Several weeks ago in the 2amt Twitter stream, Bries Vannon of The Nine asked the following question of playwrights:
“Would you be content if each of your plays had a worldwide lifespan of two to four productions?”
My immediate and enthusiastic answer was yes. I’m of the considered opinion that America would be better off if we produced and watched more new plays, and if plays were made for more specific and local audiences. The only way this could happen would be if plays were written to be performed no more than a small handful of times.
Actually, what I said exactly what this: “I feel Buddhist about it. Plays should be flowers: they should bloom, beautify the world, and die.”
Two retorts to my perhaps overly clever metaphor caught my eye. First, Monica Reida suggested that if I was really Buddhist about it, I’d expect plays to be reincarnated, wouldn’t I? Smart question, but no, I don’t think so. What I expect is for memes—the genetic stuff of which plays are made—to be reincarnated, in the same way that genetic information isn’t lost when a person who has children dies.
Next, Travis Bedard suggested that no matter what, we’d still end up with perennials. He might be right at that, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it, or that I think such an inevitability is desirable. Plays that get programmed over and over again are sometimes speaking to universally-important questions across the country, questions we’re all considering in the zeitgeist; chestnuts, however, get programmed and re-programmed for what largely seem to me to be nostalgic and sentimental reasons, and we’d be better off without most of them.
My concern is the urge to very quickly deify a particular story; that sort of thinking has gotten us into great trouble throughout history, time and time again. A culture of new stories appearing all the time would prevent that from happening, or at least make it very, very difficult.
Some objected that setting out to write plays that will be produced a mere handful of times is a very different thing than writing for posterity. Frankly, I think writing for posterity is a rather shallow ambition, and I would be embarrassed to claim it for myself. Superficiality aside, it’s also probably a fruitless endeavor: in time, the grave of obscurity will even close over Shakespeare himself, I am sure.
Since that’s the case, let’s write for the here and now, for the short-but-bright lifespan of a few years, and not worry about the future. Yes?
I was actually thinking about this in a slightly different context. I just finished Virginia Woolf’s THE WAVES and was thinking, as I always do when finishing her work, about my very small portion of the tragedy of her suicide: all the stories she might’ve written if she’d let the stones out of her pockets and walked away. She had no way of knowing how much it would matter to someone she’d never meet; anymore than Shakespeare did when he broke his staff in THE TEMPEST that hundreds of festivals would surely love one more play from him to program instead of another COMEDY OF ERRORS.
Woolf and Shakespeare are my favorite authors; I can’t imagine my life without them. I understand everyone’s distress about the over-programming of Shakespeare, but if I could get what I find in Shakespeare from a living playwright, I certainly would. I say this as someone who every single week hosts a workshop of new plays, and believes in new work and living playwrights passionately.
And this thought gives me heart, and keeps me returning to my desk, because I simply don’t know what the world will make of my work. JACOB’S HOUSE may be the last production of my work ever; or my work may become essential to someone 500 years from now. So I let the stones out of my pockets and turn back to write another play.
Gus, you continue to contribute the most eloquent and thoughtful writing to the conversation here… and to the general conversation about things theatrical. I cannot thank you enough for enriching my mind.
I hear what you are saying vis a vis Shakespeare and Woolf. I myself am far more partial to the former, though I’ve had my moments with the latter as well, but I wonder: do you suppose either of them were writing for posterity? I doubt it. I think they told the stories they wanted to tell and posterity just… happened.
Although you might be inspired by the notion that, at some time in the future, your work might mean something to someone, I also assume you aren’t writing plays FOR that person. Surely you’re writing plays that are of the moment, for the moment… or am I mistaken?
I’m not even sure what it might look like to write FOR posterity. The more I think about it, the more absurd it seems to me.