Some teachers of writing disdain genre writing. I’m not one of them.

I’m not one of them because it would be hypocritical of me as a consumer of comic books, pulp novels, the occasional horror or science fiction or Western novel, to turn up a nose at genre. Samuel Beckett spent his idle hours reading detective novels, so who would I be to judge? Turn up a nose at badly written genre? Sure. But because of what it is? No. In some way, to do so seems close to racism: prejudging books by their packaging.

I’m also not someone who disdains genre because I don’t know where to draw the line. Is “The Road” a horror novel, a science fiction novel, or literature? (All three.) How about some of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short stories? Was Edgar Allan Poe a “genre” writer? And wasn’t “The Turn of the Screw” a gothic horror novella?

Toward the end of his lifetime, Philip K. Dick found the mainstream — i.e., the mainstream of popular readers. He found it because the film version of “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep” (“Blade Runner”) brought attention to his work. What he didn’t find was literary acclamation, and the people who hold the reins on that call it “mainstream.” It isn’t. It is the niche (literary readers) of a niche (book readers). (Proof is the LA Times’ lack of a link to the Book Review section.)

Today’s L.A. Times includes a fine review of Dick’s recently published but 54-year-old novel “Voices From the Street.” (The link may require registration.) Reading between the lines, the book doesn’t sound particularly well-written or well-paced. (Years ago I blithely commented to good friend and mentor Rich Roesberg that “nobody reads Philip K. Dick for the prose.” Rich later told me he didn’t know what I meant until the next time he picked up a Dick novel and saw exactly what I meant.) As a longtime admirer of Dick’s themes and obsessions (if not always the word choices in its execution) I will probably read this book; I doubt it is the masterpiece that I still believe “Confessions of a Crap Artist” to be, but I hope it’s at least as entertaining as the meandering but nonetheless gripping “Mary and the Giant,” long out of print and which I was fortunate to discover in a second-hand book shop in Utah (!) for eight dollars.

The photo in today’s Book Review shows Dick seated cross-legged holding a copy of “Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said,” not one of his best novels. The front of each of his shoes reveals a wide hole along the bottom. I think Dick’s attraction to the literary mainstream was one of class, but also one of cash. (There is an apocryphal story of Dick ordering horsemeat for his dog only to ingest it himself.) We live in an age of wonderful irony, only the latest being this: In 2007, it is overall the genre writers with lucrative writing careers and the literary writers who scrabble to make ends meet. Philip K. Dick, in being ahead of so many in his own time, died too soon to enjoy the benefits of the true mainstream.

Three of these plays I don’t really know, and so can’t talk about.

I don’t know “Girl, 20” by Ellen Fairey, or “Lost Nation” by Tira Palmquist, although I’m planning to attend and learn about them.

I also don’t know this play “Safehouse” by, well, me. I’ve read it — heck, I’ve even written it — but I don’t know it very well. I for sure don’t know it as well as literary pal Trey Nichols who put this series together with the powers that be at Moving Arts and was part of graciously picking the play. Trey called me today and talked about my play in such an energetic smart way that he almost talked me into believing the play was that good; at the very least, it sounded interesting. Given the actors he’s talking about enlisting for the production, I could get very excited about this. In the meantime, I feel more aware of what’s missing from the play than of what’s there.

The play that I do know is “One Damn Thing” by Michael David. It’s a play about Edna St. Vincent Millay, long past her peak, struggling to write one more poem but constantly pulled back into the incandescence of her past when she was indeed able to burn her candle at both ends and still be luminous. I find this play entertaining, inventive in its staging, funny and tragic. Millay has the bad grace to die long after her powers had faded, and I can tell you from previous readings of this play when it was a work in progress that it is deeply moving to see the contrast between her highs and her lows. Please come and be part of the audience and part of launching this play into the wider world.

It’s always fascinating to see how you turn up in someone else’s writing. And by “fascinating,” I mean distressing. As a dramatist, I’m entitled to the truth as I create it, and other people’s views (particularly of stories involving me) just get in the way of that. Here’s a case in point.

Remember my good friend Doug, of “Doug’s Reading List“? Yesterday, a year and a half after the creation of The Reading List, and six weeks after my posting it here, he sent a broadcast email with his version of how the list came to be created:

Back when we were planning to go out via sailboat, I asked a well read friend of ours, Lee Wochner, to give me a list of his “take to the desert island” books. I expected him to spend a few minutes banging out his top-of-the-head top ten list and leave it at that. But to Lee, books are the essential currency of our humanness, the primary record of our civilization and any personal list of favorites to be the ultimate opening of the kimono – the baring of the ultimate soul – the absolute and total revelation of who you are as a person.

