My Two Favorite American Playwrights

I have two favorite American playwrights, for two very different reasons.  The first is, of course, the playwright whose plays I adore most. You don’t have to be a playwright to understand that. The second, however, I adore for peculiarly playwrightish reasons, because for five decades he has stood against the metastasizing mediocrity and mendacity in an art form increasingly led and misled by directors, and worse, artistic directors, and worst of all, artistic administrators.

Imagine my delight when I read today in an article in the Village Voice, my second favorite playwright giving props to my first:

VILLAGE VOICE : … They talk about you as part of a tradition of great American playwriting, as an inheritor to O'Neill, to Williams, to Miller.

ALBEE: Everybody forgets the most important of those: Thornton Wilder. If you're going to have those three others on that list, you have to include Wilder. O'Neill is a very powerful playwright, but he has a tin ear. Wilder had a beautiful ear. Especially with Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth. That talent is extraordinary.

VV: Have you seen the revival of Our Town?

EA: Oh, it's the best production of it I've ever seen. Without question. Because it understands that the play is not a Christmas card. It's a tough, existentialist play. If you're not crying in the first 10 minutes that you're there, you're at the wrong play.

I remember my own mentor, Thomas Babe, saying of Our Town, it should cut through you like a buzz saw.

Some other gems from Albee’s interview:

VV: What makes someone a good director of your work?

EA: To realize that the proper function of a director is to do an accurate translation of the play from the page to the stage. If the play is lousy, I suppose a director could improve it, as can actors. The better the play, the more damage they and the actors can do.

And:

EA: … The people who run the economics of the theater should be shot.

VV: How has Off-Broadway changed in 50 years?

EA: When we did Krapp's Last Tape and The Zoo Story, ticket prices were $2. It cost $1,500 to produce. Now, it would cost $300,000, and tickets are $65 to $70. And it has very little to do with inflation. Everyone's greedier these days.

The old man is right, especially here in Seattle. If I had to run a rough estimate from the top of my head, I would have to say that the number of conversations I have had with actors over the last five years about their struggle for a living wage as artists outnumbers by a factor of five the conversations I have had with them about great plays and how to make them.

The struggle goes on. But you will notice, I hope, that the discussion, so very earnest and loud last March, about how to fix the system, has already, just five months later, run silent.

Long live Edward Albee and his advocacy for greatness.

Comments

[Charles Smith]

Yup, Wilder is my favorite, too.

[Louise Penberthy]

When I was in New York a year ago in May, I saw the Barrow Street Theater production of Our Town. It did, indeed, cut through me like a buzz saw. It wasn't sentimental, it wasn't precious. It was real, vibrant, flesh and blood.