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Chapter 3: The Playwright. The nature of playwriting, the qualities that make a fine play, and the process and career of playwriting.

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What does a playwright do? The playwright provides the point of origin for nearly every play production...the script. More and more today, the role of the playwright is to write the play and then to disappear Todays playwright is considered an independent artist whose work is executed primarily in isolation.

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Some notable playwrights Sophocles 497-406 BCEWilliam Shakespeare 1564-1616

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Notable American playwrights

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Eugene ONeill b. Oct. 16, 1888, New York, N.Y., U.S. d. Nov. 27, 1953, Boston, Mass. in full EUGENE GLADSTONE O'NEILL foremost American dramatist and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1936. His masterpiece, Long Day's Journey into Night (produced posthumously 1956), is at the apex of a long string of great plays, including Beyond the Horizon (1920), Anna Christie (1922), Strange Interlude (1928), Ah! Wilderness (1933), The Iceman Cometh (1946), and A Moon for the Misbegotten (1947).

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Notable European playwrights

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21 st Century Americans Suzi Lori Parks Sarah Ruhl Tony Kushner Neil La Bute

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We are all playwrights As dreamers, we are all beginning playwrights

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WHY a playwright? A playwright makes plays as a wheelwright makes wheels or a cartwright makes carts

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So, although a literary art, playwriting is much more than an arrangement of words, rather it is a blueprint for a play.

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Examples of the playwrights craft Oh! Oh! Oh! (Shakespeares OTHELLO) Howl, howl, howl, howl! (KING LEAR) Howl, howl, howl, howl! (KING LEAR) The above are more than text, they are pretexts for great acting... Playwrights use formal literary values that are fully integrated into the whole of the theatrical event

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Playwriting as event writing The core of the play is action...the ordering of observable events that can be dramatized A series of events forms a PLOT which are expressed using the playwrights tools Fundamentally, the playwright works with two tools 1. Dialogue 2. Physical action

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Events of a play are linked Chronologically (cause and effect) as in realistic theatre. Such plays are CONTINUOUS in structure and LINEAR in chronology Many plays are discontinuous and nonlinear as were many of our classic plays which were character-driven and episodic Shakespeares plays shift, time, place and action Modern and postmodern audiences accept whatever structure the play requires

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Qualities of a fine play

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Credibility and intrigue

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Peter Pan

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CREDIBILITY is the audience imposed demand that the plays actions and characters flow logically and believably INTRIGUE is that quality of a play that makes us curious to know what will happen next

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Speakability A line of dialogue should be written so that it achieve its maximum impact when spoken...as in this example from Shaws MAJOR BARBARA UNDERSHAFT [hugely tickled] You don't say so! What! no capacity for business, no knowledge of law, no sympathy with art, no pretension to philosophy; only a simple knowledge of the secret that has puzzled all the philosophers, baffled all the lawyers, muddled all the men of business, and ruined most of the artists: the secret of right and wrong. Why, man, you're a genius, master of masters, a god! At twenty-four, too!

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National Theatre production of MAJOR BARBARA

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Stageability A STAGEABLE script is one which staging and stage business are not adornments but essentials Peter and the Starcatcher

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Flow. A play that continuously says something to the audience and is not constantly interrupted by changes of scenery, shifts in time, or too many intermissions.

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Richness is not an easy quality to develop in writing It is depth, subtlety, fineness, quality, wholeness and inevitability. Here is an example from Margaret Edsons Pulitzer-Prize winning play WIT VIVIAN. I dont mean to complain, but I am becoming very sick. Very, very sick. Ultimately sick, as it were. In everything I have done, I have been steadfast, resolutesome would say to the extreme. Now, as you can see, I am distinguishing myself in illness....What we have come to think of as me is, in fact, just the specimen jar, just the dust jacket, just the white piece of paper that bears the little black marks.

