Below is the 2007 Laura Pels Foundation Keynote Address, which was
delivered by Richard Nelson last Monday evening at Curtain Call, the
annual meeting of the Alliance of Resident Theatres/New York (A.R.T./New
York).
R.Nelson
Speech April 9th, 2007
First I want to thank Laura Pels - a truly generous woman. Generous in
both the obvious sense, and also always with her time, her energy, her
enthusiasm, her humor. She and I have had a few meals together over the
years, both here and in Paris, and I've enjoyed every minute of them and
always left inspired and encouraged. And I wish to thank ART New York
for inviting me here tonight. I have to say I was surprised to be asked,
but also very honored.
I am also very honored to be speaking to each and every one of you; I
know I am in a room of people who care about theater, who love theater,
many of you have and are devoting your lives to theater. And any lover
of theater - must also be a lover of plays. And any lover of plays
will, I am sure, recognize the unique place of the playwright in the
making of theater. And it is this place that I wish to speak about.
By the way, I think this will be the first 'speech' I have ever given;
fifty-six years old, and I've managed to escape giving a speech until
now. I suppose I never thought it was my 'thing,' I love hearing what I
write spoken by others, not myself. But things change, we change.
I remember when I became a father for the first time. And suddenly I
found within me an ability to fight for my child in ways that I could
never have fought for myself.
A year and a half ago I began teaching young emerging talented
playwrights at the Yale School of Drama. Tonight I want to talk about
issues that are important to them - and to me, and I believe to all
American playwrights. But mostly to them. And I suppose it is because
of them, and because of the hundreds of playwrights whose work I now
read each year, that I feel the need, the passion, but more importantly
the responsibility to discuss the state of our profession with you
tonight.
So much has happened to the profession of playwriting since I had my
first professional production at the Mark Taper Forum Lab in 1975. And
so much of what has happened has not been good for playwrights.
The profession of playwright, the role of the playwright in today's
American theater, I believe, is under serious attack. Some who attack
are simply greedy, some ignorant, some can't understand why theater
isn't TV or film. But perhaps the greatest threat to the playwright in
today's theater comes from not those greedy and ignorant, but rather
from those who want 'to help.'
'Help.' 'Playwrights are in need of help.' This is now almost a maxim
in our theater today. Unquestioned. A given. But where does this
mindset - for that is what it is - a mindset, come from? Of course
playwrights need things - money, productions, support, encouragement.
So do actors, directors, designers, artistic directors. But THIS
mindset is different, because what is meant here is: 'Playwrights are in
need of help -- to write their plays.' 'They are in need of help - to do
their work.' 'They can't do their work themselves.'
How strange. What other profession is viewed in this way? What other
person in the theater is viewed this way? Imagine hiring say a director
with the assumption that he couldn't do his work himself. Now I am not
saying by this that a director shouldn't listen to others, receive
notes, be open to discussions, and so forth. Quite the opposite, for
THIS is all part of what a director does. AND I am NOT saying a
playwright shouldn't listen to notes, be open to discussions, and so
forth - because THIS is what a playwright does. What I am saying is
that the given mindset should not be that the playwright cannot be
trusted to lead this process. Cannot be trusted to know how to work
within the collaboration of theater.
Nor am I talking about mentoring - or educating young playwrights here.
I'm not talking about a classroom situation. I'm talking about how our
professional theater looks at playwrights and the playwright's play.
About assumptions made and about the various specific solutions theaters
THEN make based upon these false assumptions.
What is really being said to the playwright by all the help? From the
playwright's perspective it is this: that the given now in the American
theater is that what a playwright writes, no matter how much he or she
works on it, rewrites it at his or her desk, the play will ALWAYS not be
right. Will ALWAYS need 'help.' In other words, writing a play is too
big of a job for just the playwright to achieve. This, I believe, is
now a prevalent attitude in the American theater. And this mindset is
devastating.
Emily Mann told me the other day that in her 17 years running the
McCarter Theater the greatest change has been - that now more and more
plays are submitted that are obviously unfinished. That writers today
recognize that if they wish to participate in a process that perhaps
will lead to the production of their work, then this will require
rewriting and revision guided and cajoled by others. So why finish
anything?
I sit with young writers and hear how they now leave chunks of their
plays purposely badly written - hoping that the 'help' they receive will
concentrate on these areas and not on others that they care about.
Tricks, games that many a screenwriter has learned over time, but now
finding their way into the writing of plays.
Now no doubt many of you are thinking - but the plays aren't finished,
they need help, and they do get better.
Again, I am not saying that a playwright should avoid and ignore
comments and reactions to his work, quite the opposite. But I am saying
that our mindset toward playwrights should be this: 1) the playwright
knows what he is doing, 2) perhaps the play as presented is as it should
be. So that the onus for change is not on the playwright but on others,
on the theater. And the theater is there with a full array of tools to
support the playwright as he or she attempts to improve upon his or her
play. How to improve a play should be the domain of the writer, with the
theater supplying potential tools, a reading say, or a workshop with
clearly delineated goals. These are tools that should evolve out of a
need, as opposed to being a given.
