Robert Cohen - Theatre, Brief Version-McGraw-Hill Education (2016)

60 Chapter 4 The Playwright
play production: the script, which is the rallying point
around which the director or producer gathers the troops.
Yet that point of origin is also a point of departure. The
days when a Shakespeare or a Molière would read his text
to actors, and then coach them in its proper execution,
are long gone. What we have today is a more specialized
theatrical hierarchy in which the director is interposed as
the playwright’s representative to the actors and designers.
More and more, the playwright’s function is to write
the play and then disappear. Once the script has been
printed, duplicated, and distributed, the playwright’s
physical participation is relegated mainly to serving as
the director’s sounding board and script reviser. Indeed,
the playwright’s physical presence in the rehearsal hall
can become an embarrassment, not so much welcomed
as simply tolerated—and sometimes not even that.
Fundamentally, today’s playwright is considered an
independent artist whose work, like that of the novelist
or poet, is executed primarily if not exclusively in isolation.
There are exceptions, of course. Some playwrights
work from actors’ improvisations, and others participate
quite fully in rehearsals, even to the point of serving as
the initial director of their plays (as Edward Albee, Sam
Shepard, and Neil LaBute often do) or, more extraordinarily,
by acting in them (as Athol Fugard and August
Wilson have done).
But the exceptions, in this case, do not disprove the
rule. Since the age of romanticism, the image of the
playwright has turned increasingly from that of theatre
coworker and mentor to that of isolated observer and
social critic. In the long run, this change should occasion
no lamentation, for if theatre production now demands
collaboration and compromise, the art of the theatre
still requires individuality, clarity of vision, sharpness
of approach, and devotion to personal truth. The theatre
needs to challenge the artists who are called upon to fulfill
it and the audiences who will pay money to experience
it.
The independence of the playwright is therefore
generally her or his most important characteristic. Playwrights
must seek from life, from their own lives—and
not from the theatrical establishment—the material that
will translate into exciting and meaningful and entertaining
theatre, and their views must be intensely personal,
grounded in their own perceptions and philosophy,
in order to ring true. And yet while being distinct and
individual, great plays also speak to shared experiences.
Playwrights must communicate their intimate selves
and speak to the wider world. We look to the theatre
for a measure of leadership, for personal enlightenment
derived from another’s experience, for fresh perspectives
and new vision. Simple mastery of certain conventional
techniques will not suffice to enable a playwright to
expand our lives.
Literary and Nonliterary
Aspects of Playwriting
If you take a look at the classes offered at your school’s
English department, you will probably see classes in
drama: perhaps a Shakespeare course, or a survey that
incorporates some Greek or American plays. This makes
sense—drama is a foundational form of literature. And
many dramatic authors begin as poets or novelists, so it
may seem as if playwriting is primarily a literary activity.
But it is not. It helps to understand the word’s origin:
playwright is not playwrite. Writing for the theatre
is quite different from other literary forms. Although
by coincidence the words write and wright sound identical,
a “playwright” is a person who makes plays. The
word “wright” is an old-fashioned way to say “maker”; a
wheelwright, for instance, is a person who makes wheels.
This distinction is particularly important because some
plays, or portions of plays, are never written at all. Improvisational
plays, rituals, scenes of comic business, and
documentary dramas may be created largely or entirely
in performance or are learned simply through oral improvisation
and repetition.
Picture this scenario: a playwright simply writes the
words “they fight.” In a novel or short story, the details
of that fight would live in the mind of the reader. But for
a playwright, what is created goes far beyond the words:
there are infinite ways the characters on stage could
fight—fists? Guns? Knives? Playful tickling?—and hours
of time will go into plotting these moves and incorporating
them into the story of the play as a whole. The actors
will find motivated actions, the director will enshrine the
final movements as the official “blocking,” the designers
will make sure that the set and costumes can withstand
the physical wear and tear, and an official fight choreographer
will train the performers to enact the scene safely
and convincingly. All of that planning, all because of two
simple words! But this level of physical realization is true
for all actions written in a play: “She crosses the room”;
“he drinks”; “they dance.” And so too for the words:
there are always new ways to deliver lines of a script. The
words are critical, but they are more of a blueprint than
a final product; they are always linked to real, embodied
performance. In fact, some of a play’s most effective