On Playwrights (Part I)

EVERY play begins with a playwright – someone who stays up night after night to put the words on the page, crafting believable characters, stirring up tension and conflict, addressing topical issues, invoking humour, building the action, and then pulling the whole thing together through a variety of techniques, new and old, that seamlessly works what could have been a mass of words into a cohesive unit, a work of art, that becomes something else entirely, a new thing, something alive that transforms into another work of art when placed on the stage. It continues to transform, each time it is performed, so that the playwright not only births art but creates art that gives life to yet other forms of art. The script leads to the production of the play, and each production brings with it some slight change so that each time the work is performed can be considered a moment in time whereby that specific production, that one performance, becomes a fleeting thing of beauty, never to be captured again, never to be seen in exactly the same way.

“William Shakespeare”

Because the playwright is the creator of the play, he/she functions in one of the most powerful roles in the artistic world, because the playwright is the one, through his/her work, who presents the opportunities for many other strands of art to converge and unite in theatre. For example, the playwright creates the characters that are played by actors, the playwright might be the one who specifies what kind of music is to be used, the playwright might have specific instructions for costuming, for staging, for what the background scenery should look like. Therefore, it would be foolish to deny the importance of the playwright in providing opportunities for having some part in giving the chance for expression, for life to dance, fashion, and other fields in the domain of art. Of course, these relationships are definitely mutualistic – in that the playwright benefits too. Perhaps the music gives life to his words, or perhaps the actors do so, or perhaps the painters or the designers and builders. However, it is looked at, it should be clear that the playwright functions as an important wheel in the machinery of theatre, and the functioning of this machine relies on his/her relationships with the various different parts of the machine, and the ways in which the wheel can function with other wheels, cogs, bolts, and nuts.
The question that intrudes upon the established importance of the playwright is the one that states: Well, then, if playwrights are so important, then why do they often rank below both writers of fiction and poets? Of course, there will be those who seek to counter this by suggesting that playwrights occupy important positions in the literary world and that they are held in high esteem and are well-regarded by others. While this is true for some playwrights – such as Nobel Prize for Literature winner, Derek Walcott, Pulitzer Prize winner, Lynn Nottage, or Broadway veteran and Tony, Grammy, and Academy Award winner, Stephen Sondheim, there is no doubt that a great many playwrights no do receive the attention, acclaim, and, most importantly, the respect that they deserve. It is no secret that playwriting almost always emerges as some sort of afterthought to fiction and poetry, regardless of whether we are talking about the presence of plays in best-seller lists, playwrights in highly-regarded literary competitions, or the opportunity for the study and academic interrogation of the plays and/or the subject of playwriting itself, as evidenced through the limited fellowship and study opportunities that are available for playwrights, at least when compared to the other two dominant genres. Even our very own Guyana Prize for Literature did not seem to have awarded a prize for Drama until 1994, about eight years after the Prize came into being.

The reasons for playwrights not being appreciated as much as that of fiction writers and poets are numerous. The first being that while theatre was fashionable for a very long time in the history of the world, it was soon replaced by technological innovations, such as printing (which led to publishing) and television. This shift in interest from theatre to other mediums is ironic, considering that theatre emerged first in human history and it is to theatre that we will return if/when technology fails or shuttles us into a dystopia (whichever comes first). A second reason has to do with the fact that playwrights write for the stage and not necessarily for consumption by reading. Therefore, a playwright’s vision is more costly to produce since it relies on production elements, such as staging, costumes, props, and the payment of actors. Playwrights, therefore, can be regarded as investments that are reliant upon the ever-changing mood of the general public, and this lack of certainty in the playwright’s ability to return everything that has been invested in him/her that renders this particular brand of writer to viewed with poisonous suspicion. Lastly, I believe that the accessibility of theatre – once a strength – has proven to be one of the elements to undo this particular art form. We live in a world where everyone wants to stand out, to be unique, to have access to that which only a limited few can reach, and theatre with its open arms, sharing the gifts of the playwright, does not fall into this category. All of this is unfortunate, of course, considering that there many playwrights who continue to put out work that is on par and sometimes surpasses the work of the trending or popular writers – and then there is the fact that the lavish and spectacle that comes from the theatre, through the playwright, are elements that can never be replicated in any other kind of literature. Nevertheless, playwrights continue to be downtrodden in our society and while there are general examples that the world can know and understand and seek to remedy, there are specific examples that we in Guyana need to confront and challenge as well. The one fact that best interrogates the place of playwrights within our society, the one that I constantly turn to when I need assurance in my work in theatre, is the one that states the truth of the greatest writer to ever have written in the English language, William Shakespeare, was, after all, also a playwright. More on the plight of contemporary playwrights in next week’s article.

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