The community of playwriting
I wrote my first play almost 30 years ago when I was 14. I was attending a high school I strongly disliked that provided early lessons in how to rebel; that’s how the play came to be called “Too Long.” The “teacher” — I use the word loosely; he was assigned to in some way oversee my play production at a student event while I did my best to subvert his authority without losing the production — said that the script was “too long.” So that’s what I named it.
How did I come to write this play? I was asked by some of the other kids if I would appear in their play — a jury-trial play of some sort — and I agreed; I was thrilled to be asked. But then I noticed that most of my close friends — the odd, the inept, the ungainly and ill-kempt, the losers and stragglers, the self-conscious and left-out, in other words, people like me — weren’t invited. I kept making pitches for them to be involved in the jury-trial play, but the kids putting that on just couldn’t find any way for them to be involved, even though, unsurprisingly, there was a role for everyone on the soccer team. I understood. Kids aren’t dumb about societies of people. So I decided I’d write my own play, a comedy, with only one parameter: If you wanted to be in my play, I would write you a role. It was an equal-opportunity production. I had a lot of fun with playing off the perceived notion of my friends’ identities — I made my best friend, a seemingly weak and withdrawn boy with glasses, into a serial killer who had strangled 29 people with one hand; I turned into a femme fatale the odd girl who never turned her head lest her perfectly straight hair wrinkle; I gave great gobs of dialogue to my stammering friend with full confidence that not only could he deliver those lines, he would. And of course, in keeping with the nature of such theatrical origin stories, it all came off as a huge success. The play got big laughs and for one night everyone involved was a star. And without knowing how to do anything, with no formal training except trial and error, I became a playwright and director without realizing it.
Not much has changed. Hundreds of productions and readings and workshops later, I still have no formal training in the theatre. Instead, like an apprentice or a magpie, I’ve just adopted what works for others when I find it also works for me. Moreover, I’m still working within mini societies much like the one in school: the society of actors and directors and playwrights at my theatre company Moving Arts, the extended society of such folk locally and across the nation, the society of students and colleagues at USC. I do have some formal training in playwriting, courtesy of David Scott Milton (who shaped my career and still teaches in the MPW program at USC) and the late and much-missed Jerome Lawrence. Dave and Jerry were part of theatrical communities as well and talked about them at length and did what they could to introduce their students to those societies; that’s an inspiration and an example that I work to pass on.
On Friday night I saw the world premiere of EM Lewis’ “Infinite Black Suitcase.” (Here’s a link to the theatre company, The SpyAnts, who are producing it.) Ellen Lewis was my student at USC, then my assistant director at Moving Arts, and a member of my playwriting workshop, and now she’s out and about and inspiring other people. Ellen is both strong and compassionate, qualities that don’t always intermingle and that one doesn’t always find in writers. On Saturday morning, after her opening night and its ongoing opening-night party and toasts from many well-wishers both blood-related and not, Ellen came to workshop (of course; she’s nothing if not dedicated). In talking about the pages of her new play, “Song of Extinction,” I said that the common thread in Ellen’s plays is “being strong, and going on.” She corrected me: while they may be about being strong and going on, she felt that “going on” is possible because other people help, both in the plays and in her life. And then she turned to the workshop and generously — probably too generously — thanked all of us for what is truly her success.
Every once in a while, I’m reminded of why I’m a playwright and not a novelist. This was another instance. I never wanted to be alone in a room writing for weeks and months at a time. I wanted to be working with a group, and that was one of my earliest writing experiences. No matter how much we might complain about it at times — about the directors who misinterpret the play, the actors who bungle the lines, the producer who didn’t market the play, and on and on — every working playwright I know is here because we need these other people and secretly hope they will be as committed and as talented, as inspirational, as other committed, talented, inspirational theatre people we’ve worked for. We love the actors and the audience members and the directors and producers and everyone else, sometimes in theory, but sometimes in practice.
Almost 10 years ago now I was fortunate to be in the audience one night for one of my comedies when a woman literally fell out of her seat laughing. The moment has passed, but it’s burned into my brain and I still love her wherever she is now. I’m still writing for that woman and other people like her, and still counting on theatre people to help me do it.