don't read enough plays.

The problem started when my dear wife decided to subscribe to the New Yorker again. I've had an on-again, off-again love affair with that rag my entire life. When I first sign up for it, it feels almost indispensable... for a while. In time, however, it begins to pile up into great half-digested heaps, a handful of the issues even entirely unread. When I finally decide to let my subscription lapse, I don't notice it's not there... till I get to an airport and (like an ex-smoker sneaking a single cigarette) buy an issue to fly with. A few in-flight reads and I’m back off the wagon again for a good long while.

In any event, it's here now, week after week, and lately I pick it up before anything else when I feel the urge to read. The thing is, though: it feels more than a little bit like intellectual candy, rather than intellectual meat. It's
tidy, wrapped in cellophane, bright. With the exception of a few articles, it doesn't inspire, doesn't challenge, doesn't question. It speaks to my biases. It pleases.

When I'm not reading the New Yorker, I read more science than anything. Steven Johnson, Oliver Sacks, Jared Diamond, James Gleick... but I won't even go on, because there are literally 30 or 40 names on that list. I read whatever those folks produce, and they tend to be prolific, year after year.

Beyond science, there's a touch of history, too, and the odd biography or memoir, as well as a bit of fiction... my nose is buried in Steve Martin's new novel right now, in fact. All of that calls to me first, it seems, before I get to reading plays.

Why is that? In part, it's because I prefer to see plays, or have them read to me. It's also at least somewhat due to the fact that I can't afford to spend $13 a script, which disappears in a mere hour or two of reading, when the same investment will get me eight or sixteen hours out of a good work of non-fiction. My budget isn't what it used to be pre-baby.

If I'm honest, however, I have to admit that it's also -- and perhaps primarily -- because my work is more inspired by the ideas I encounter in the other books I read. Reading plays is critical, of course... but I've read thousands. I'm at a stage in my life now in which I really just need new ways of thinking, new ideas, new raw material. Reading more plays, I seem to believe, will make my work imitative, not original.

Still, if only to ensure that I’m not falling down on the job, I do try to read or see at least two plays a week, and some weeks I manage to do a few more than that… but it’s increasingly hard.

What about you? What do you read? Why?

The Best Seats in the House

2011-01-12T13:00:00.000Z

I will never forget the best seats I ever had for any performance I've ever been to.

It was the last night of my exquisite honeymoon. My wife and I had tickets to a ballet at the Opera Garnier in Paris. We sat in a box one off from the center in what is assuredly the most dazzling performance space I've ever been in.

Here's the thing, though: I'm not quite sure the performance was as good as it seemed. Even if I discount the fact that we were totally full of newly-wedded bliss -- and thus might have enjoyed watching a cow chewing its cud on stage for an hour -- what I find myself wondering, in hindsight, is whether the luxury of our private box contributed misleadingly to our pleasure.

Can a seat have a positive effect on one's experience of a performance? I know for sure that a bad seat can make a performance intolerable. I have particularly long legs -- standing, I'm at least seven inches taller than my wife, but sitting down, we're eye-to-eye -- and seats with no leg room will make me vow never to return to a theater again, in addition to disrupting my enjoyment of whatever I'm seeing. But I'm not talking about obstructed view seats or seats not designed for human comfort: I'm simply talking about the difference between seats slightly better than one another.

I would very much like to see a careful study done of this question -- one that matches the seat in a given house (irrespective of who's sitting in it) with a simple 1-to-1o rating of a patron's enjoyment of the show. The study would have to span several shows, of course -- or, better yet, several seasons -- to be statistically significant, but it shouldn't be that hard to do: just get patrons to write a number on their ticket stubs and drop them into a box as they leave. Each seat would be given an average score over time, and scores would be compared against one another.

Would we see general trends? Would the patrons in seats three rows back, dead center, rate a show more highly than patrons in seats four rows back, just off to the left? Would box seats be more or less generous in their reviews than orchestra seats? What patterns would emerge? Would they hold true across theaters? In other words, would a fifth-row seat always rate a show more highly than a sixteenth-row seat? If not, would the differences speak more to the architecture of the houses at the respective theaters or to the demographics of the theaters' patrons? So many questions, I'm sure you'll agree.

I think we need to bring more science to bear on our profession. Don't you? Why cast about in the dark if we can be more effective?

Twitter and Theatre

2011-01-05T13:00:00.000Z

I don’t want this blog post to be a commercial for Twitter… but it might venture close to that territory. If I cross a line, I do hope you’ll forgive me. All I want to do is make you happy. And I promise you: Twitter can make you happy, 140 characters at a time. No, really. I can give you five reasons, in fact.

#1: Networking

In the time I’ve spent on Twitter – I keep it open in the background while I’m working most days, and pop in to join the conversation several times a day for anywhere from five to forty-five minutes– I’ve had the privilege to tweet with a rather stunning collection of brilliant minds from throughout the theatrical ecosystem, from producers to directors to fellow playwrights to everyone in between. I’ve established creative partnerships; I’ve met people who have subsequently read, produced, and promoted my work; and I’ve also been able to help others in turn. Our meetings haven’t been limited to the virtual space, either. I’ve turned Twitter friendships into real-life connections that genuinely mean a lot to me.