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A scene from WIT

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Depth of Characterization Phylicia Rashad as Big Mama in Cat on a Hot, Tin Roof Anthony Sher as Richard III Laurence Olivier as Hamlet

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Gravity A plays theme must be important... You just cant look at it like that. You got to look at the whole thing. Now, you take a fellow go out there, grab hold to a woman and think he got something cause she sweet and soft to the touch. Its in the world like everything else. Touchings nice. It feels good. But you can lay your hand upside a horse or a cat, and that feels good tool Whats the difference? When you grab hold to a woman, you got something there.... Roger Robinson as Bynum

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Hamlet (Act 3, Scene 1) HAMLET: To be, or not to be--that is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune Or to take arms against a sea of troubles And by opposing end them. To die, to sleep-- No more--and by a sleep to say we end The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to. 'Tis a consummation Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep-- To sleep-- perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub, For in that sleep of death what dreams may come When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause. There's the respect That makes calamity of so long life....

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Pertinence The play needs to be relevant to its time. Arthur Miller wrote THE CRUCIBLE in the 1950s during the McCarthy hearings to mirror the witch-hunting frenzy in 1692 New England...

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Other qualities COMPRESSION refers to the playwrights skill in condensing a story ECONOMY relates to an authors skill in eliminating or consolidating characters, events, locales and words INTENSITY is the result of the playwrights success in compression and economy AND can take many forms...harsh, abrasive, explosive, calm, physical, etc.

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Celebration Finally, a play celebrates life...relishing the human experience in all its forms

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Playwrights Process DIALOGUE should sound fresh and authentic as if the words spoken really happened CONFLICT is at the core of drama, but if forced can come across as ineffective. Events such as discovery, victory, rejection, revelation, separation, or death are climactic scenes in a play and define structure. STRUCTURE connects the various parts of the play together in a whole...some playwrights work from outlines, others from inspiration, still others from transcripts. But wherever the structure comes from, it needs to work.

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Playwrights rewards Edward Albee with the TONY Award The Pulitzer Prize The rewards are tangible and intangible. At its best, playwriting is more than a profession and more than just a component of theatre. It is a creative political act that enlarges human experience and enriches our lives...

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Current American Playwrights David Mamet (born 1947) Race NYC, 2010

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Tony Kushner Born 1956

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David Henry Hwang Born 1957...was awarded the 1988 Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critics, and John Gassner Awards for his Broadway debut, M. Butterfly, which was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. For his play Golden Child, he received a 1998 Tony nomination and a 1997 OBIE Award. His new book for Rodgers & Hammerstein's Flower Drum Song earned him his third Tony nomination in 2003. He was the book writer of Disney's Tarzan, with score by Phil Collins, and also co-authored the book for Elton John and Tim Rice's Aida, which ran almost five years on Broadway and won four Tony Awards. His most recent work is Chinglish which opens on Broadway this fall.

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M. Butterfly Chinglish

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Joe DiPietro JOE DIPIETRO was most recently represented on Broadway with NICE WORK IF YOU CAN GET IT, a new musical based on the works of George and Ira Gershwin. He won Tony Awards for Best Book and Best Score for MEMPHIS, which was also awarded the 2010 Tony Award, Drama Desk Award and Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Musical. His other shows include ALL SHOOK UP; I LOVE YOU, YOU'RE PERFECT, NOW CHANGE (the longest-running revue in Off-Broadway history: THE TOXIC AVENGER and THE THING ABOUT MEN (both winners of the Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Off-Broadway musical) and FALLING FOR EVE. His plays include the much produced comedy OVER THE RIVER AND THROUGH THE WOODS, THE ART OF MURDER (Edgar Award, Best Mystery Play), CREATING CLAIRE and THE LAST ROMANCE. A New Jersey native, he lives in Manhattan with his pug, Rocco.

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STEPHEN SCHWARTZ Stephen Schwartz was born on March 6, 1948 in New York City, New York, USA. He has been married to Carole Piasecki since July 6, 1969. They have two children. Ironically, being a major Broadway composer, he's lost the Tony award six times, whereas for writing songs for animated movies he's received three Oscars. His six Tony nominations are: in 1973, as Best Score (Musical), both music and lyrics for "Pippin;" in 1977, as Best Score, both music and lyrics, for "Godspell;" in 1978, as Best Book (Musical) and, for both music and lyrics, as one of several people sharing a nomination as Best Score for "Working;" in 1987, his lyrics with the music of Charles Strouse for "Rags;" and in 2004, as Best Score (Music and/or Lyrics) for "Wicked. He was awarded a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for Live Theatre. His new adaptation of the musical, "Working", was nominated for the 2011 Equity Joseph Jefferson Award for New Adaptation.writing songs for animated movies he's received three Oscars