Most people today would feel that way about recommending their top 10 rental DVDs or best episodes of Friends or favorite American Idol competitor. Books, and reading, have slid from their place of honor in American culture, as a quick glance at literacy rates and market share & revenue numbers for publishers & newspapers will reveal.

I used to feel just as strongly about books as Lee does. Everywhere I ever lived I dragged every book around I’d ever owned, except for the complete collection of original 1st edition Ian Fleming James Bond paperbacks I’d received from my uncle Doug and loaned to Jay Buckles in 1974 and never got back and my large format anniversary edition Harold Head comic book that disappeared into Dan Norenberg’s Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser station wagon in 1976 and never returned. Not that I’m resentful and have a hard time letting go or anything.

My woodworking project in high school was a bookshelf. I dragged that around too, and showcased prized books in feature locations around my room, and later, houses. Although many things you wore, watched or discussed reflected who you were, I always believed that nothing told your story like your books. Whenever I visited someone who was a reader, who had books around their place, I always took a long, lingering trip to the bathroom and spent as much time as possible scanning their shelves to a) see if I recognized anything I’d read that validated my existence and provided a connection and b) see what I hadn’t read that defined my gaps and the differences between us.

My first big purge of books was when we moved to California. I sold the bottom layers of my library at our garage sale in Hudson, WI. I had them all laid out on our cargo trailer, which they filled mostly two deep, spines up. After the sale I pulled the trailer down to our used book store in town to sell a few of the remainder to the owner, then took the rest to the local retirement home and hospital for their libraries. It was a traumatic experience. I haven’t forgotten that either, and have spent the intervening six and half years fine tuning a long, complex and very tenuous logic chain that makes my wife entirely responsible. Not that I hold on to things like that or anything.

When I told Lee about the garage sale his expression clouded and he looked at me like a traitor to the cause of literacy and higher thought. The sale, the abandonment of books – the very thought of it – visibly turned his stomach. I would have had the same reaction not two weeks before I’d done it.

The next big purge was when we dispersed our worldly possessions in preparation for this upcoming travel. I sold some more at our garage sale, but donated most of them. I gave my dozens of sailing books to Jimmy Sones, a friend who also nurtures a dream of one day sailing over the horizon. The rest that I really treasured I put in a cargo trailer and drove out to my son, Adam, also a reader, in Minnesota. He put them on the bookshelves that I gave him, which were made by his grandfather as his high school woodworking project back in the early 50s. My dad’s shelves were much better made than mine, and of the two (mine went a long, long time ago), I’m glad I kept his around for such a suitable family heirloom moment.

So, at this point, I am essentially bookless. Aside from a few wilderness medicine books, survival manuals and some guidebooks, I have only a handful, most written by friends.

This is a very strange place to be for a kid who read, on average, at least four books a week for most of my childhood.

So, I need your help. I need your “take to the desert island” list of books so I can stock up for these travels.

When I asked Lee for his list he ended up spending over nine hours on it (see it here: Doug’s Book List ), which I guess is about what I would have invested if someone would have asked me this question prior to the Great Book Purge.

You, on the other hand, do not need to invest that much time or energy.

The expedition vehicle we ended up with is not a 53’, 35,000 lb. cruising sailboat. It isn’t all that big and is already at the limit on weight. Consequently, we don’t have a lot of capacity for me to drag along books. So, your list can, and needs to be, short.

If you could only take a backpack full, what books would you take to a desert island?

Be well,
Doug
—————————————-
Douglas Hackney
dhackney@egltd.com
www.hackneys.com/travel

(You’ll note that I have helpfully included Doug’s email address and website should you wish to draft your own Doug’s Reading List and send it. To him.)

As I’ve written here before, I’m glad to call Doug a friend. He’s a smart person who repeatedly puts his energies into helping the world, usually in a direct fashion, one person at a time, whether it’s clearing debris post-Katrina, donating books to a burned-out store in San Diego, or gifting tools to a would-be motorcycle mechanic in India. I admire Doug. Doug is good people. Which is why it saddens me all the more to see how memory loss is afflicting him at such an early age.

In Doug’s version, Doug tells a tear-stained Lee that the imminent sailboat departure of he and his wife affords the retention or acquisition of no more than 10 books. Lee cannot imagine the world reduced to a mere 10 books and with a darkened brow associates Doug with the “Friends” culture. From “Anna Karenina” to “Friends” to… WWF rebroadcasts on a 2″ iPod screen… it’s a downward voyage, led by Doug’s divestiture of his library. Doug isn’t on a heroic quest, but a fool’s odyssey — one Lee succumbs to joining.

