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I just finished reading the interview by Carol Rocamora of Edward Albee in last month’s American Theatre. There is, of course, very little I can say that is critical of Albee, after all, he’s a god. I can think of no greater movie-watching joy than that of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf staring Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. Such ruthless, terrible beauty is seldom seen. But, I thought I’d take some time to comment on some of what I read and some of the things that struck me.

Probably the greatest single thing that struck me from Albee was his statement that he doesn’t write drafts. He says, “No, I think you should write the entire play down the first time, and then fix it with a few touches here and there. You shouldn’t write it down until you think you have the whole play. Playwrights get in terrible trouble when they write a play too soon, and then hope that it finds its shape.” So, Albee lets the play swirl and swirl around in his head. As he comments, “A play begins as an idea translated from the unconscious to the conscious. You’ve been thinking about it a long time and creating it a long time before you’re even aware of it.” Now, there are some plays that I’ve written that I simply cannot imagine writing in one shot. Not even a question of one shot–that is, writing all in one sitting. That would require an exceptional stamina that I don’t think I have. I’ve written a play, not in one sitting, but as near to one sitting as I could muster–maybe a couple of days. But the play was a skeleton. It was bone thin. Air whipped through the ribcages and rattled the untethered jaw bone. I had to go back and “flesh” it out. Put some fat and skin on that sucker. Then I had to rework it after that. But, this is not to say that I don’t find merit in what Albee says. It is more than a simple abstraction. I know well what he means by “get in terrible trouble” and “hope that it finds its shape.” I’ve written plays where I have attempted to jigsaw out an ending and screw it on to the main part of the play I started, but didn’t finish right away.

I was struck by other things as well. First, I was struck by the fact that the “search of family and identity” is so important to him. I’m reviewing in my mind the plays I’ve read, and I haven’t even read his Pulitzer Prize plays…mostly his early ones. I can see in The American Dream and, of course, Who’s Afraid, the focus on family. And certainly in Zoo Story the concern with identity. I guess I’m surprised because my most recent play was very concerned with identity, too. Though, I’ve noticed a lot of religious and mythological creep in my plays–which is why I’m probably such a fan of Shepard. I was very surprised by Albee’s flat commentary on his adoptive parents. Clearly, he’s bitter about that and I can really see it now, in reflection, in thinking about what he said in this interview and the characterization of the mother and father in The American Dream. Further, that “identical twins” is a “theme that has haunted Albee since childhood.” Not because he had a twin that died early on in his life…but because he invented a twin for himself due to his being ignored by his adoptive parents.

I was curious about his foundation and will have to take a look at what that’s about and what it has to offer.

Albee commented that he would never extend a play to make it fit an “evening of theatre” nor would he intentionally shorten it for such an external reason. And then he described how he was workshopping a play of his in preparation for a performance, a three act play, and decided that it was running long and wasn’t working so he just cut the second act. Just cut a whole act. That is either great confidence or an amazing disrespect for what you’ve written. He made it almost sound flippant. Though, upon reflection, I doubt very much it was rashly decided.

It was refreshing to hear him state that “None of my 200 characters is me; all come through me, but I hope the have sufficient individuality.” Then, curiously, “I like to think my plays will not only heal me but also possibly others, that they have enough universality, that the writing of them is not a private act.” My plays will not only heal me… The plays somehow fill a void in him…make him complete. And, of course, to explore.

There are other things that are fascinating, from his interest in directing, to his belief that directing makes his understanding of playwriting greater, his belief in the possibility that all his plays add up to one big play, that non-profit theatres work best because they take risks and chances, the belief that big theaters and for-profit theaters are escapist and pander (one of the things I am always in disbelief of is when I attend Stratford Festival plays and plays at the Shaw Festival how many people–including my mother, aunts, etc., attend musicals), and finally, his shot at MFA programs: which of course, I’m throughly in. However, I think it depends on the program and what that program intends, as I’ve mentioned before, such as in my talk with Theatrically Speaking. The MFA program I’m in at CSU is more focused on writing, workshopping, and getting into theaters–and Mike Geither, whose praises I cannot sing enough, is a fiercely dedicated proponent of this and works tirelessly to get young playwrights into theaters and has been instrumental in my own involvement in convergence-continuuum.

A good, general interview of Albee. Worth a look if you’re a fan.

Naomi Wallace’s article, which I began reviewing in my last post, continues with an enumeration of ways to transgress when writing. She outlines six, specifically:

1. Ways of Seeing — she points to John Berger’s book.

Interestingly, I have several copies of John Berger’s book. When I worked for AmeriCorps in 1994 one of the VISTAs with whom I worked managed to get Penguin Books to donate tens of thousands of its overstocked books to the program. We filled the shelves of the ABLE program and had many duplicates to take for ourselves. I have looked at it several times, but always assumed it was an “art” book. Guess I should go dig it out.

2. Write against YOUR traditional ways of seeing.
   

   I’ll have to read it to gain the perspective necessary to fully understand what Wallace is talking about here; but I have no doubt about it’s validity. I was amazed by the immediate progress I made when I changed the MANNER in which I approached playwriting. I can’t imagine how beneficial approaching the matter from a different way of SEEING will be.