Now a culture of 'help' breeds a culture of dependence and this is what,
I believe, we now have in the American theater: the culture of readings
and workshops, one unimaginable when I was a young playwright thirty
years ago. A culture of 'development.' And this culture, more than
being an activity, a process - is a mindset. Having spent a great deal
of time in classical theater, I have watched actors and directors
approach classical plays that have massive contradictions and address
those plays not as works to be fixed, but rather to be solved. So I am
arguing for a theater where the mindset is not to fix new plays, but to
solve them.
Now if it is assumed that all plays need to be helped along, then no
playwright actually has it in his or her power to complete his or her
play. Therefore, can it really be called his or her play? Ah - now we
come to other trickier sides of this equation, where the 'help' given
writers also has strings. In the time I've been given, I'd like to look
at just a few - there are many - examples of how this mindset has
infiltrated our theater and what it is doing to my profession. So let's
get specific.
And let's look at the actors, directors, even audiences who have been
taught/re-educated by this culture to feel a responsibility to 'help'
the playwright write his or her play. Producers, literary managers,
dramaturges who 'help' with rules about what makes a good play, who
'help' by mandating readings because they must be 'helpful'. Let's look
at managers who 'helpfully' organize commissions so that the theater
can encourage OR is the word 'enforce' changes that are 'helpful' to
the play. There are contracts that demand remuneration for this 'help.'
There are foundations that allow their monies to be used in a
developmental hell that breeds the loss of confidence and control that
every playwright needs, must have, to succeed.
SO. Readings. Mandatory reading of plays for judgment or to 'give
help.' Be careful. This is dangerous, and has already caused great
harm. A play with two people at a table having a conversation - this
works in a reading, we get a good sense of what the writer is after.
But what about 7 people in a room, moving about, talking to two, then
three, unheard by a forth, and so on. This makes no sense in a reading.
And so playwrights, practical people that we are, slowly - like a bad
evolution - we stop writing in forms that don't work in readings. And
again, slowly, our plays begin to look alike, dramaturgically similar.
Of course a playwright can benefit from a reading, but one needs to be
so very careful about why the play is being read, what hopefully is
being gained. And, what is being lost. All those reading series out
there - careful, careful, in the long run are they doing much more harm
than good?
Workshops. What are they? What IS the role of an actor or a director
in a workshop? To direct or act in a play requires, I believe, a strong
element of confidence in the play; a belief that the answer to one's
questions or confusions can be found - in the play. This is what a
director or an actor does, this is their talent and how they explore.
But if the playwright is encouraged to - no CELEBRATED -for rewriting
during this process, then where does that put the actor, the director -
not acting, not directing - but there - 'to help.' Isn't this the wrong
mindset for a director or actor to have? Is this the way they should be
looking at a play? Couldn't their talents be put to better service
trying to solve what the writer has written - as opposed to trying to
help him fix it?
Audiences. By involving them in readings and discussions and god forbid
workshops, we are apparently asking for their 'help' with the play. But
doesn't this confuse even warp the role of the audience? And in terms of
new work doesn't this put an audience's focus overwhelmingly on 'does it
work?' as opposed to 'what is it about?' or 'why was it written?' or
'does it matter?' Aren't these the questions we want discussed? Aren't
these the questions that help generate the sort of substantive
discussions we in the theater wish to have with an audience?
Rules for writing plays. My god. One hears young playwrights being told
what a play 'must do,' or 'how a play works.' One hears writers being
told that a character's 'journey' isn't clear enough, or that the writer
needs to determine a character's 'motivation.' One hears how a play has
to 'build' in a certain way, or how 'the conflict' isn't strong enough.
These are terms that seem to suggest a deep understanding of what a play
is and how it is put together, but in fact they tell us very little.
Perhaps a particular play might be helped by one of these suggestions,
but they (and other 'rules') are too generally prescribed. To see how
silly this prescription is, one has only to ask: what is the clear
motivation of Lear? The playwright doesn't write out of 'motivations'
but rather out of truth and reality, out of people and story and worlds
he or she wishes or needs to create for us. These terms are perhaps
useful to the critic, or the dramaturg in finding a way in for
themselves to these plays; but such considerations are not how plays,
good plays, great plays are made.
The word 'text.' I may be crazy, but I think I just woke up one day and
suddenly somehow people starting talking about the 'text' instead of
'the play.' How did this come about? Since when does a playwright only
write 'words.' Isn't that the hidden meaning of this? To make the
playwright the 'word guy' and leave the theater making to others? As if
the writer was only a source from which words flowed that others made
into plays.
As I tell my students endlessly - theater is the only artistic form that
uses the entire live human being as its expression. Playwrights write
people, not words. We write words to convey the people. To push us
aside, to make us the 'text guy' and not the 'play guy' is a subtle but
dangerous change in thinking and betrays a new mindset about the place
of the playwright in the making of theater.
Step commissions. These are commissions - and this is pretty prevalent
I believe - where the playwright is paid in say three stages. First
when he agrees to the commission and signs the contract, 2nd payment
when he submits the play, and 3rd payment when he submits the rewrite.