Here’s Lee’s version:

Doug bemoans to me his lack of a degree in literature (completely understandable — the bemoaning part) and asks if there might possibly somehow be some way that I could provide him with a primer — a list of bare essentials that will allow him to escape cocktail-party chatter with only minor stabbings from cocktail toothpicks and in the meantime enlighten him in the non-Biblical literary underpinnings of Western civilization. What we’re looking for here is work that is both relevant and popular in such circles, or which will enable Doug to steer the conversation back to safer shores. (Which provided the reasoning behind my “Hold your own at a dinner party” sub-list, “i.e., the 11 most-discussed, most-influential works of modernist literature at this time; impress your friends, astound your enemies. Comprehensive? By no means. Will these 11 provide enough artillery to cover your weaknesses? Absolutely,” and why the list features Kafka, Beckett, Camus, Sylvia Plath, et al.)

These two origin stories differ greatly, as you see.

In the comics, it has always irritated me when origin stories are recooked. Supergirl goes from being Superman’s cousin as well as the only other Kryptonian to escape the planet’s destruction to being either a shapeshifting protoplasm or a human being with the same Earth name as Supergirl but now infected by the protoplasm, back to being Superman’s cousin but from another dimension, and so forth. I can’t follow it and I don’t like it. (I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I read none of these related comic books.) Iconic characters and iconic stories are iconic for good reason: The original version carries a deeper truth, one that tells us something about ourselves. Who was the alien Superman, after all, but a Jew, sired by Jews, newly Americanized, someone who had escaped the destruction of his own planet and was now eager to represent his new nation in the battle against Hitler and the forces of genocide and oppression? To suddenly, if briefly, recast him as a cyborg, as DC Comics did in the 1990’s, is lunacy. Forces of reasonable goodness still merit representation; cyborgs deserve nothing.

I feel similarly about the two origin stories now competing for primacy with regard to “Doug’s Reading List.”

In Doug’s version, he can transport only so many books, so he needs a desert-island reading list. We’ve all seen that story. In fact, we’ve heard that story as well, as with radio programs like “Desert Island Discs.” It doesn’t take us very far. It’s about economy of scale, and that is a story lost on a nation of strivers and dreamers.

In my version, Doug is seeking the wisdom of the ages and turns to me for guidance. (This version clarifies why the endeavor is worth nine hours of my time.) Doug is much like the Indian motorcycle repairman who only needs the tools. I draft the list, provide options oriented around Doug’s own goals (“desert island” is there, as well as “succeed at cocktail party,” and further reading choices), as well as a point-by-point explanation of why some titles were chosen while others left off. Ideally, Doug adopts the list and, armed with newfound insights gleaned from this reading, transcends the material to lend new perspectives on what he’s read and on what surrounds him in our world.

To me, that is an American story, and in the six years I’ve known Doug I’ve come to associate him with what we think of as American ideals: mid-Western, commonsensical, hardworking, successful, generous, populist, honest. He may believe that his story of the list is correct — it may even be correct — but it’s not right. It’s not right for Doug, and it’s not right for America.

The narration in “Little Children,” which I finally saw on Thursday after months of strong coercion from friends with respectable opinions, was immediate and jarring. We don’t get narrators in dramas much any more — and certainly not third-person narrators. Whereas in 1944’s “Double Indemnity” it was a fine device for Walter Neff to narrate his own downfall, now he’d have to shut up and leave us to our own judgments. So why this switch? Moreover, why was the narration voiced by Will Lyman, probably best known as the firm ironic voice behind the PBS documentary series “Frontline”?

During the first few scenes I couldn’t help rewriting the film — sans narration. The narrator tells us that Sarah Pierce marks time every day until she’s relieved of child care; why do I need the narrator to tell me that when I can see it? In another scene, Sarah shakes hands with the new friend she wishes she could touch — and the narrator tells us she wishes she could touch him. Imagine listening to someone read you a story and while you’re listening to the story you’re crossing out whole paragraphs at a time. That was the impact my hyperactive editorial mind was making on this moviegoing experience.

Until suddenly I understood: This is a documentary we’re watching. It’s a fake documentary (not a mockumentary, which parodies for comedy), but a documentary nonetheless, of the stunted lives of a certain subclass of suburbanites, as depicted here by this representative (fictional) sample. The “little children” are the childlike adults who act heedlessly and (almost) suffer consequences. And in the end, they are transformed into grownups: One stays with his mate, while the other grabs up her child and apologizes.

