Theatre criticism, like theatre production itself, is a time-consuming, money-consuming, and grueling activity, and its rewards are few, especially for those of us who do not do it “for a living,” as the rather condescending saying goes. I used to do quite a bit of theatre criticism myself, but now I have two little children to take care of, and it’s far more important now, at their ages, that I spend my time with them: they need me in a way that the theatre certainly doesn’t. But because theatre is a life-long pursuit, even parenthood will not stand in its way. Obviously, I still read plays and read and write criticism, though this latter has taken a more literary form than in the past — that is, I read and interpret plays in the sanctuary of my privacy, on my own time, from the comfort of my imaginary large leather chair rather than the discomfort of the tight and crowded theatre seat. And mostly from the comfort of my imagination itself, rather than somebody else’s.
That a written drama only comes alive on the stage is one of those truisms that could stand debunking. Certainly something comes alive on the stage during a theatrical performance; call it a play if you wish; but it is not always the drama that is embodied in its original form on the page. There is no such thing as a fool-proof play that reveals itself regardless of the strength or the weakness of the production in the theatrical experience. I have read many plays that I have subsequently seen in performance, and vice versa, and my experience proves this rule: no production brings out all the dimensions of a good drama; a production may further illuminate some of these dimensions, but no production will illuminate all. And for someone whose concern with theatre extends beyond what may be seen at a local stage, this armchair reader is forced to read those plays that interest him in book form — he can’t just sit around and wait for a local company to produce one of these plays, for that may never happen. One can remain in ignorance, and sit, and hope against hope that this play will eventually show up in the theatre listings of the local paper, or one can hop down to the library and read the damn thing instead. If the choice is between ignorance and knowledge, I hope it is the latter that will win out in every case.
And if this is the case, the dramatic imagination of the playreader is broadened through such a reading: a drama newly-read may affect our experience of dramas we have read or seen in the past. If there is any kind of ideal stage production of a written play, it will be on the stage of the reader’s mind, for an ideal is always a subjective judgment in aesthetics. After one has absorbed and learned to process the conventions of published drama with their speech prefixes and stage directions, reading a play is not unlike reading a novel, a poem, or even a work of history: for reading is not only an intellectual and linguistic pursuit, but calls upon the resources of the emotional and visual imaginations, as well as the resources of the reader’s physical body.[1] The sensitive reader of the drama will hear the voices and see the movements of the personae on the stage of his own mind: every reader a director. This is also true for listening to recorded opera: as one listens, one may see the Ring in one’s own mind either as realistic as Peter Hall’s or as abstract as Patrice Chereau’s — and any combination of the two approaches.
The deeper a knowledge and meditation on the theatre and drama, the more likely it is that the individual reader may have an even more significant experience of a given play than the individual spectator. This is, I believe, what Yun-Cheol Kim was talking about when he mentioned “academic depth in [criticism's] analysis and reading” in the excerpt I posted yesterday. There must be breadth in the critic’s conception of the history of theatre and drama, of course, but this should not be purchased at the cost of depth. If it is, we will have critics who fling about critical terms and drop the names of theatrical figures with casual abandon, demonstrating that they have, at least, read potted histories of theatre and drama. But I am veering from my thread of thought here and should stay the course. To return to my contention, the more educated and more sensitive the reader, the more significant his reading experience will be, whether it’s novel, poem, or drama. The more ignorant and insensitive the reader, the less significant the experience.
The written drama also permits the reader to expose himself to the dramatist’s vision without the intermediary levels of direction, design, or performance — and this, too, especially if the reader is knowledgable of the craft of all three disciplines. This is especially true when approaching the work of uniquely idiosyncratic dramatists. It’s true that theatre is a collaborative art, but often this term “collaboration” is bruited about as a means of denying individual agency, especially on the part of the dramatist in his creation. As Mark Brown says in his introduction to his book of Howard Barker’s interviews:
Barker has long been criticized in certain quarters for the perceived individualism — even solipsism — of his artistic process; I remember with some amusement a conversation I had with a prominent theatre director (and one far less accomplished than Barker) who opined that, “Barker’s problem is that he doesn’t understand that theatre is a collective endeavour.” Much aside from the ludicrously reductive nature of this statement … its blithe collectivism refuses to countenance the possibility of the brilliant, self-generating artist. … [He expresses in the interviews] both his appreciation of the skills and loyalty of the many theatre-makers who have worked with him throughout his career, and, without contradicting that appreciation, his absolute clarity as regards the totalizing, individual vision that lies within his work. Without such a self-generating vision, Barker simply would not have the extraordinary intellectual and spiritual drive which, much more than any mere defiance of adversaries, is the real wellspring of his tremendous body of work.
And Barker, too, is one of those dramatists for whom one would have to wait endlessly for local productions of his plays in the US, especially the later work — so the individual mind is the only theatre in which most readers will see them.
I’m delighted to be spending my money on diapers instead of theatre tickets, and my time with my two little girls instead of in black box theatres filled with strangers. Of course, like all theatre critics and practitioners, I would hope that some day I could make a living on my theatre and drama work (salary requirements on request; published clips galore here), but like most theatre critics and practitioners, I doubt I’ll be able to do so. But fortunately for me, the experience of drama is as individual as the experience of any literature. And it continues to affect the way I look at the world outside the theatre — the world in which I happily spend my time.
