Play write vs. Playwright
Playwright, or play writer? That is the question.
For most of us who are engaged in this fascinating, collaborative creative exercise, the answer is the latter. Certainly this is true for me. I write plays. I do not wright plays. And there’s a difference.
Play writers write plays. We create characters, plots, scenes, and dialog. We create first drafts, revise them several times, probably get a table read or two, maybe even a staged reading in front of paying patrons. In fact, we probably spend more time revising and editing than writing. (Perhaps we should call ourselves “play editors”?)
That is not necessarily a bad thing, nor something to hold in low esteem. Play writing is hard. Hell, all writing is hard. Writing plays is a particular manifestation of this difficult yet rewarding endeavor.
The problem is with what happens next – or, doesn’t happen. Once we’re “done” writing, we pitch the play to theatre companies, festivals, and competitions in the faint hope that the script will strike someone’s fancy and get a production somewhere. Sometimes, it works. Most of the time, we get rejections – or worse, get ignored – and we turn our attentions to the next project.
In short, we write plays. We tend not to see many plays produced.
On the other hand, playwrights, so I’m beginning to learn, develop their plays – or, as I like to call it, work them. “Wright,” after all, is an old word that basically means “craft worker.” The craft isn’t just about writing. There’s a lot more to it.
After writing, revising, and editing the script – up to a point, but not to where it’s anywhere close to finished – playwrights work the script with actors, directors, and dramaturgs. They analyze its structure, key scenes, and storylines. They break it down into beats, strip away the cleverness so carefully and lovingly and painstakingly instilled in previous drafts, and become critics. Not theatre critics, but story critics. Where does it work? Where does it fall apart? Where in the story does Tab A not fit into Slot B?
Then comes the truly liberating, absolutely frightening, yet perhaps most important leg of this collaborative, creative journey: workshopping. Here we retell the story in different ways, engaging a creative team of actors and a director (and maybe a dramaturg) to brainstorm with the writer entirely new ways of delivering the playwright’s (yes, wright) key story points. Ideas good and bad fly forth. A scene is told, retold, and maybe told backwards, or completely in mime. Nothing is out of bounds; nothing is sacred.
At the end of the process, and all throughout, the playwright revises the script based on what works for the creative team. All contribute, but the playwright is the one who must decides and what goes. After all, when all is said and done, it’s the playwright’s name that goes onto the credit that starts with “written by.”
I’ll be pursuing this workshopping approach with my newest work, “Family Hardware,” with a creative team who has committed to bringing it to life in the 2016 Fertile Ground Festival of New Works. I’ve borrowed heavily from, and have benefited greatly from, the generous advice of Ciji Guerin-Selvoy, co-founder of the Cantilever Project, a group that puts on much more intensive, structured, six-week playwriting workshops that delve even deeper into a play’s strengths and weaknesses, with the goal of developing stage-ready plays from raw script. I hope to be able to take one of those workshops in the near future. For now, baby steps: an intensive workshopping weekend with a highly talented group of people who are, I hope, going to put me through the ringer to make this a better play.
Because I don’t want to be just a play writer. I want to be a playwright.
