Gwydion Suilebhan's Blog (21)

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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,…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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

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…