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Neil LaBute Neil LaBute (Born 1963)

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Playwriting credits Filthy Talk For Troubled Times (1989) In the Company of Men (1992) Bash: Latter-Day Plays (1999) The Shape of Things (2001) The Distance From Here (2002) The Mercy Seat (2002) Autobahn (2003) Fat Pig (2004) This Is How It Goes (2005) Some Girl(s) (2005) Wrecks (2005) In A Dark Dark House (2007) reasons to be pretty reasons to be pretty (2008) Helter Skelter & Land of the Dead (2008) The Break of Noon (2010) The New Testament & Helter Skelter (2009) Some White Chick (2009) The Furies (2009) In a Foreset, Dark and Deep (2011) Reasons to be Happy (2013)

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Suzan-Lori Parks Born 1964

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Lynn Nottage Born 1964 Ruined (2009 Pulitzer Prize) Intimate Apparel (2003) Mother Courage (adaptation) (1998) Crumbs from the Table of Joy (1995)

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Up close Arthur Miller Arthur Miller was one of the major dramatists of the twentieth century. In the years before his death he often was called the greatest living American playwright. BORN October 17, 1925 DIED February 10, 2005 SOURCE: Marino, Stephen. "Arthur Miller". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 16 May 2008 [http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=3116, accessed September 2010.]

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He earned this reputation during a career of more than seventy years, from his first plays as an undergraduate at the University of Michigan in the 1930s to his achieved critical success in the 1940s with All My Sons (1947) and Death of a Salesman (1949). In the 1950s he wrote The Crucible (1953) and A View from the Bridge (1955), refused to name names at his appearance before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), and had a celebrated marriage to the film actress Marilyn Monroe.

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He produced a critically acclaimed autobiography, Timebends (1987), and premiered new plays on Broadway and in London in the 1990s. In the new millennium, Miller remained as active as at the beginning of his career, publishing a collection of essays, Echoes Down the Corridor (2000), and completing two new plays, Resurrection Blues (2002) and Finishing the Picture (2004), which premiered a few months before his death.

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Recipient of the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for All My Sons, Death of a Salesman, and A View From the Bridge... ALL MY SONS on Broadway with John Lithgow, Dianne Wiest, Josh Lucas and Katie Holmes (2008).

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Death of a Salesman

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American Actors in the title role of WILLY LOMAN Philip Seymour Hoffman Brian Dennehy

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...the Pulitzer Prize for Death of a Salesman, the Tony Award for All My Sons, Death of a Salesman, The Crucible, and Lifetime Achievement and the Olivier Award for Broken Glass...

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...Miller clearly ranks with the other truly great figures of American drama Eugene ONeill, Tennessee Williams, and Edward Albee and the pantheon of great world dramatists, such as Chekov, Strindberg, Shaw and Beckett.

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Broadway revival of A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE, 2009-10

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Arthur Miller was not only a literary giant, but also one of the more significant political, cultural, and social figures of his time, well-known as a man of conviction, with rock-solid integrity, who frequently took popular and unpopular stands on many issues. At his death, the front page headline of The New York Times called him the moral voice of the American stage. In the great themes of his work guilt and betrayal, family and society, individual and social conscience, private and public responsibility he confronted the ethical issues of his time.

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In his own words...

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Plays by Arthur Miller The Golden Years The Man Who Had All the Luck All My Sons Death of a Salesman An Enemy of the People The Crucible A View from the Bridge After the Fall A Memory of Two Mondays Incident at Vichy The Price The Creation of the World and Other Business The Archbishops Ceiling The American Clock Playing for Time The Ride Down Mt. Morgan Broken Glass Mr. Peters Connections Resurrection Blues Finishing the Picture

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One-Act Plays A View from the Bridge (one-act version) A Memory of Two Mondays Fame / The Reason Why Two Way Mirror: Elegy for a Lady Some Kind of Love Story Danger: Memory! I Cant Remember Anything Clara The Last Yankee Screenplays The Misfits Everybody Wins The Crucible Autobiography Timebends