"I don't get it"

From the mail bag:

I enjoy your blog. I've been following your project of writing "posthumous plays" but I don't understand why you're doing this. The entire point of writing a play is to get it produced, isn't it? I don't get it.

--Beginning playwright

I'm glad you asked.

I didn't say I don't want these plays produced. I said I don't want them produced while I am alive. My reasons come from two sources: personal reasons; and issues surrounding the social politics of art.

First, it's important to remember that I've had over 40 plays produced. I've been the resident playwright of two theaters. I've received grants, awards, good reviews, bad reviews. Even a bit of money. I know about the experience of writing, developing and getting a play produced.

I'm in the last act of my life. From now on, I get to play the game by my own rules. My way or the highway. Looking back at the experience of having those 40 plays produced, I realized that 99% of the enjoyment happened before opening night. Put another way, there's really only one thing I like about being a playwright after opening night: watching the play from the light booth. Why there? So I can watch the audience, and they can't watch me. I can see what works and what doesn't by how they react, and they don't have to be distracted by me if they happen to know who I am.

After a play, the only folks I'm interested in seeing are the actors and the director. I don't like mingling with the audience or hearing from someone how wonderful the play is. Often someone likes it for the wrong reason by my lights anyway. I don't like reading reviews, good or bad, though when I was younger, I loved good reviews. I learned they are a temptation to soften my own critical faculties. You can't believe your press clippings. You have to be your own toughest critic.

The subject matter of these posthumous plays is very personal. In a sense, they might be called dirty laundry plays, ghost plays, demons plays. This complicates matters considerably because now there are folks in the world who may recognize the events and people that inspire these plays. They may disagree with my use of such events and people and want to tell me so (this has happened in the past). I don't need it. I don't need to give them my lecture on the difference between art and life.

The fact is, I work damn hard at making a play right. When I can't get it any better, I stop. As far as I'm concerned, that's the last word on the matter -- until, possibly, I put the script into the hands of actors later and rework some scenes in it. But I completely believe what Norman O. Brown argues in Love's Body: "The proper response to poetry is not criticism but poetry." You like my play? Great. Dislike it? Fine. Don't analyze it. Be inspired to go write your own.

The best "criticism" of my work I ever encountered was from an audience member who after a play of mine, in the darkness before curtain call, yelled, "This play has balls!" Right on, brother. I can't do better than that.

The posthumous plays are personal enough that each potentially could push me into a nervous breakdown. That's stress enough. I don't need to deal with the stress inevitably caused by the social politics of art. I'm too old to jump through all the hoops I jumped through when I was younger -- which, in fact, you'll have to jump through to establish a playwriting career.

This is why these are posthumous plays. They are not invisible but they can't be done while I am alive. I hope this clarifies the matter.