In the past month, I have seen at least four (maybe more--my memory ain't what it used to be) new American plays produced in Off-Broadway or Broadway houses that display a crippling lack of skill, the kind of skill one might expect would be at least addressed in any of the myriad MFA programs that spit out new playwrights year after year. I thought about writing about the one I sat through last night but then this morning it seemed that to do so, to single one out, would be unfair. Because the problem is bigger than any one play.
Gary Garrison has a wonderful excercise that he posted here a while back. I'll re-post it now in the hopes that some of these aspiring playwrights might take a moment to reflect on what they call dialogue. Here it is: Simple Exercise for a Complicated Dramaturgical Problem.
The other glaring problem is maybe more difficult to address but it matters just as much. We go to the theatre to see people doing things. Hence: the word "action." We want to see characters who want something and spend the next couple hours striving towards (or away from) very specific things. So many new plays these days lack the fire of intention. If the people onstage are just chit-chatting away for a couple hours, I'm bored.
I suspect this problem can be traced to the fact that many of these writers don't read. Their literature is television. Television has a lot of great stuff on it. Don't get me wrong. But it also has a lot of drivel. A mindless collection of scenelits leaping from one one-liner to the next, does not a situation comedy make. The term itself: "situation comedy" implies what it can be at its very best -- Mary Tyler Moore, All in the Family, The Simpsons. The comedy emerges out of the situation. The situation is uniquely tied to the specifics of character and setting. The humor is not simply a stand-up comedy routine.
The last thing I think is at play here has less to do with writers and more to do with Artistic Directors and the development offices of non-profit theatres. This is what I refer to as: The Plague of High-Concept Programming. More often than not, we are seeing plays produced because they are about something either deemed important or as-yet-unexplored regardless of whether there's an actual play there, vis a vis the two standards outlined above. I wrote about this here a while back, too, and I will include a link now in the hopes that some of these Artistic Directors might also stumble upon it. Here it is: "High-Concept" -- Choking American Theatre to Death.
Okay, I think I've ranted enough for a Monday morning, don't you?
