I was reminded recently of a director I once had the displeasure of working with who saw his job more or less as moving actors around like set pieces on his set. As one of those actors I remember finding it incredibly demoralizing to be searching for moments of genuine authentic action/reaction with my fellow scene partners and feeling as though doing so was just taking up more of his precious time for blocking. He had some big heady vision for the play and it involved ideas which were never very clear.
The thing is, ideas behave more or less as we expect them to. People, on the other hand...
The director who thinks of nothing but figuring out who sits and stands and crosses when and where has one thing in common with the playwright who manipulates his characters, cramming them into a plot of his own design, human nature be damned. They're both focused on control.
I have found that when I am doing my best work as a playwright, it is when I stop trying to control my characters. I often find myself repeating this, almost as a mantra, to members of the playwriting workshops I teach. And yet, truthfully, writing intuitively is not something that can be taught. It either happens or it never does.
I still remember with such giddiness the first time I allowed one of my plays to unfold without a clue as to where these characters were going to take me. The rush was electric. And the result was astonishing.
The play had an authentic pulse, a heart beating underneath because the characters were real. They were human. Unpredictable. Deceptive, ugly, gorgeous, dangerous and genuine. When I am writing a scene and my pen moves across the paper and I see that someone has said something I did not expect and now can never forget, I sometimes let out an audible gasp.
That's when I know I'm doing the work of playwriting.
And I think a lot of it comes down to breathing and listening. When I was acting in that play with that director and his vision, I found moments of grace in the eyes of my fellow actors. And really, in those moments what we were sharing was a kind of letting go, a yielding to time. I look at you and speak my line. Your eyes change slightly. And before you speak, we share a moment that is human, authentic, alive.
It reminds me of what my therapist used to say whenever there'd be a lull in my session.
The pause that feels almost too long is often the source of great discovery.
Human genius waits for us in the silences between our thoughts. In those moments when we don't know whether to turn left, right or back up slowly out of the room. If we allow time to do its thing, a door will open. And the rush is thrilling because it belongs to all of us.