Footnotes
- By this I do not mean to divide the reading experience into a list of Manichean dualities such as intellectual/emotional, linguistic/visual, mind/body. This is useful for discussion, but obviously each half of these antonymic dualities affects the other. [↩]
It’s been a long time since I’ve read them, but I recall that Ibsen’s stage directions have literary merit on their own, and by the time you get to “Brand,” a late work, I believe, the play is more stage directions than dialog or action. A playgoer wouldn’t see any of that (unless she brought the script along with her).
Also speaking from long-term memory, “The Cherry Tree” manuscript describes something in the background of the set that might be seen depending on the weather. Maybe modern technology could effectively render that direction.
In other words, it looks like you’re on to something. It would be interesting whether this discussion would apply to screenplays as well, or at least some screenplays (probably not to the screenplay of “The Hangover”).
From experience, I know that reading musical scores has helped appreciate those pieces more. I’ve even noticed things I didn’t hear before, but could subsequently hear once I read the score. I can stop and study things at my leisure, without the music rushing by.
So your point might apply to any medium which is notated in some form but presented or performed in another form.
PS I foresee a play about a bitter middle-aged playwright who discovers love and family in his 50s and becomes at least marginally less bitter, at least around the wife and kids. How the play would end, according to tragic sensibility, I leave to the author.
“Reading a play is like smelling a hamburger.”
Interesting post. I’m in the middle of going back and reading the scripts of new Australian plays I’ve seen performed over the last year. It’s an intriguing experience, especially given the sentimentality and barrelling obviousness that’s par for the course in main stage Australian drama.
I do so admire Brand myself, Victor — but must point out for the sake of accuracy that Brand is a comparatively early work, which came a decade before Ibsen launched on the brilliant dozen plays for which he is best known; Brand is dated 1866, and The Pillars of Society was written in 1877 (when Ibsen was 49, providing some tender hope for us late-bloomers). However, your point about stage directions is well-taken. I was recently reading Krapp’s Last Tape again after watching John Hurt’s performance of it in the Beckett on Film series, and it struck me how the prose style of the opening stage directions established the precise rhythmic, deliberate tone of their performance on stage:
The sentence structure here actually suggests the care with which this opening sequence should be performed, and how carefully the reader should approach the text.
Good luck with that little project, Cameron. Not too long ago I tried this approach with three American plays that I hadn’t seen — Grasses of a Different Color by Wallace Shawn, Ruined by Lynn Nottage, and The Break of Noon by Neil Labute. But like you, I suppose, the prospect of reading plays from the last few years in American theatre gives me something of a chill.
I was attempting to recall something from decades ago. So “Brand” is early. Never too old to learn.
I wonder if it would be worth at least an experiment to stage a play with the manuscript — lines, stage directions and all — projected somewhere, or sent to people’s iPads or whatever. Maybe you could incorporate that into your next play? I’ll demand credit for the idea, of course.
Is that your study, George? I hope it is.
I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t read plays, if you’re interested in the theatre. Like you, it’s the only way I’ll ever get to experience much of the interesting work that’s been written over the past couple of millennia. I’ll certainly never see most of it if I wait for it to appear on the stage.
And of course there’s no reason why plays can’t be literary pleasures, just as poetry and novels are. The best plays always are.
I agree with you about the need for individual agency in theatre writing (one of the problems with theatre writing here is how little confidence there seems to be in writing qua writing, and that weird infantalisation of the writer). I just think that good collaborations permit that individuality to flower: a poor collaboration by definition will quash whatever each participant has to offer, whereas one that works extends and burnishes it.
I wish it were, Alison. However, when the girls go to college, I fully intend to convert their room to just such a den. Can’t wait for 2030 to swing around.
There is a bit of an anti-literary prejudice against drama these days, mostly the result of misreadings of Lehmann and others, as well as among playwrights themselves, who don’t see themselves as creating texts for reading, but solely for performance. I covered some of this ground in the Yale Theater piece “The Booking of the Play” that I wrote last year.
Agreed about your last point. How to define, however, a “good” collaboration between a dead dramatist and a living theatre company? But I think there’s been quite a lot said about that recently, such as the controversy spiralling around the new production of Porgy & Bess that Diane Paulus is directing. No need for me to go into it, with figures like Stephen Sondheim weighing in.
Anti-literary prejudice seems to come from literature too, an idea thaatre writing is not quite legitimate, as if is a kind of half-writing. Which is of course self fulfilling. But I’ve written about that too. And too right about the misreadings of Lehmann – the last thing he asks for is a post-textual theatre.
I remember Richard Gilman informing me that he didn’t need to go and see Chekhov performed, that he was more than happy to simply read the plays and watch them in the theater of his mind.
As satisfying as reading plays can be, I have to say that on the rare occasion that I see something live in the theater that is exquisitely, soulfully realized, it fills me with an enthusiasm, an excitement, a desire to speak with strangers on the street, to spread the good news, that is something that I don’t get from reading plays. But, on the other hand, that kind of experience has to be seen in light of all the other theatergoing experiences, which don’t end nearly as well, and in that sense, a comfortable chair and a great play are usually the better bet.
I would never think of reading plays as a replacement for seeing them! Their written life exists in tandem with performance, surely.