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.