Now what is wrong with this picture? What is the underlying assumption
here? That the play the playwright submits will need to be rewritten
and that the playwright will only do this rewrite only if he or she is
paid for it.
Now as we all know the playwright still is the owner of the play, he or
she owns the copyright. So - say you build a house and you own this
house. And someone comes along and suggests that you add a window. Now
if you agree and think this would improve your house a great deal you
are going to add this window. However, suppose a guy comes along and
says - he thinks you should add a window and he will pay you to do so.
To your own house! How bizarre. This guy must be thinking maybe you
don't want to add a window and you need to be paid to do it. Well, that
is very much what these step deals suggest - and once again insidiously
we have the role of the playwright, or at least his judgment and
understanding of his own play and what it needs doubted, questioned. In
his mind he's thinking he is being paid to do what he doesn't
necessarily want to do.
Here's one that will upset some of you. And the one that will take the
longest to explain and discuss. The idea of 'participation.' You
should see my first year students' faces when I explain what
'participation' is. You mean, they say, that I give up a percentage of
my play forever? Why? Because, I say, the theater has done your play.
Why? They ask again. Because -- and I tell them the theaters will give
you two reasons: they have enhanced the play's value by producing it in
a important 'market' and two, because the theaters have HELPED the
writer with the writing of the play. Ah - this HELP again, which may
have been unwanted, now we have to pay for! How did this happen?
A little background that most of you know, I'm sure. Participation has
been around a long time in the commercial theater, but it is a fairly
recent development, certainly as a pervasive practice, in the non-profit
theater. And it just sort of happened. No real debate that I know of.
Now who is to blame for this? Of course playwrights themselves need to
accept a good bit of that blame, for not fighting this harder when it
began to occur in non-profit contracts. But - and I would guess that
those who now run the Dramatist Guild might even agree - until very
recently our Guild was pretty myopic, and saw theater only through the
lens of Broadway where participation was a given. So there was no
understanding of why it should be stopped in the non-profit theater. And
so there was little if any serious debate or opposition. Only when
Gregory Mosher and Bernie Gersten took over Lincoln Center and they
refused to take any participation from new work was there even the
glimmer of discussion. And certainly nothing like the praise that those
two gentlemen deserved.
So it happened because no one fought it. The playwrights were too weak
and disorganized to fight back and understand what was being done to
them. So - I suppose it's our fault. However, as we all know, that's
not how the theater works, the serious theater works.
I remember an executive committee meeting many years ago at the Guthrie
where I was working, when we were going over salary increases for the
next season. When it came to the proposed raise for actors one new
board member said, 'but I understand that there are always lots of
actors who want to play each part. So why are we now going to pay
actors more? We should pay them less and save that money.' A few
minutes later a couple of more experienced members of the board took
this gentleman aside and explained. And what they explained is obvious
to all of us in this room: we in the theater have a responsibility not
just to our immediate bottom line, but to the future of our art and
profession. You apply principles of hardnosed business to every element
of the theater and you will destroy the theater. So yes, we playwrights
did not protect or fight for ourselves. Yes, we should have. But that
failure does not make us -- fair game.
We write our play, we own our play and we should continue to own our
play - all of it, at least as long as we stay in the non profit theater,
which is a theater that raises its money often on claims of producing
new writing.
Now only one argument about this has ever made sense to me: if a
playwright has a huge hit, shouldn't some of that money come back to the
theater and support other writers and other productions? And I have
signed many contracts in England stating just this, that should I make a
very large amount of money from the play during a given year, then a
percentage is owed to the theater. That makes sense. That is
responsible. But I have never seen an American theater contract with
anything like that language. If theaters won't take it upon themselves
to rectify this situation, if playwrights prove as a group too weak and
unfocused, then I say let's turn to the funders themselves, the
foundations and donors, and ask does this make sense to you, that
healthy percentages of future incomes from plays presented in smallish
theaters with small royalties, requiring months and months of work and
involvement by the playwright - should these theaters now have a right
to this? Should they now own part of the plays? And what signal does
this send to the writer, especially the young ones.
These are a few - there are many more - specific examples of how this
mindset toward the playwright has found its way into all reaches of the
theater and therefore how difficult it will be to change.
Finally to conclude, as I'm running out of time: EMPOWERMENT, that I
suppose is what all this is about,- allowing the playwright to feel that
he or she owns the play, IN ALL MEANINGS OF THAT WORD. AND TO HAVE
PRIDE IN THAT OWNERSHIP. Prescribing 'rules' - this does the opposite.
A culture with a mindset of 'help,' does the same. The loss of a
percentage of one's play - the same again. And so it is my hope and I
believe my profession's best hope -- to change this mindset and the
culture based upon it. When I was asked to give this speech, I was told
to speak about anything I wanted. I knew right away that this is what I
wished to talk about with all of you . Because, it is my great belief
and hope, that it will be from gatherings like these, gatherings of
caring, dedicated theater professionals, lovers of theater, that we can
change how we think, change the broken ways, and reinvigorate, even
re-imagine our theater. Thank you.
Richard Nelson
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