Except….

It would seem that each remains in what has been presented as an unbearable situation. Sarah is seen back at home clutching the child she hadn’t loved, in the home of the husband she disdains; her lover is being tended by the wife who insists upon a future in the legal profession that doesn’t interest him. So our choice would seem to be: act like children and be happy but careless and irresponsible; or sacrifice happiness and live as an indentured servant to adulthood. This is a barren decision tree.

It’s odd to sit through two-and-a-half hours of a film, love every moment of it, marvel at its wit and grace, and come away having really no idea what sort of statement it is trying to make. “Little Children” is a literary film, finally inferior to the director’s previous film, “In the Bedroom” (which also investigated moral ambiguities with regard to parental response), and as such is a treat in a calendar generally full of explosions and Tom Cruise. Literature as practiced in the past 100 years asks more questions than it answers, and this film is of a piece with that new tradition. But in a way it cheats: By offering only one (bad) answer, it refutes the breadth of experience the rest of the film endorses.

Here’s the email I sent to 10 playwrights the other night seeking input on the new syllabus I’m writing for a class:

I’m taking a quick unscientific poll of playwrights I know whose work I respect to see what they would say in response to this question:

“What are the six contemporary American plays you could learn something about writing plays from?”

If you have just a few minutes to ponder this and reply, I’d appreciate it.

I already know what I think — obviously — but I’d like to know what YOU think.

“Contemporary” in this context means post-1950.

I don’t mean the BEST plays necessarily — I mean the plays that truly demonstrate how to do at least one particular thing well. “True West,” for example, demonstrates how to convey a lot of information organically (as in the opening line), among other things. I think “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” does a great job of foreshadowing. On the other hand, I love “Waiting for Godot” and am a huge fan of Ionesco, but I don’t know that there are any (positive) lessons in playwriting to be gleaned there.

This is an opportunity to send up a signal flare for plays you admire and to let others slip off into the annals of history.

If you have those few minutes and can respond, I’ll be grateful.

Thank you.

Seven of them responded, and while there are a couple of selections I anticipated, and there is some overlap, I still find the list filled with surprises. To wit:

From Respondent #1:

Making it American and post-1950 takes away my favorite learning plays — Chekhov’s rewrite of The Wood Demon into Uncle Vanya, but here goes (off the top of my head):

HOW I LEARNED TO DRIVE, by Paula Vogel. Shows how you can use disjointed time and scene sequence to trick an audience out of its prejudices and allow it to view provocative subject matter (child molestation in this case) from a completely fresh angle.

THE FEVER, by Wallace Shawn. Demonstrates how to effect traditional structure — inciting incident, rising action, crisis, climax, denoument — in a one-person play. Also how to handle and present dense, intellectual matter in a theatrically compelling way. A one-person play called MY ITALY STORY by Jospeph Gallo does the structure thing, too.

ANGELS IN AMERICA by Tony Kushner. How to create an alternate universe on stage that really works on its own terms and yet resonates with the audience’s experience of our “real” world. Also, how to inflate domestic drama to the level of grand opera, without music.

DOUBT, PILLOWMAN and PROOF, by John Patrick Shanley, Martin McDonough and David Auburn, respectively, all as one entry, because they demonstrate the same thing: how to structure a modern mystery play — a “whodunnit” — and keep the audience in their seats guessing about what’s really what until the final curtain.

DEATH OF A SALESMAN, by Arthur Miller. How to write an interior play, i.e., a play that’s really going on inside the protagonist’s head, while still keeping events external and dramatic enough to carry the audience along.

LOVE, VALOR, COMPASSION, by Terrence McNally. Demonstartes how to effectively and seamlessly shift point of view. The book for the musical JERSEY BOYS, by Marshal Brickman and Rick Elise, pulls that off, too.

After I replied favorably to seeing HOW I LEARNED TO DRIVE on the list, and wondering about Pinter’s absence, he reminded me that I had stipulated “American” and then he added this:

I followed your request pretty carefully. Although HOW I LEARNED TO DRIVE and THE FEVER are among my favorite plays, the others on the list are not. For the most part they’re plays I like, but also plays that I think you can learn something about playwriting from.

I really like ARCADIA and just about all of Tom Stoppard’s work, but I can’t think what I’d learn from them. You said American plays, so I didn’t consider him or Pinter for this excercise. If Brit playwrights had been allowed, I would have included Marie Jones’ STONES IN HIS POCKETS as a good teaching play. It shows how to paint a big canvas with just two actors. Maybe something by Caryl Churchill, too.