#2: Ideas

Diving into Twitter headfirst – following a bunch of people, chatting with strangers, overhearing all manner of crazy schemes – can seem overwhelming at first. Quickly, however, the ability to dip into the Twitter stream any time you like feels like having ready access to more ideas than you even knew existed: new voices and new perspectives about theater, engaging and challenging and enriching you. Time spent on Twitter has made me a better playwright and theater blogger, for certain: more aware of the world in which my work and my own ideas exist, for sure, and more ready to learn.

#3: Questions

Virtually every day, it seems, one of my fellow theater Tweeps – a slang term used to refer to the people you follow – asks the Twitter stream a question. “Name your all-time favorite theater documentaries,” someone asked recently. Another wanted to know how to troubleshoot a lighting instrument that wasn’t working well. If you need to know the answer to almost any theater-related question, and you’ve made enough theater friends, you can just plain tweet what you like to know, and the answer will appear to you shortly. Yes, you could go to Google… but why not go directly to trusted peers and experts instead? (Hint: a good place to start is the #2amt hashtag; just do a search on that term and you'll be off to the races!)

#4: Fun

One of the side effects of having so many cool and creative people hanging out together, even if only virtually, is that the word games never seem to stop. For two straight days last summer hundreds of theater practitioners were making up names of imaginary superhero plays. (Aquaman of No Importance, Arms and the Batman, and so on.) The banter you can easily access makes the whole Twitter stream feel like hanging out with a really good, really tight cast and crew. Yes, there are sometimes arguments, but they often lead to new insights… and, for the most part, they almost always remain civil.

#5: Dialogue Practice

Finally, a benefit to Twitter that belongs specifically to playwrights: dialogue practice. Imagine having to keep all of your lines to 140 characters or less. Sure would compress your wordiness just a bit, wouldn’t it? Especially since you need to write quickly just to keep up with the rapidly-moving stream… particularly if you’re following a great many people. I find that if I can boil an idea down that small, and do it within a minute or so, without sacrificing the rigor of my thinking and self-expression, I’m usually onto something.

If you’re still not convinced by my five reasons, however, let me make a suggestion: join Twitter, follow me (my screen name is @GwydionS), and watch me tweet for a while. Follow some of the people I follow, too – many of them might even have names you recognize. And then, when you feel ready, jump in and say hello. I promise to give you a warm welcome!

What Playwrights Should Study

2010-12-29T16:00:00.000Z

About a month and a half ago, I was part of a long discussion on Twitter about whether MFA programs were any good for playwrights. My strong opinion then, as it is now, is that I wish they would just go away. As we all know from Outrageous Fortune -- or if you don't, where have you been? -- there are now a small number of MFA programs that are producing, one way or another, many of the "hot" new playwrights. The whole thing smacks of elitism, and it also strikes me as a shallow determinant of quality. I think we'd be better off if the whole system were somehow abolished by fiat.

This is not to say, mind you, that I don't think a playwright can get better by spending two or three years working on his or her craft... I just don't think that's enough. I think it takes ten years of working on your craft to get good at it, not two or three. A decade or so of writing, hearing your plays read, exposing them to audiences, failing, trying again, self-producing, reading a ton of plays, seeing a ton of plays, learning about the history of theater, and talking to other playwrights, again and again. Nothing else will make you into a playwright.

Oh, sure, there are probably prodigies who can do it more quickly: Sarah Kane comes to mind. (Though I think she'd have gotten better, too, had she lived.) In the main, however, it just takes time.

If not attending an MFA program, what else should one be doing? I believe one should be living, quite frankly, and learning about anything and everything else than being a playwright. Exploring the world, taking classes in other subjects, meeting different sorts of people, taking up other hobbies, spending time with family, starting a family, making friends -- even trying other art forms. I consider all of that equally important to maturing as a playwright. And I suggest wholeheartedly that in the long run, we'd probably all be better off if we studied other subjects in college.

Although I started writing in earnest when I was 12 years old, in high school I was a bit of a math prodigy, too, so that was the area in which I focused my studies. I went off to college to major in astrophysics, and it was only when I was one course away from completing that major that I switched to the writing department... to major in poetry. My minor, furthermore, was African American history, and the language I studied was German. The closest I got to writing plays was to work as a technical director and lighting designer and set designer for several college productions, just for fun.

I went on to earn a master's degree in writing... again, though, in poetry. This was an MA, mind you, not an MFA, so my course work was slightly more academic than it might have been. Although I was there to study poetry, I read a good deal of philosophy, too. Most importantly, I fell in love with the early 20th century American novel and spent most of my time reading and thinking about Willa Cather and Edith Wharton and... you get the picture.

