Does a playwright's age matter?

From The Guardian (London) and The Sunday Times: Much of the reaction to British playwright Polly Stenham's West End debut has centred on her tender age: 21. But The Guardian asks an interesting question: should a playwright's youth (or, for that matter, dotage) be taken into account when assessing the work?

Labels: plays, playwriting, U.K.

 

Havel then and now

From The Sunday Times: Czech playwright Vaclav Havel is one of our favorite subjects here on the Gofer, but how could he not be? After all, how many playwrights have also been the leader of their country? Or, put another way, would you want to see a play by George Bush? Either of them?

This profile takes the long view, catching him at two key moments in his life. The first comes back in 1989 when, as the Velvet Revolution continued to coalesce around Havel, "an aide rushed in to tell him the Communist party had relinquished its monopoly on power under the weight of public protest. Disbelief, wonderment, joy and once again disbelief passed over his features in quick succession." The second is just a few days ago, as he "anxiously read[s] the reviews of his first play in 20 years."

It's comforting to know that even someone as travelled and sophisticated as Havel still worries about his reviews -- all good, by the way.

Labels: Europe, playwrights, playwriting

 

Play searches for truth -- literally

From The Associated Press via Yahoo! News: The Internet and live theatre are perhaps as unalike as any two media could be, one existing entirely virtually and the other only in the flesh. Philadelphia playwright Katharine Clark Gray ">manages to blend the two, though, in User 927, a mystery inspired by AOL's oafish release of 19 million search logs two years ago.

Labels: internet, playwrights, playwriting

 

From The Three Little Pigs to Iraq

From The Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Now here's a theatre artist with range. By day, Elena Hartwell is stage manager for a production of The Three Little Pigs. By night, she performs her own play, In Our Name, three monologues about women with loved ones in Iraq.

Labels: playwrights, playwriting

 

Playwrights who hate the Times' critics, please line up to the left

From The Huffington Post: We're all for playwrights hauling off and trash-talking critics, but Jon Robin Baitz's now notorious blog post attacking The New York Times' Christopher Isherwood gives us an overwhelming sense of déjà vu. Isherwood had, pretty benignly, suggested that writers who'd given up on theatre in favor of writing for television use the "opportunity" of the WGA strike to return to their first love. Baitz, as if some hot button in him had been pushed, went off like a rocket.

Great. We'd like to see more playwrights functioning also as journalists. But Baitz's dissing of Isherwood (as well as, more patronizingly, Times critic Ben Brantley), has a certain, almost comical inevitability about it. Those of a certain age will remember when Clive Barnes, as the Grey Lady's first-string critic, was roundly reviled in the New York theatre community, and the sighs of relief and hail-fellow-well-mets that greeted Frank Rich when he moved into the spot. (Were there any in between the two? I don't recall, but that probably means I don't need to.) Rich, it was at first agreed, was much better -- smarter, more sincerely interested in theatre, etc., etc. But, of course, eventually he had panned or ignored enough people that he, too, became the bête noir of theatre people: "The Butcher of Broadway," malicious, too intellectual, whatever.

So it is with a certain wry amusement that one notes Baitz citing Rich favourably by way of comparison with Isherwood -- who now, like his predecessors, moves onto the lepers' island reserved for long-running Times critics. 'Twas ever thus. But wait until the next guy (or, perhaps better, gal) gets the gig. He/she will be much better.

Labels: Ben Brantley, Christopher Isherwood, Frank Rich, Jon Robin Baitz, New York Times, playwrights, playwriting

 

Playwriterly podcasts

From G.L. Horton's Stage Page: This is a great find, and we confess we should have found it sooner, since it's been around for almost a year-and-a-half now. Some of the podcasts on G.L.Horton's Stage Page are Boston-centric, but others, like this discussion at the International Centre for Women Playwrights Celebration about the challenges involved in getting produced (including some insights into the thinking of literary managers) will appeal to dramatists pretty much anywhere. We also think more playwrights should take advantage of the web, as Horton does (with an assist from her husband), to get their material heard -- literally -- by recording and posting excerpts.

Labels: G.L. Horton, ICWPC, International Centre for Women, playwrights, playwriting, podcasts, theatre

 

Playwright doesn't want "help," thankyou

From Mr. Excitement: We've been here before. In his address to ART/NY, playwright Richard (Some Americans Abroad,New England) Nelson presents many of the same arguments against the play development process in North America that others have (perhaps he missed the discussion because he's been off in England). It's fine for a 57 year-old playwright to insist that he's learned his craft and doesn't need any "help," thankyou very much. It may or may not be true, but it's fine. What Nelson's speech ignores, though, is the value of dramaturgy, readings, and workshops to playwrights just starting out, and needing to learn their craft. Done well, the development process can be quite as good an education as, say, attending the Yale School of Drama, where Mr. Nelson currently teaches.

He's on firmer ground when he says the participation system in non-profit theatre should be re-examined. I expect, though, the "I'm the god around here" approach to playwriting has resulted in far more bad plays than works of unsullied genius.

Labels: ART/NY, play development, playwrights, playwriting, Richard Nelson, Yale School of Drama

 

Havel's comeback stymied

From The Guardian (UK): We figure that right about now playwright Vaclav Havel would prefer to be doing something simple, like running the Czech Republic, than working in the theatre again.