I realize now that I slipped an Irishman in there with McDonough.

If I were going to suggest a Pinter it would be THE HOMECOMING or A KIND OF ALASKA. But again, I don’t think we can learn how to write like Pinter or Stoppard by reading or seeing their plays, anymore than we can learn how to fly by watching birds and flapping our arms.

Respondent #2’s list:

Proof, how to hide the major dramatic question (will she survive her emotional problems?) behind a McGuffin (did she write the proof)
Cloud Nine, how to play with time and space and effectively make a statement
Angels in America (Part One only), how to use epic structure in post-modern times
The History Boys, how to use of a naturalistic process (preparing for a test) as an umbrella and overriding metaphor for a community (England’s educational transition in the time of Thatcher)
Pillowman, how to mix myth and realism
Rabbit Hole, how to use the 7-page/week workshop format to structural advantage with emphasis on the audience preception shift.

From Respondent #3:

Narrowing it down to six is tough. Even tougher is not including any plays written before 1950 … “Long Day’s Journey,” “Our Town,” “Glass Menagerie” …

But here they are, in no particular order …

“Buried Child” – Sam Shepard
A Greek tragedy set on an Illinois farm. I can’t think of another play that operates on so many levels. It’s comedy and horror perfectly blended, and is a terrific example of giving an audience a play that is as deep as they are willing to dig … and there is always another layer waiting to be explored.

“Kimberly Akimbo” – David Lindsay-Abaire
This would probably be the most controversial play on this list as to whether or not it deserves inclusion. The play has its flaws, but his writing is so seemingly effortless (proven again in “Rabbit Hole”), that it catches you by surprise at how impactful the characters are the ending is. And it does all that without breaking a sweat. To me, that’s playwriting on the highest level.

“Angels in America, Part One: Millennium Approaches” – Tony Kushner
Mixes magic realism with great comedy with awful tragedy, and does it all with beautiful language. This is the play Aristotle had in mind when he wrote The Poetics.

“1776” (libretto) – Peter Stone
This is the very best example of how to write 27 roles, each sharply drawn. And, in addition to the remarkable historical accuracy, Stone manages to make these previously cardboard figures jump off the page. And in what other musical comedy do you find such finely etched political and philosophical arguments?

“Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” – Edward Albee
If you want to break new ground and create a visceral awfulness onstage that will be the model for many future plays and playwrights, I can’t think of a better example. The key to making this type of play work is to make it as compelling as a fatal traffic accident so that the audience simply cannot turn away. At three plus hours, Albee somehow managed to do this. It’s unrelenting and exhausting. Which makes it perfect.

“The Odd Couple” – Neil Simon
Not a single joke in the entire play. Instead, this is laugh-out-loud humor grounded in character. There are no lines you can take from one character and give to another (aside from the interchangeable Pigeon sisters) without the line falling flat. This is the best well-made comedy ever written. And, I believe (though it’s just a guess), the most difficult play on this list to write.

You could call this list The American Dream and not be far off the mark. I would really like to have included a woman here. Or a minority. (Well, Kushner and Albee are “friends of Dorothy,” though they’re hardly a minority in the theatre.) But you wanted the top six and these are they. In my opinion.

What I like about that list is the range: Here’s a playwright unafraid to equally admire the very disparate “1776,” “Buried Child,” and “The Odd Couple,” all of them excellent plays.

Respondent #4’s list from a contrarian playwright friend of a dozen years features some negative choices:

1. God’s Man in Texas by David Rambo for a demonstration on how you need to have something at stake (in this case, the pulpit of one of the biggest and most influencial church’s in America) that the audience cares about. This is an excellent play to study for theme, as it deals with father-sons in the spiritual and physical world.

2. All My Sons by Arthur Miller (and this might be pre-1950, I’m not really sure) about how to begin a play. The way the information is revealed in the first 20 minutes is especially deft. He doesn’t reveal everything all at once.

3. Mac Wellman’s entire output. How to write utter nonsense and be seen by the misguided as some kind of newfangled genius.

4. Angels in America by Tony Kushner. There isn’t a scene in both plays (but especially the first) that don’t offer lessons on how to write characters that leap off the page. (Also, he is very clear here about what the characters want, which is why they are so alive in the first place)

5. Nothing by David Mamet. Great playwright at times who can ruin playwrights who lapse immediately into his speech patterns, which seem so easy to copy but aren’t.

From Respondent #5:

‘Night Mother, by Marsha Norman. I think it’s a perfect text to teach with, because it is so simple and specific and wonderfully written. It is about one thing that the main character wants and how she goes about achieving it, and has such marvelous complexity of character over the top of its simplicity of action and plot.

“Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf,” by Edward Albee. Because it turned me on, on, on to playwriting and has kept me there like no other play, and that kind of energy is important if you’re going to do this.

Talley’s Folly, by Lanford Wilson. I actually like Fifth of July better — but Talley’s Folly is direct, specific, two characters (so often new playwrights bite off more than they can chew with their first plays — casts of thousands, fifty different sets — this is an example of one set, two actors, and (again) a very direct action line.

Maybe something that has some good theatricality to it, too: Angels in America, or M. Butterfly. I adore Sam Shepard. Mamet’s Glengarry Glenn Ross. Take Me Out by Richard Greenberg really impressed me. The Pillowman is a terrific read, too, and very intense.

Anyway. There’s a few, off the top of my head. I could talk about this topic over gin martinis for hours. Good luck with the project!

I was surprised that this was the first mention of “‘Night Mother,” a play I have grown to admire more and more over the years, and one which I will certainly be teaching this spring.

From Respondent #6:

“Proof” – it’s the best contemporary example of the well-made play in my mind. I’m speaking particuarly of structure, plot, payoffs, etc. Done extremely economically with good character development.

“Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolff” – If there’s better depth of character or superior, crackling dialogue, I don’t know where it exists.

“Streetcar Named Desire” (this might be pre 1950) – Language as poetry. Amazing.

“How I Learned How To Drive” – Breaking structure; themes that carry through the play. It was used at one of the sessions I took at the Kennedy Center and I was more impressed when I read it than with the production I saw here (with Molly Ringwald and Brian Kerwin).

“Angels In America” – It’s brilliant in everything I mentioned above. Really brilliant. And he doesn’t get caught up in the transitions between scenes. He just does them.

“Our Town” – that’s pre 1950, isn’t it? I think it was the forties. But I love the way it travels through time so easily and how it’s narration isn’t jarring and is woven into the fabric of the structure. And its universal theme is what makes it such a great teaching tool. Everyone can relate to it, even if the few cynics who condemn it for being corny.

Finally, I received this reply from Respondent #7. While I don’t know the last play she suggests, I so admire her rationale for its inclusion that now I’m going to seek it out. Here goes:

Doubt by JPS– because I think this is a play where the DNA of the story is really upheld in every scene, monologue, and line of the play (almost every line is an expression of some sort of doubt- and certainly every scene is).

Fences by August Wilson – Most structuralists maintain that Cory (the son) is the real protagonist of this play, even though it is 99% Troy’s story. I find that interesting and love this play for being complexly structured and have two or three utterly, searingly beautiful moments that lift it into the catagory of a classic.

Long Day’s Journey into Night by Eugene O’Neil– for the way he shifts your perception of the characters with almost every line, with stage directions, and with silences.

Red Light Winter by Adam Rapp– from last year’s Pulitzer shortlist. I would teach this as an almost masterpiece by a young contemporary writer. There are some significant Act Two and character problems — but it is brilliant at character development with the two male characters (female character lags a bit). Almost unsurpassed at dialogue riffs that seem gratuitous but are actually very specific and purposeful, and lyrically beutiful while still entirely conversational.

History Boys by Alan Bennet — this is a fascinating play that refuses to tie anything up with a bow for you. Everything seems random, the hand of the maker is not at all in evidence, there is no melodrama or manipulation on the part of the writer, it is made to be performed and not read, and it still manages a profound impact.

Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom by Suzan Lori Parks. This teaches you that you can do absolutely anything and call it a play. In a good way. The only Parks play I actually like. Utter freedom. Total creativity. Shows that playwriting is not a collection of rules, but a celebration of imagination.

For years, one of the things I’ve made a point of saying to students (as well as writing on the board) is this: “I may be wrong.” Although I have strongly held views about craft — how to accomplish certain things well on stage — when it comes to art opinions should be more freewheeling. Creativity demands freedom, and while good playwriting exists atop a framework of what will work (or play), ultimately rules are secondary. If I have any rule, it’s this one: Don’t bore the audience. But, as a very close playwright friend pointed out to me years ago, definitions of “boring” differ.

One thing the list points out is that while some of us gripe about the bad plays we see, there have been many wonderful plays written in our lifetime. The reason we may be unhappy any given night in the theatre may have more to do with our disappointment that we’re not seeing something as memorable as we’ve already seen and demand to see again.

Another thing it shows is that there is always room for good new plays.

Salon’s Allen Barra reviews Gore Vidal’s latest memoir and finds it as overstuffed as its author.