So that's mathematics, astrophysics, African American history, German, poetry, and fiction... and it's really only a drop in the bucket of the subject matter I've explored over the years. I worked as a typesetter for three years -- those were digital graphic designers before there was such a profession -- then apprenticed myself to the master printer at a college for several months to study letterpress printing. While I consider myself a fairly good cook, over the years I have applied myself in particular t0 the study of the making of soup, and I now have some expertise, I believe, on that one subset of gastronomy. At the suggestion of a computer programmer I once knew, I took up birding; my "life list" -- the number of American species I've managed to spot -- isn't as long as I wish it was, but it's not embarrassing, either. I've worked as a sports journalist, a teacher, and (believe it or not) a carny, and I've learned from every single one of those jobs. I now work part-time for a digital engagement agency and as a regular part of what I do, I study one non-profit organization and government agency after another, learning about their missions and audiences and communications strategies; I'm never at a loss for new things to learn.

My main areas of study since I left academia have all been scientific. My familiarity with physics led me first into astronomy. Then I found chaos theory, and it was a short walk from there into game theory and economics. I spent a good long while working my way through evolutionary biology, about which I still think a great deal, and made a few side trips into genetics and medicine and ecology. Over the years, though, no subject has gripped me with as much depth as epidemiology and virology; I've consumed virtually every book I could find. Oh, and I've certainly read just about all there is to read in the last decade or so on the subject of atheism, which feels largely like a scientific subject, at least of late: this after a childhood studying Judaism and a brief side trip into Wicca.

I tried to learn Irish Gaelic and failed; same with Spanish. I've started to deepen my knowledge of jazz, but it's slow going, and I really wish I had time and attention for opera, too. I've listened to a great deal more old time radio classics than, well, almost anyone my age, but I wouldn't call myself an expert; would that I was one. I'm an able handyman around the house, but I'd kill to have the skill my father's late partner had: he was genuinely gifted. I've been to a dozen or two of the world's great museums, but it feels like a drop in the (paint) bucket. I've only visited 37 of the 50 states; not having been to Alabama, Alaska, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, and Wyoming feels miserable. (Don't even get me started on where I still need to go in Europe, let alone the rest of the world.) There are major works of literature I haven't read, and my knowledge of history is appalling, and I sometimes genuinely agonize over the fact that I can't speak French with my French-fluent wife.

At this point in my playwriting career, filling all those gaps in my knowledge and experience -- plus the ten thousand others I haven't thought of or noted here -- feels like it would make more of an impact on my work than going back to earn an MFA, even if I wanted one. (I'm even more certain that doing and studying those things would make me a better human being, and make me feel -- when the lights go out at the end of my lifetime -- like I have fewer regrets... as long as I keep writing, too, that is.) They'd give me more to say, that's for sure, and make me more compassionate toward a wider variety of characters -- that I also know.

Naturally, none of this can replace my own continual lifelong efforts to hone my craft... but that goes without saying. This brings me, however, to my final point: of all of the playwrights throughout history, 99.99% never earned an MFA... or even took a single class in playwriting. The whole notion that writing can be taught (rather than learned, or at most self-taught) is novel... and may in fact prove to be a historical blip. Historically, we playwrights have learned by reading plays, watching plays, writing plays, and getting responses to our plays. If you want to be a better playwright, just do those things, by hook or by crook... and spend the money you'd spend on the MFA on the time to do it (and on, say, a pottery class, or cross-country skis, or that collection of Montaigne essays you've wanted to read, or all of the above).

Meanwhile, the rest of us will do our best to overthrow the theatrical hegemony that suggests certain MFA graduates are better playwrights. It's about time for that revolution to start.

A Playwright's Perspective

2010-12-20T03:04:36.000Z

I've been a writer now, working in one genre or another, for more than (ulp) 20 years. I began my career as a poet, wandered through fiction, and even made my way for a while as a journalist, reviewing both books and restaurants and even covering sports for a while. It wasn't until I found playwriting, however, that I really felt like I'd genuinely come home. The genre fit me -- like it had always been there, just out of my line of sight, waiting for me to realize it was my one true love. Since then I've been fortunate to have my work produced and read all over the country, not only in DC (my home), but also in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and several places in between.

Happening upon a gift like that has a way of making one grateful, and it's that sense of gratitude that has led me to share what little I've learned throughout my career as widely as I can. I've given lectures, I've offered critiques to young writers, I've volunteered my time in several ways... and, in the last several years, I've also been blogging about life in the theater, both as a playwright and as a member of the larger theatrical ecosystem. You'll find me here every Wednesday, beginning quite soon, and on www.2amtheatre.com and www.suilebhan.com as well.

That's the perspective I hope to bring to my writing for TheatreFace: generosity and a spirit of service to the theater community. I want to write about the things you want me to write about: the questions you have, the concerns you're wrestling with, the stories you'd like to hear more about, no matter what role you play in the theater. Please do reach out to me with your thoughts, if you have them -- I'll be glad to connect.

More soon.