The Play's the Thing

I have always enjoyed some of the Blog Theme items that I've read on other people's websites and I thought it would be fun to participate. This one is actually the second one that I am deciding to do with my blog (the photo thing from Shells I mentioned before---5 photos on the 5th of the month in 2005---was actually the first). The one I'm doing today comes from ThursdaysBookworm.

Each Thursday she asks book oriented type of questions. What's funny is that the person running the site, Brandie, has created a cool little site there that has this woodgrain bookshelf/librarian feel to it. But then she has this link to her personal blog on the site----and clicking on that brings up this site filled with hot pink attitude called Second Time Around . The tag line is "You say B**** like it's a bad thing". And sometimes she delivers on that with both barrels. This mall-babe Jeckel and Hyde weblog duality amused me.

Anyway, here's my contribution to the Thursday Bookworm:

1. What would you consider to be the best play ever written, and why?

I don't know if I could give a "best play ever" award--although if forced I think I'd give it to Shakespeare for Hamlet (because of the overall impact that it has had on Western Culture and beyond). But my two personal favorite plays are "Waiting for Godot" by Samuel Becket, and "Star Spangled Girl" by Neil Simon. I know, weird combination. I just like them. The Simon play just cracks me up---he's always been a favorite playwright, but I like Godot for the language. It's like a staged poem for me. I've seen it directed with a strong emphasis on the comedy, and on the tragedy---but for me, the existentialism in the show (and I think in general) is more about living fully in the beauty of any moment, be it despair or rapture. If I ever directed this I think I would give it a more lyrical slant with a childlike-wonder quality thrown in.

2. Who would you say is the most prolific American playwright/dramatist of all time? And from any other country?

If this question is asking about prolific in the sense of the number of plays written, who's written the most---I have no idea. I've know of some semi-professional playwrights who have written hundreds of plays, but the ones I read from them I didn't like very much. I think there is more quality work out there (to say the least) from playwrights who have maybe not written as much in terms of volume.

In regards prolific U. S. writers in terms of prolific meaning "abundant inventiveness"---or maybe even simply just making a statement about the nature of the way of things that was particularly resonant, I would have to consider either Tenessee Williams or Arthur Miller. My personal vote would go to Miller because I think Williams deals mostly with his own inner demons in his writing, while Miller reflects more from the culture at large.

My wife is really into Horton Foote and his pays from the Orphan's Home Cycle series---Cortship, 1918 (which she directed as her thesis show in Undergrad), and Valentines Day.

3. Are there any plays or playwrights that you don't particularly care for?

I don't have any playwrights that I can say I don't particularly like. I haven't been reading plays in a while, so there may be some out there that I would take exception to. I can remember in college getting frustrated with Christopher Durrang. I liked him at first, found him to be very clever, but then it was like he hit a rut. He kept repackaging the same play----it was always a "I'm gay and I hate Catholics and my family was real messed up" play of one sort or another. He did it right in "The Marriage of Bette and Boo" and he should have moved on after that. But, that was a while ago, maybe he has---I haven't read any of his stuff in the last 10 years.

I also didn't care for the surrealist playwrights who wrote plays that were totally unstageable. I mean, what's the use in that---if you can't stage it, just write a book.

4. Have you ever performed in a play? Which one(s), and which role(s) did you play?

I got my Bachelors and Masters in Theater, so I've performed in quite a few plays. Everything from an idiot father in Simon's "Fools" to Reverend Hale in Miller's "The Crucible". I tended to play supporting roles, usually character roles, and thought at one point that I wouldn't be really accomplished until I started playing lead roles. So, finally, I got cast in a lead---I played Mortimer in "Arsenic and Old Lace". But, in the end, it was the role I found the least enjoyable. I found I liked to make people laugh and be a little goofy and I could do that more as the supporting sidekick characters. So I went back to those for the short time I acted after that.

I found that I like being out in front of stage to see the performances more than being on stage in them. So I enjoyed doing Tech and writing and directing much more. I ended up sticking to those as much as I could.

5. Have you ever written, or attempted to write, a play of your own?

I have written several things---one half of my double major in my Masters program was in script writing. I wouldn't qualify anything I've written as a serious piece of dramatic literature but I have produced everything I've written and it has entertained audiences.

I guess I should qualify that a bit, everything I have done was written to be produced. I would be in situations where we wanted to do a play and so I would write a show. Typically, I would have the good fortune of already having a group of actors and I would improv with them for a while and then would write a script to play to their strengths.

It really got around two things that I quite disliked about theater---trying to pick a script that would be suitable in the limitations of a given production situation, and casting. By writing the show, I would write specifically for the space, budget, and players. It became a model I prefer to work in.

However, I have only re-staged one of my scripts because once the first situation is gone, then you are back to trying to get everything in order to address the needs of the script. The one script that did get produced a second time was one in which I had written a character for my wife who was pregnant with our red-head at the time. So I wrote a role for her that required the character to be 7-8 months pregnant! However, when she directed it the next summer, she found that she found, of course, that she needed to come up with some padding for that character. It's that sort of thing that keeps me from doing these things twice.