More than 20 years ago I was a fan of Vidal’s books. Then I grew up. Part of growing up was noting that while I understood and appreciated what Vidal was against, I couldn’t see what he was for. Now I know: nothing. Because it’s harder to be for something.

One thing Vidal is increasingly for is his self-image. Although that’s extremely boring to most of us, I don’t begrudge him the self-indulgence, partially because I’ve seen it in other aging men of letters who met with great success. Jerome Lawrence, for example, was not only the co-author of “Inherit the Wind,” “The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail” and many other famed plays, he was also a wonderful, kind man who put a lot of money and personal energy into helping future generations of playwrights, and who always told the same stories about himself. I felt less forgiving toward Athol Fugard, whom I met in 1990 and who seemed to be taking personal credit for ending apartheid in South Africa thanks to his plays. (My response at the time: “It seems to me that Nelson Mandela played a role in this too.”) More locally, many of us in my playwriting workshop have had personal exposure to a literary figure who for 20 years has perfected the art of turning every topic into a disquisition on his own recent relative success. You wouldn’t think that any — any! — subject could be related to the daily doings of this minor writer, but it can. I’m sure that if you were to win the MacArthur Fellowship it would turn out that he had once actually been MacArthur.

I haven’t noticed Philip Roth falling into this, and his work is as strong (or stronger) than ever. I like to think that his toughness is being rewarded on the page.

While I’m on the subject of the Edwards announcement, I couldn’t help noticing two more things:

1. The campaign put up then took down then put up its site, stepping on its own announcement. If you can’t even announce right, can you really run the country?
2. The story says, “He did yard work at the home of New Orleans resident Orelia Tyler, 54, whose home was completely gutted by Hurricane Katrina and is close to being rebuilt.” What would be the difference between “completely gutted” and just plain old “gutted?” Because the latter means “guts removed,” it’s an inherently complete operation. You can’t incompletely gut something.

I recently saw a terrific one-person show that I almost missed because I’ve grown to hate the form so much.

For writer and performer Debra Ehrhardt it was almost as difficult getting out of Jamaica 25 years ago as it was getting me to see her show, “Jamaica Farewell.” I don’t begrudge anyone their opportunity to spin self-indulgent tales of their comically tortured childhood; I just don’t want to see them anymore. (Even if — especially if — your name is John Leguizamo. Note to John: less mawkishness next time. And please don’t ever again mime a baby suckling at a breast. We get it, even if you don’t — you’re a demanding infant. Jeez. And note to Mr. “Frank Sinatra Fucked Up My Life”: No, that was you.)

So, having been annoyed so many times, my preference to seeing most one-person shows that don’t feature Dame Edna or Elaine Stritch would be to stay home. Or even to shoot heroin into my eyeball. Anything. Ehrhardt, though, was charming and persistent and I decided to accept her invitation to see the show one night in December just before leaving town. I’m glad — no, lucky — that I did.

Every once in a while you see a show that rewards your devotion to the theatre. Some months ago I asked a group of fellow playwrights how often they were glad they’d seen a show. How often had it been worth the effort involved? Responses ranged from 25% (the always upbeat and bright-eyed comedy writer Stephanie) to 10% (me) down to 5% (the would-be curmudgeon in the group who is a closet romantic — and isn’t that what every cynic is: a romantic who got burned?). The theatre is notoriously difficult to pull off. The writing has to be good, as well as the performing, it has to be pulled together and presented well by a director and designers, the theatre had better not be too hot or too cold, the right audience has to have found it because they are very definitely part of the experience, there had better not have been a bad parking or driving or box-office experience, and on and on and on.

So why do so many of us go so often? Just to get angry at ourselves for our blockheaded refusal to give up? No — because when it is superb, nothing surpasses the visceral thrill of performers and material connecting with an audience in a defined space. I love great performers of all stripes and honestly feel blessed to have worked with so many wonderful actors, and I love great provocative writing. Put the two together and you’ve got the theatre — when it works.

I haven’t seen a lot of that in one-person shows, and that’s probably because the form has become confessional, with the goal of arousing our sympathies. Mostly, I have no sympathies. Life is hard, and if you’re doing a one-person show I can unequivocally guarantee you that by comparison your life is not at all hard — in fact, it’s ridiculously easy. How easy? Unlike these people in Lagos, you aren’t grateful for the opportunity to live deep in a pit at the bottom of the world’s largest dump. Despite what you think, juggling your waiting job with acting lessons is not a great tribulation.

