Which is, I suppose, the definition of a blog...
NYT critic Charles Isherwood's fall 2010 article about (or, should I say, against) direct address set off a mild firestorm in the blogosphere; Kris Diaz, a former fellow Ars Novan, was singled out by Isherwood, and responded to Ishwerwood on his blog. Soon after, the fabulous Joshua Conkle of Youngblood picked up the cry, Alejandro Morales over at the Public's Emerging Writers Group suggested that, to some degree, Isherwood had a point, while Chris Braak, down in Philly, points out that direct address, which has been around since the Greeks, is often preferable to the "unmotivated flying monologue" addressed to another character for no particular reason.
The debate also engendered two of the best days of discussion in my playwriting class last year. I brought in paper copies of Isherwood and Diaz's manifesta, asked my students to read them, and then started asking questions. I wanted to really get at the "generational" argument posed in some of the articles -- is this just a question of two generations inability to look at each others' means of expression? What are these arguments really getting at?
The kids didn't have an answer, and neither do I...but either way, it forced all of us to interrogate form, to think more deeply about what we do when, and why.
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