A few weeks ago, I went to see a play. Sitting next to me was a woman who, it turned out, was a senior editor at a publishing company. She had decided to subscribe to a few theaters to learn more about theatre as an art form, something she felt under-versed in. We got to talking. She learned I was a director and a blogger writing about theatre issues, we talking about the publishing industry and the theater we were currently sitting it.
After the show, it turned out she lived three further stops on the F train, so we rode back to Brooklyn together and talked about the show.
It turns out, we both agreed about the show. There were specific moments that showed a lot of promise, and a lot of stuff surrounding those moments that didn't work. We were in agreement about what those moments were as well.
And then she asked me, "So, I don't get it. Who in the theater is responsible for editing the plays? Who tells a playwright, `no, that moment doesn't work, you need to elaborate on this, cut that' etc.?"
And my response was... "Well, on some level no one and on another level lots of people" and then I tried to explain some of how new play development works in theatre, about dramaturgs and literary managers and artistic directors and the writer-director relationship,and workshops and readings and the whole shebang. Or as much of it as I could outline in fifteen minutes.
She was surprised, to say the least. She then talked about her world where before accepting a proposal and giving an advance (roughly their world version of a commission) they would insist on a detailed outline and a sample chapter and then work with the writer to get that outline to the point where it would eventually turn into something they'd agree to publish. Or how with fiction the editing process can end up with the publisher insisting on some fairly large changes to a text.
I think I brought this up in an earlier post, but I just find it interesting how different the attitudes towards development of work are in different disciplines. Very few novelists would say the kind of stuff that Richard Nelson
said at ART/NY where he proclaimed that a theater insisting on multiple drafts in a commission contract was a mark of deep disrespect to a writer. I'm not saying things are better in any one discipline over another, but I find it interesting how the conventions of developing a new work, the normative behaviors, the expectations etc. change depending on what art form we're talking about. And I think these differences may challenge some of the assumptions we all have on how this whole thing is supposed to work.
So I brought this up with a novelist friend of mine who has a book coming out soon. We also talked about the recent Wells Tower interview in the NYTimes where Tower basically credits his editor with vastly improving his writing style:
The book is a lot of things, in other words, but, given the subject matter of the stories, which range from marital infidelity to a boy’s mistreatment at the hands of his stepfather to the dismemberment of a moose to Viking mutilation, you would not expect anybody to call it cute. Yet when Mr. Tower submitted the finished manuscript to Courtney Hodell, his editor at Farrar, Straus & Giroux, the words “too adorable” were among those she wrote most frequently in the margins. And she didn’t mean it as a compliment.
“Initially, there was a lot more corn-pone-ing and self-consciously vernacular language, cute little moments,” Mr. Tower said in an interview the other day, adding that he reined all that in upon revision. “So I actually didn’t sit down to write a bleak collection. When I look back at the early stories, it seemed much more like a ‘Hee Haw’ episode.”
I can't think of an interview with a playwright that contains a similar moment of gratitude vis-a-vis a lit manager or dramaturg. Because the conventions of collaboration are very different.
Anyway, novelist friend and I were talking. He said, "Well, one thing is a play is then further mediated through a production and a novel is not, and so they're going to have different styles of approach. And of course, there are novelists who refuse to be edited, and if they're successful enough they can get away with it."
I then asked him if money had something to do with. Their being more money and more opportunity in the publishing world and whether or not that has somehow created this system.
He said: "I don't know, but I wonder. Of course, when you think about it, when you write a screenplay you don't even own your work but it's where you'll make the most money. So maybe there's some kind of inverse ratio between money and control, because when you make less money your fulfillment and personal investment in it and kind of all you got" And then he paused and with a mischevous grin said... "I mean, no one edits poets".
I'm interested in people's thoughts about this. I know a lot of playwrights read this blog, and writers who have experience in multiple forms (screenplays, plays, books etc.): (And again let me say I'm not sure what I think about all of this, I'm just asking some questions to get conversation going)... What have your experiences been across the forms? Should theaters be more heavy-handed in helping craft the plays they produce and if not why not? What do you think about all of this? One of the issues I brought up with the editor was the issue of developing plays, working on them and then not doing them... if we somehow fixed that issue, would some of the other NPD issues in terms of notes and rewrites and workshopping fall by the wayside?
And not just writers. What about you directors and producers out there? What about you current and former lit managers? Artistic directors? What up, everyone?!
Recent Comments