Everything about Ehrhardt’s show is in delightful contrast to the new proclivities of the one-person show. In relating her tale of trying desperately as a young woman to get to the U.S. and start a new life, she never asks us to feel sorry for her. Rather than drowning us in bathos, she shows us pluck and determination. Nothing will stand in her way. She’s also generous in her characterizations: Although she stars in her own life’s story, all the peripheral characters are given fair treatment and deft handling. She sketches in her mother, her father, her boss, and sundry townspeople with wit and charm. Her portrayal of her father, a drunk who has squandered every family opportunity, is remarkable in its final kindness. In an age of visualized revenge, we don’t see that sort of kindness and understanding often. (Except at the end of Paula Vogel’s “How I Learned to Drive” — in which our protagonist shows great empathy for her molesting uncle, in a closing that elevates the play into art.)

Somehow or other, she also manages to meld comedy with high-wire tension in this 90-minute show — as when she is threading her way through the strange terrain of darkened backwaters with a million dollars in cash in a briefcase and men with machetes or would-be rapists stalking her. The writing, and her performance of it, is riveting. I promise you that I’ll never forget some of it.

There are two upcoming performances of “Jamaica, Farewell” at the Whitefire Theatre in L.A., on January 7th and February 4th. I strongly, strongly recommend the show. It hasn’t had an extended run yet, but it deserves one, and it deserves to tour.

In recognition of the holiday and as an admirer of Paul Auster’s work, I thought I’d share his modern Christmas fable (filmed as part of the terrific film “Smoke”), Augie Wren’s Christmas Story. And luckily, here’s a site where someone spent the time to type it for you: Augie Wren’s Christmas Story.

In the film, Augie (Harvel Keitel) relates the story to a fictionalized Auster played by William Hurt. The scene plays out much as this short story does, with the added touch that, as Augie tells the story, the camera pulls in closer and closer toward his mouth and finally his slight smile, raising doubt about the story’s veracity. Part of the point: Whether it’s truth or fiction doesn’t matter — in fact, it’s all fiction, and, as usual with Auster, it’s metafiction (fiction about fiction). As a fable, it’s an evocative and unforgettable story about the sometimes incredible generosity of the human spirit. And that’s what every Christmas story should be about.

I’m rewatching Season One of Rome, this time with elder son Lex, to bring him up to date so that we can watch the second season together. We’d both rather still be watching The Wire, but we’ll have to wait another year for new episodes.

The second episode of “Rome” tonight got me thinking about focus — because in one scene I couldn’t help noticing where it wasn’t.

Legionnaire Lucius Vorenus has just returned from eight years of serving Caesar in an endless war in Gaul. He has barely reacquainted himself with his wife, Niobe (pictured above), when he has to sit in adjudication over a young herder petitioning to marry his 13-year-old daughter. Camera shots ricochet between the beleaguered young man and the unhappy father, who isn’t pleased by the notion of his daughter marrying a drover whose family lives in a house formed from cattle dung. Ultimately, though, he agrees.

And then comes what’s missing: A reaction shot from the daughter, who so ardently wants this man. So why don’t we have it? And why, instead, do we have a reaction shot of a clearly thrilled Niobe?

Because, as this storyline develops, the daughter and her intended aren’t that important. This scene is part of a story being developed about Vorenus and Niobe, which ends the season in a tragic twist. We’re in on the secret; Vorenus is not. Judging by the end product, I take it on faith that the editor (as well as, clearly, the writer and director) knows that Niobe is the point and not her daughter, and that’s why Niobe gets the reaction shot.

My chosen medium is the theatre. While we don’t have a camera, the issue of focus is always important. Good stage movement (blocking) does more than just get actors to where they have to be; good stage movement is also motivated by characters’ desires, and doesn’t steal focus from the principle figure in the scene.

It’s the same with writing the scene. If too many characters come in all at once, or too many different topics are raised, or inappropriate stage business pulls the eye, there’s no way to focus the audience’s attention. Chaos erupts. The human brain demands focus so that it can make sense of all the information flooding it. Without that focusing process, the unfiltered data would overwhelm us. That’s called confusion.

If as an audience member you pay attention to what you’re supposed to, you should be able to follow the story. If you stop to think about what you’re not supposed to be focusing on, you can see the man holding the puppet’s strings. Lex wondered how I saw the twist ending of “The Prestige” coming. It’s because I wondered why, when the one magician’s accomplice was a major character, we were never formally introduced to the other magician’s collaborator even though he was shown in many scenes — and once I asked that question, I knew the answer: Because we weren’t supposed to be.

Directors direct the actors. Writers use focus to direct the audience.