Comments on: Sarah Ruhl: Essays I Don’t Have Time To Write (Part 2)

By: Lindsay Price

Lindsay Price — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 20:32:04 +0000

I laughed out loud over Hamlet’s ‘clear steps.’ Why is it that human beings are so unclear, and yet characters MUST be clear? Why do we act unexpectedly every day, and yet sometimes actors say - ‘my character would never do that.’

By: Ken

Ken — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 16:45:23 +0000

Art is, at its core, a con, a lie, a game. It is a sculpted, refined, considered thing, which must appear to be wild, improvisatory, and thrown together with heedless passion. There is no need to choose between the Apollonian and the Dionysian–the artist contains both. To throw upon the stage something that was truly dashed-off and haphazard would ultimately bore audiences, because they would sense (consciously or not) that there was no guiding authorial hand, no captain steering this vessel. However, to present something that is nothing but schematic plotting, where every ounce of spontaneity has been drained from the piece in the service of some overdetermined result would also leave audiences cold, for there would be no place for them to insert their responses into a hermetically sealed event.

Thus, I can’t help but feel that the idea of writing from a place of reckless wild abandon is just a faux-naive pose. If you are an artist, you are not some holy fool who stumbles into profundity while in the midst of some orgiastic trance; you are a thoughtful, deliberate craftsperson who is in touch with your unconscious but who can also shape what emerges from that dream state into something that can stand the repeated scrutiny of strangers.

By: RLewis

RLewis — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 17:59:55 +0000

Success has a strange way of changing one’s perspective on the state of the arts. Just because one no longer sees what they pine for, doesn’t mean that others aren’t still practicing it. Losing touch with the jugglers doesn’t mean they stopped (nor stage fights - http://www.vampirecowboys.com/past.htm).

By: Lawrence Goodman

Lawrence Goodman — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 14:51:53 +0000

Oh yes, full disclosure: I have an MFA in playwriting.

By: Lawrence Goodman

Lawrence Goodman — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 14:51:02 +0000

I think a strong case can be made, if this is in part what you are arguing, that MFA programs have done considerable harm to theater. Essentially they take talented writers out of the real world and put them in an environment where they have to please a group of professors who tastes run to the abstract and esoteric. The disconnect between what an academic wants from a play and what an audience does is profound. And it becomes a hard habit to shake once you leave the academy, which is why I think we have too many plays today that seem written by playwrights to please other members of the theater community, the audience be damned. Obviously there are exceptions to this–some theater professors want nothing to do with the theoretical approach of their colleagues in other departments–but in the aggregate, I think it’s still true.

I hear you on the need to write from the unconscious or our Dionysian impulses, but for me at least it’s comes down to this–a play has to have an emotional impact. I don’t care if it comes from laughing uproariously because of the jugglers or weeping because of the death of a character, it’s got to be there. This doesn’t have to take the form of catharsis–wonder and awe are also legitimate as far as I’m concerned. I just need to feel something, that’s all.

How did theater become seen as such a cerebral art form? I began writing plays because going to the theater was for me a visceral experience. That’s the huge advantage you get from it being live–you can go for and get to the jugular.