Pandemic Pause has taught us many things. Sometimes I think hardly a week goes by without some lesson arriving at my feet. And as I live alone, I feel a responsibility to bend down and pick it up. Take, the business of playwriting, for example.
I bet if I were to poll all the playwrights on my "inner circle" email list and ask them for a job description, we'd get a lot of talk of drama, the blank page, dialogue, script format, etc. etc. And the American ones at least, would take pains to steer clear of anything remotely related to the directing, designing or performing of their scripts. Heck, many of my friends who are playwrights wouldn't dream of allowing their new play to premiere without first consulting a trusted dramaturg. I remember during my tenure at the Dramatists Guild hearing Mr. Edward Albee on more than one occasion rant against the American Theatre's conspiracy to convince playwrights that they needed help writing their plays. I must say I always enjoyed that rant and felt he had pretty much nailed it.
But the problem lives in all corners of life and work in the 21st century and it's literally killing us. It's gotten so completely virulent.
The problem we face in the theatre is a problem in virtually every field imaginable: over-specialization. It's insane that my gastroenterologist (Anyone over 50 should have a colonoscopy and when you do you'll acquire one of your own.) doesn't feel qualified to answer my questions about nutrition and instead would like to refer me to a nutritionist. A friend had to have a hip replacement and a few years later a knee replacement. The surgeries were performed by different surgeons. My friend with ovarian cancer had one surgeon to remove the ovaries, uterus and Fallopian tubes, a vein surgeon to deal with the area where the cancer was strangling her aorta, a breast cancer surgeon to remove the breasts and a plastic surgeon to stitch her back up. That's not even accounting for the radiologists and anesthesiologists. Her surgery which should have taken 4 hours tops took all day while a team of specially trained nurses and surgical assistants kept her open waiting for the blood vessel specialist to check everything.
In my online writing workshops I encourage the playwright to take ownership of their entire new play, not just its written form. For this reason I have a habit of rolling my eyes at writers who deliver stage directions with a lot of "either or"s sprinkled throughout. It's your vision, your world to define. Take the drivers seat. Make a choice, I urge. And while some are at first hesitant and a bit shy about expressing preferences for all sorts of things. Eventually many of them come to remember a time when they imagined a play more fully, a time before they were trained to sit tight and be quiet while the director and producers decided what to make of their script.
Good 'wright! Goo'boy!
Don't get me wrong. Collaboration is key... to everything. But... experience tells me the best collaborations, the most fruitful ones are messy. Lines are a bit blurred. Boundaries crossed. Mistakes made. Corrections breed the most amazing fruit. To write dialogue you must must must hear it in your head. If you can't, then you'd better live in a building with thick walls so you can pace around your living room speaking the lines out loud. And, trust me, if you don't or can't or won't, it'll be immediately apparent on page one.
Pandemic Pause has sent me into a cocoon when it's the last place I want to be. Perhaps that's causing me to notice that despite the loneliness and the ever-present hunger for actual human contact, it does also feel good to do things, whole things, by myself. To know that I can unpack the box, put together the furniture, prepare the stir fry, wipe down the table, clear it and do the dishes. And the way I do it may not be worthy of top chef but it is satisfying in the moment and it does help me feel whole.
Writers performing their own monologues makes me smile. Yes, of course, I'm not going to put any professional actors out of work. But there's a depth and earnest raw truth to a monologue performed by the person who wrote it and it's worth sitting up and taking notice of.
On the first Monday of every month I host Some1Speaking at which 5 monologues are presented, some by actor friends of the writers and many by the writers themselves. Join us.
