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

80 Chapter 4 The Playwright
4. LaBute’s play Wrecks is about a man
who, grieving at his wife’s funeral,
gradually lets us into his secrets. The
play’s tragic dimension (its title—like
LaBute’s Medea Redux—echoes Greek
tragedy, in this case Oedipus Rex) is not
obscured by its contemporary dialogue.
Ed Harris here plays the solo role, under
LaBute’s direction, at the Public Theatre
in New York in 2006. © Michal Daniel
4.
so I can shove an answer down
your throat.” It’s not like I already
have this figured out; it’s going
to take a lot of writing for me to
finally say, “This is what I think.”
Most times I think to myself, if an
audience wonders why I’ve written
something, “Why are you asking
me? I only thought of the question.
I wouldn’t have written it if I had an
answer!” For me, it’s all about “what
if?” And “why?” And sometimes by
the end I’m even farther away from
the answer than when I began.
RC: One thing I love about your work is
the sense of deferral. We’re pulled
into the play and then certain
surprises come to us and we’ve
discovered the play isn’t what we
thought it was. How much of that
do you discover as you’re writing
the play—and how much of the
ending have you prepared?
NL: Well, hopefully there’s a place where
[the ending] reveals itself to me.
Sometimes I’m clear in knowing
where I want to go, but I still don’t
know how the journey’s going to
happen. Like I knew where I was
heading with Wrecks because of
the kind of story that it was—I had
the Greek model so the process
was different—but exactly when
that moment was going to drop,
and where he’s going to allow us to
go, and how that reversal will work
I didn’t know until I’d written it. To
answer the question: sometimes
an ending is present as I begin
writing, sometimes not. It’s always
an adventure.
You know, I’m not always
working toward clarity. Sometimes
I’m working toward the grayest
area possible, because that’s what
I find attractive. Why do we always
have to know everything? That’s
what is fascinating to me about
people, and art. I love that a play
could be shit to one person and art
to somebody else and that they can
both be right. It’s when somebody
tries to tell me their opinion is
more valid than mine is when I get
upset. I like to believe that just
about everything can be more than
one thing; I’m a big believer in
“subjectivity.”
RC: Like you said earlier, the flexibility
of truth.
NL: Mm-hmm.
RC: Last question: Any thoughts to say
to an emerging, young playwright,
somebody who wants to try to write
a play?
NL: There was a great quote and I
often, as a teacher, would give it to
students. It was [Russian dramatist
Anton] Chekhov writing to [Maksim]
Gorky around the turn of the
[twentieth] century and all he said
was, “Write, write, write.” There’s
just no way around it, other than
sitting down and writing. I know
a lot of people talk about being
writers, but I know far fewer who
actually give me a manuscript to
read. And to me, that’s the only
mark of being a writer. Not that they
worked at the Geffen [Theatre] or
the Public [Theatre] or in London or
if they’ve been published—it’s just
that they have written something,
you know? That’s the springboard
for everything else, that you
actually have something on paper.
So, don’t fear it, but wrestle your
thoughts to the ground, do your
best. That’s the only thing that I’ve
ever really done, is to sit down
and write.