DIRECTOR VS PLAYWRIGHT PART 3 - FIRST FRICTION

Previously on SlowLearner...

But getting back to the good reasons for rewrites: what if a director gives you an honest, honorable, and well-thought-out rewrite note, and you still think it’s wrong? That’s next.

There's no getting around this bit. Sometimes you just think you wrote it right - not the whole play, of course, but the particular segment that's up for review, that your director would like you to rewrite. Jordana explains her problem with the moment, but I think either she's wrong about there being a problem or just that what she's identifying isn't actually a problem, but an interesting ambiguity or misdirection. And so we're deadlocked. We're probably sitting in a coffeeshop or a park, pages spread out all over the table, deadlocked, staring grimly at one another.

So here's where my advice gets playwright-centric: stick to your guns. Make a stand. What does making a stand mean? It doesn't mean you act like a dick or get haughty or melodramatic or anything. You just say, "I don't want to rewrite this scene at this time. You haven't convinced me that there's anything wrong with it. I'd like you to take this moment into rehearsal as is, and in the process of staging it I think my intentions will become clearer to you than I am able to explain in words right now. If we find there's a problem with this moment when it's on its feet with actors, we'll talk about it some more at that time."

I think that's a perfectly legitimate request - actually, not a request, a decision, a decision I think you as the playwright should get to make. See, the thing is, at that moment, you and the director are arguing over an imaginary problem. When you imagine the moment, you imagine it working. When the director imagines it, they imagine it not working. The two of you aren't talking about the same image, so how can you possibly come to any accord?

What you need is to have one concrete image in front of both of you - specifically a group of actors attempting the moment in rehearsal. Possibly the director will see that you're right, and leave the text as is. Possibly you will see that the director is right, and make the requested adjustment. Possibly you'll both be wrong, and the moment will be problematic for reasons neither one of you anticipated. The important thing is that you'll both be talking about the same reality rather than two different imaginary ideas.

Now, here's why I call this advice playwright-centric. A director might very well respond, "Well, why couldn't I insist on taking my idea of the scene into rehearsal, so that it was my adjustment we were evaluating with the actors rather than the playwright's original flawed version? Why should the playwright get the benefit of the doubt?"

I would respond on two levels: 1) the playwright does get the benefit of the doubt in this model, but it's also simultaneously the burden of proof, and 2) no matter how deeply the director has thought about that moment in analyzing the script, it's my belief that the playwright has thought even more deeply about it while creating it, and as such should get first crack at selling their vision.

The fact of the matter is, there are going to be one or two deadlocks between playwrights and directors in the pre-rehearsal dramaturgy phase. Somehow those deadlocks have to end. And because directors are usually forceful, seductive, aggressive, charismatic people and playwrights are usually bookish conflict-averse mole-people, the deadlock frequently ends with the playwright buckling under the force of the director's desire. And I'm modestly suggesting that that might not always be the best thing for the play in the end.

So the solution I've suggested amounts to tabling the conflict until rehearsal (but in the playwright's favor). But what is the playwright's role in rehearsal, the director's undisputed domain? That's next.

--SlowLearner

Comments

[philucifer]

Couldn't agree with you more (and that's coming from someone who's most often a director in this scenario.) Your reasoning is sound, and without the necessary experimentation, any new advances in storytelling would die stillborn. The truth is, the director (and by extension, the audience) cannot necessarily recognize truly progressive writing until they meet it, face to face. It's only in rehearsal that it all begins to come clear, and it then becomes the responsibility of the writer/director collaboration to find the clearest and most effective presentation possible.

Bravo!

[James]

This post really interested me. Obviously, for me, I've had a long-standing relationship with one director, so of late, this problem hasn't happened too much recently (after seven plays and four years, we pretty much end up on the same page with productions).

The disagreements/deadlock situations Pete and I have gotten into have usually happened when I write something deliberately strange/jarring/problematic (i.e., a five-page run-on sentence monologue in "Monkeys," an explicitly racist rant from a character in "Allston," a seven-year-old in "Mayonnaise Sandwiches") and Pete is initially thrown on the first reading. When I tell him, "No, baby, it's cool," his reservations usually dissipate, because he's under the impression that I know what I'm doing (the fool!). The times I back down are when I'm less than sure as to where the script is going, and Pete can provide a little more objective insight; when I tell him my intentions with the scene, and he tells me that that's not being conveyed at all in the script to a reader/audience member, that's when I relent.