By company member Augie Praley.
Perhaps this came from my work on a new play, my constant barrage of self-hatred in rewrites, or just the thought of writing plays, but I find myself returning to shows long-since produced and dead and wondering if they are “COMPLETE”.
One of my favorite anecdotes about writing came from a professor of mine in college. She said that when she completed her first screenplay that was met with quite a bit of success, people would approach her often to tell her what to do next.
“Oh, my grandmother’s life story would make an excellent movie,” they’d say. “You should write a movie about bank robbers who are also holocaust survivors!”
She would smile and nod politely, remarking that “Yes, that is an interesting idea,” or “Oh, how imaginative.” But beneath that forced smile and polite conversation, she was thinking “If you think it’s such a great idea for a movie, then you fucking write it.”
She would go on to explain that her thoughts were not of a malicious intent, but instead a reflection on the process of writing: Writing is Hard.
I am not a fan of many memes (frankly, if another person tweets or facebooks or gchat statuses another link to a “Stuff People from New York Say” kind of video, I might commit Hari Kari right then and there), but there is something to this particular “What I Think I Do, What My Friends Think I Do”: http://weknowmemes.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/what-i-really-do-writer.jpg
Clever as it may seem, the concept of a “writer” in this day and age is a convoluted idea of what we once were, what we will be, and what we (sort of) are. To sit down and tap some words together on a lonely keyboard surrounded by glasses of warming scotch and ashtrays overflowing with cigarettes is not how a play is born. For most, it takes months of careful thought. For some it is an agonizingly slow process. I have been blessed with the gift of writing quickly and stubbornly without much thought or care. It leads to a quick completion of a “play” but leaves me rewriting each play for months upon months.
And even then a play is not complete. It takes actors coming in, reading your words, screaming over how many ellipses justify a “pained pause” or a “beat” and reworking your language to fit the contours of their own mouths. Then the playwright will change the text, rework the wording so it sounds more natural coming out of THAT actor’s vocal chords.
EVEN THEN a play is not complete. It requires those actors to read the words out loud, preferably memorized so they can do some other kind of action like peeling a potato or washing a dish or dismantling a Colt AR-15 Semi-Automatic Rifle, cleaning it, and putting it back together, all this in front of an audience. That audience will then watch those actions, and listen to those words, and walk away thinking things like “Huh” or “Wow” or “That was not a good play.”
THEN a play is either lauded or ripped apart. Wreathes or rotten tomatoes are thrown at those involved. There is a veritable frenzy of online commentary on the websites of poor theatre companies in the sleepy american hamlets brave enough to produce such new and avant-garde work. There are Grandmothers and Step-Uncles to love it, or hate it, or wonder why there was so much violence in the eponymous thirteenth act.
To those of you who know me as a writer, when showtime comes and I’m not on stage, I am frequently pacing in the back (should there be room to pace), or sitting in the back of the house, usually on the left, with a small notebook, scribbling notes, or, most often, across the street, drinking a beer, waiting to be stoned to death or thrown into the Anacostia.
Then, then we can call it “done”, allow it to rest for some time, until someone else picks it up and says, “I can do this better.” So that the entire process can start a new.
But “Complete”? I’m not sure that ever comes to be. And I think that’s why I write plays.
I’ve been known to write short stories, episodes of television and a movie or two when the idea comes my way, but even still, when people ask me what I do, I tell them the truth:
“I walk dogs, occasionally. I am also a future waiter. And I’m studying magic tricks that a thirteen-year-old performs on youtube, in hopes that one day I can have a show on a street corner in TriBeCa.”
When those crafty people press further, I look at them and I say “I’m a playwright.”
For all their bells and whistles, the words “Screenwriter”, “Poet”, “Novelist”, “TV Writer”, they all sound finished to me. A movie is done when it’s screened in a rich man’s house, a poem is finished when it’s read out loud to a lover under a shady tree, a TV show is complete when Ryan Seacrest says it is and a novel ends when our hands are papercutted and tired from holding such a thick manuscript.
A play is never complete. That’s the magic of the theatre. So many artists work at every play, developing an amorphous blob of creativity that eventually envelops an audience whether they like it or not. Every show is slightly different. Every production slightly moreso. New people beget new insight and new insight begets new creativity and new creativity begets new plays.
What a marvelous thing it is to have an incomplete play. What a marvelous thing it is to be an incomplete playwright.
