In the 2 June 2010 issue of The Australian, Theatre Notes‘ Alison Croggon discusses the peculiar status of the playtext in contemporary conceptions of literature (a status that may have led, in this hemisphere, to the recent Pulitzer Prize debacle over the drama honoree). Although she finds that much of the responsibility for this status lies in the blinkered perspective of critics and prizegiving organizations, she also says that they are not the only ones to blame. “On the other side of the fence, you will find playwrights who deny a literary aspect to their work, considering it hostile to theatricality. … Too many playwrights accept the majority verdict and believe they are merely writing ‘blueprints for performance’. Playwrights are too often infantilised by a workshop mentality and, as a result, can too easily dismiss the literary responsibilities of their craft.” Alison’s full essay is here.
In today’s Guardian, Lyn Gardner writes about the “Silence that speaks volumes in the theatre.”
And on the New York Times‘ “Arts Beat” blog, lead critic Ben Brantley presents a list of books that he regards as excellent recreational reading about theatre and drama, and invites readers’ submissions. Mine are there as well; you may add your own.
Thanks for the link, George – a small correction: the essay is actually in the Australian Literary Review, which comes out every month as part of the Australian.
Speaking of the “silence that speaks volumes”, yours has been the only reaction I’ve found to this piece. I’m kind of surprised!
I’m surprised too, Alison. Especially since it speaks to that anti-literary dodge found in many playwrights today, which I find worrying (but then, I would, literary drudge that I am, I suppose).
Interestingly, in the comments to the Brantley blog post, there is a writer named Jeffrey Sweet — a playwright — who says, “Plays mostly don’t read very well. But then they’re not particularly supposed to. (OK, Shakespeare and the Greeks read OK, but the rest not so much.) They’re not supposed to provide full experiences on the page. They’re supposed to reach fulfillment in production. It’s like looking at schematics rather than at a building made from them.” Et voila.
Very common, all of that. It seems to run: once in the good old days plays were different, but now we needn’t bother, because actors and directors will make up for lazy style, clumsy structure and indifferent dialogue? Or am I reading it wrong?
To blogless Dan: I have somebody who comes in once a week to clean up.
To Alison: Well, in the same place, Jeffrey Sweet goes on at considerable length to explain his position, but I think it’s something other than that. Contemporary texts from both ends of the formal spectrum — from realistic plays with “naturalistic” dialogue to texts composed of found materials and/or interviews — would deny the definition of drama-as-text in the way that we think of poem-as-text or imaginative-prose-as-text. In the first, yes, I suppose it is intended by the dramatist to be spoken aloud, that being necessary to the unfolding of the play (though I would argue that those writers who are often charged with writing “naturalistic” dialogue — Mamet, Pinter, et al. — are actually doing nothing of the kind); in the second, the dramatist is more an editor than an author, almost sheepishly marginalizing the role of the dramatist’s imagination in the theatre.
Sweet has written many plays, a popular textbook on playwriting (The Dramatists Toolkit) and a member of the council of the Dramatists Guild, so I imagine his perspective represents those of many other American playwrights as well.
Well, that un-defining seems to deny a whole lot of 20C poetry-and-prose-as-text for a start! Collage, sound poems, found poems, documentary poems, etc etc, were all part of the great experiment of modernism and these energies are all still in play. What about things like, say, Muriel Rukeyser’s amazing documentary poem The Book of the Dead, or Enzensberger’s epics about the Titanic? Meaning that it’s an amazingly limited way of looking at writing of all kinds. And yes, Mamet (at his best) and Pinter write anything but naturalistic dialogue. Pinter really is a poet on the stage, if not necessarily off it.
But maybe Sweet is right. Maybe people don’t know how to read plays. But I bet you anything it’s because they don’t read poetry either.