3. Study how language is used to oppress

From the various forms of literary criticism that I’ve read, I’ve certainly come to understand the validity of claims regarding how language conveys power relationships and affects self-perception. When researching my play about midwives I looked into misogyny in medicine and power relationships in the medical world; it should come as no surprise to anyone who has spent time in a hospital that language is one of the key mechanisms that medical professionals use to control interactions: from the mechanistic view of the body to the manner in which they use “medical-ese” to keep patients at arms length (nephrology–kidney; oncology–cancer, etc.). I still find the way Wallace loads this item with her communist polemic distasteful, but hey, to each her own. Regardless, language is certainly something that should be important to playwrights, and how one group uses it against another is key to many aspects of play creation.

4. Disrupt cliches and the “cluttered mind”

I always strive to do this. Cliches are THE key indicator that you are not original…unless, of course, you’re writing an entire play using cliches, which I have thought of doing.

5. Explore other writers

Probably the single most valuable aspect of the MFA program I’m in. Just the sheer exposure to other writers and other “ways of seeing.”

6. Research thoroughly what you’re writing about

I always am thorough in my research. In fact, I am afraid that my calling may be to just do research and not to write at all. In each major work that I have done–two big plays and a children’s book–I’ve spent, collectively, six years researching: gathering, reading, analyzing, following citations, working the interlibrary loan machine…

Wallace goes on, after this, to express her “highest aspiration” as a writer: which is to “re-imagine ourselves and our communities” which I think is very noble, indeed. And despite my disagreement with the language in which Wallace often couches her propositions, I do very much agree with her on this point–as well as her “6 Ways to Transgress.”

The next thing that Wallace considers is of great import to me, I’m glad to see it is for her, too. Of course, I am forced to admit that Wallace’s language in her plays and her often stunning stage images leaves my constructs to shame–but with Geither’s help and my re-constructed view of playwriting and the stage I have began to cultivate powerful stage images of my own. Regardless, the item of concern here is the question of “dryness” and “sex” that she puts.

The question of “dryness” refers to “writing devoid of passion and complexity and entertainment”–that is, the fear that if you write plays that are political they will be “dry” and uninteresting. This certainly should be a concern, but I would state that it ALWAYS should be a concern REGARDLESS of the subject matter. If characters in a play are viewed humanely and honestly and one utilizes imagination in the staging and dimensionality of the work and one exercises the “standard” toolkit of playwriting techniques: such as timing and tension, etc., then a play should NOT be “dry.” Wallace goes on to expand the dryness to encompass a subject matter that is just plain boring (again, as viewed by students). But Wallace ably fends off this question by simply pointing to the blood press that is history–that is, one throws apples into a press to get cider; history throws people into a press to get blood, consequence, and the problems of the future.

The question of “sex” is what Wallace re-phrases as a question of intimacy. And again, Wallace ably defends that both economics and politics are sexy, especially when couched in the terms of their consequence on the smallest of lives throughout all time: for instance, the prejudice of a pope makes four generations of Jews live in a ghetto. The consequences on the lives of all those people is pretty intimate. Here Wallace quotes Terry Eagleton who somewhere wrote that “our economic world is about ‘the plundering of the body of its sensuous wealth'” and again, she couches the argument in terms of capitalism, etc. But, in this case I agree–in that our lives are spent pursuing a course other than that which we would were it possible for us to live without selling 40+ of our human hours every week: our body hours, our dreaming hours, our life hours. Now that I have children I realize more acutely what the sale of my time–my life–means.

Here, Wallace begins to make some of her more powerful and beautifully worded appeals. For instance, “What could be more intimate and personal than the history of our bodies and their relationship to the world?” or:

History itself is a study in intimacy, or our lack of it, with others. What else is history and politics but the struggle of people to define who they are and what they can and cannot do?

But still, I think the statements that she makes apply to a certain type of writing, a certain type of play. What has been referred to by others, with some amount of distaste, as “social plays” or plays about “issues”: Ibsen, Miller, Wilson, etc. But when I think of the early plays of Sam Shepard, I am less inclined to agree that these elements apply. But one certainly could argue for them in his later family trilogy plays, and so on. They play out less on the national political level than at the metapolitical level of the family or the interpersonal/personal level of the self and its relation to family members. If anything, of course, Shepard’s plays approach the idea of masculinity in our culture: its manifestation, consequences, and meaning. But, as Wallace states, “we are involved in the job of drama,” each of us.

I am relieved that on page 102 Wallace writes that she is “not calling for a condescending theatre or a ‘preaching to the converted’ theatre but a welcoming, vigorous, inquisitive and brutal theatre…to challenge normative ways of seeing, to get uncomfortable, to get unsafe, to get unsure.” For really, there is nothing worse than a condescending political theatre. It becomes very like the current national campaign for president.

In the end, true to form, and true to good writing, Wallace leaves us with as many questions as possible answers. Some of the questions that I felt particularly drawn to were those that Wallace posited for playwrights–what she refers to as a “how” state of mind:

“How did it come to this? How am I diminished by my own ignorance? How have I been silenced in ways that I am not aware of?” These are good questions, and while I know Wallace points us toward a full human condition, I am still disappointed that the questions (and her pointing) are couched in the lesser language of a blatant political philosophy that I would say, diminishes the discussion.