Labels: playwrights, playwriting, Vaclav Havel

 

Arthur Miller's cast-off son

From Vanity Fair: This wrenching and, to a guy who thought he knew all there was to know about Arthur Miller, genuinely shocking article about the playwright and the son he cast aside is liable to spur some major reassessing. Can a man who did this really be the great moral artist Miller is put forward as? Before the piling on begins, let's keep in mind that even great artists are products of their age, and Miller's was before mainstreaming of the disabled became commonplace. Still, one notes that Miller's wife, the photographer Inge Morath -- an accomplished artist in her own right -- did not treat their son as a dark secret to be hidden away. Mother's love? Or simple human decency?

Labels: Arthur Miller, Inge Morath, playwrights, playwriting, Vanity Fair

 

Many Stories

From The New York Sun: At age 68, as the Signature Theatre prepares to devote its new season to his work, playwright Charles Mee explains it all for you: "In the world today there's not one story that's privileged over all others, and what we're really trying to do is find out how to live in a world with many stories. . ."

Labels: Charles Mee, playwrights, playwriting, Signature Theatre

 

No nudity or drugs onstage? Shocking!

From The Guardian (UK): From the swinging pendulum department comes The Pain and the Itch, Bruce Norris's play not-so-loosely based on his own, very Republican family. Norris isn't just acting out against his upbringing; he's confronting the whole notion that theatre is, or can be, anything but a high-priced diversions for the well-to-do. Noel Coward would be proud.

Labels: Bruce Norris, playwrights, playwriting, The Pain and the Itch

 

A lost African-American masterpiece is found

From The Guardian (UK): It takes a Brit, apparently, to rediscover a major contribution to the canon of African-American drama. Theodore Ward's 1937 Big White Fog was recently revived at London's Almeida, after director Michael Attenborough undertook a bit of detective work to find out who owned the rights -- and more about its largely forgotten author.

Labels: African-American drama, Almeida, Big White Fog, Michael Attenborough, playwrights, playwriting, Theodore Ward

 

Play-stealing cop suspended

From the CBC: Act Two of the saga of the play-stealing cop begins, as the plagiarizing producer of plays by Canadian writer David Belke and others is suspended from his job. Most curious to me: why did he steal just Canadian plays? Because they're so good? Because he thought they're so obscure nobody would ever notice? (I speak as a Canadian playwright.)

By the way, as proprietor of the online play publisher ProPlay, I sometimes talk with playwrights who don't want to publish on the web because they think their plays will get stolen. Note, though, that the play-stealing cop got his copies of the plays from a traditional publisher, and in print form. Occasional larceny, alas, is one of the hazards a playwright faces, and always has. Thankfully, thanks to technology, it's increasingly likely that thieves will get caught. And it's arguable that publishing online makes it far too hazardous to steal a play -- somebody, eventually, is going to notice.

Arguable? Hell, it's a fact. By the way, I'm pleased to say that we'll soon be adding some of David Belke's plays to ProPlay. Given the cop's widely-publicized experience, I have a feeling when people want to produce David's plays, they're going to arrange the rights first.

Labels: David Belke, plagiarism, playwrights, playwriting, ProPlay, theatre

 

Not "Streetcar," but not bad either

From The Telegraph (London): Phillip Hensher's otherwise sympathetic review of The Notebooks of Tennessee Williams" perpetuates the fallacy that Williams wrote nothing decent after Night of the Iguana. Closer to the truth is that he didn't write another Streetcar Named Desire (or, for that matter, Night of the Iguana) after 1959, but he did pen a number of over-looked and fine plays. I particularly like two from very late in his career -- Vieux Carre and A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur. Had they been the work of anybody else, they would have been recognized as talented little gems. The tragedy of Williams' career, of course, was that, after his early successes, good would never be good enough.

Labels: Phillip Hensher, playwrights, playwriting, Tennessee Williams, theatre

 

Play banned for satirizing burka-wearers

From the BBC: The Pakistani government bans a play about the wearing of burkas. The problem appears to be not so much that it satirizes wearing the garment, as it satirizes women who do -- and then go about attacking music and video stores and brothels with batons.

Labels: burkas, Pakistan, playwrights, playwriting, theatre

 

The meaning of Richard McBeef

From the National Post (Canada): Here's my take on the plays of the Virginia Tech killer, and dark and violent writing in general.

Labels: Cho Seung-Hui, playwrights, playwriting, theatre, Virginia Tech

 

Pulitzers for drama falling down Rabbit Hole?

From The Los Angeles Times: Last year the big controversy around the Pulitzer Prize for Drama was that the journalists in charge, who make the final decision as to who'll get the little trophy, chose to ignore the theatre jury's finalists and award no prize at all. This year the controversy is that the journos chose to overrule the jury's choices and give the award to David Lindsay-Abaire's Rabbit Hole. In the Los Angeles Times, Mike Boehm reviews the erratic recent history of the prize, and how the meddlings of its board threaten to diminish its stature.

Labels: drama, playwrights, playwriting, Pulitzer, theatre