Not for nothing, but...

...You will fail. You will fail a thousand times. Some of these failures will be astonishingly acute. You'll watch your colleagues achieve great successes and you'll feel inadequate, out of the loop. Not one of the cool kids.

But your few successes will be worth both the thousands of dedicated hours spent bringing your visions into tangibility and the disappointments of those awaited emails that say nothing but, Sorry kid, we had this many submissions taken in and we thought a bunch were more worthy than yours. And when these e-notices come from friends, they sting a bit more.

Fact is you will, in all likelihood, not win nearly as many times as you think you should. Your belief in your own work is your greatest strength and your Achilles' Heel; it will keep you afloat during the Dark Ages and serve to highpoint the bee stings that plague your inbox. Your work will take hundreds of hours and miles of internal digging to bring to the surface—if it's to be any good at all. This comes with a mighty cost. But no matter how good it is—intrinsically--someone will not feel it appropriate for their own purposes. This is not you; this is simply bad chemistry.

(And here's the rub: even if your work does“suck”--whatever that means—somebody, somewhere will take a shine to it. Seriously: how much self-indulgent twaddle have you seen sponsors' dollars invested in that the rest of the audience simply adores?)

The hard part is that you have two choices: persist or change your road. Changing one's road means deciding that you're best served in another medium where the possibility of success has lower odds. That's a very hard decision, especially with the time and heart already invested. 

But maybe you do have that other ability within you that needs to be explored. We are annoyingly (and maybe overly-) complex creatures, and many times, like in our writing, we need to head west-by-southwest to crank out those six pages that lead us to that One Glorious True North Beat.

Only fellow artists will truly understand your existential pit of despair. In that, at least, you are not alone.

My own plan is simple: have my somewhat voluble yet momentary pity party, then take up my shovel and continue scraping away at the stony Earth, and to completely mix up metaphors, gallop full speed with head down, ears back, heading straight for Masterpiece Barn.

Asking for 10-page samples

Having had to negotiate reading 50+ submissions at a time (on more than a few occasions), I favor asking for 10-page samples. This is not a wholly favorable practice; it frequently provokes pointed questions about the legitimacy of vetting scripts.

And of course I have had ethical issues with this. Does my asking for an abbreviated version of your play cheat us both by not having the full product at hand to judge in its entirety?

Maybe.

But, as one who has 50+ full-length plays to wade through, and as someone with little to no assistance in reading the aforementioned 50+ plays, does it make my jobs as literary manager and producer easier?

Definitely.

I've weighed the pros and cons of abbreviated samples, with fairness as the primary criterion:

By asking for the first 10 pages, I get the beginning of your play, and thus I should know two things:

• The specific importance of your inciting moment, what I call the Passover Factor: What is making this day/moment in time special? Why does this play need to exist? And;

• Is what is happening indeed interesting enough to get me through 10 pages of dramatic action?

Play readers need to judge as best we can what our audiences might think were this text inflicted upon them. It's not enough for me, the initial arbiter, to like it, although that's a definite plus because I will favor its further consideration for production. And to assume that my judgment is of a critical and professional proficiency to instantly and infallibly detect all Scripts of Unusual Caliber is self-righteous poppycock. But if I have the first 10 pages I can make a fair assumption about (again) two things:

• The efficacy of the opening of the play, and;

• The remainder of the work, which I can reasonably expect to be equally compelling. If your first 10 pages kick my ass, I'll gladly ask you for and read through the rest, waiting for the grand payoff. If your first 10 pages don't grab me, then I can safely deduce that the rest will similarly glaze my eyes over.

Remember, I have 50+ plays to read and judge to the best of my ability. And “to the best of my ability” means just that. Few folks admit to play-reading fatigue. One person can read only so many plays before they get tired and lose the energy needed to fairly critique each successive play. If I have to read 50+ complete plays, all ranging from 45 to 95 pages, I'm going to lose my shit.

But if I have to read only 10 pages, I can not only process the bulk faster, leaving me more time to coach my actors, design the posters, sell tickets, and clean the theatre's toilets, but convince myself that I am judging fairly every play on my desk. The job is easier, and my time is better spent.

And as I read those ten pages, I have to imagine the audience experiencing those 10 minutes of performed script. That’s a long time to wait before the play shows its power.

Before we go any further, let me state for the record that, as an eternally hopeful scribbler of dramatic material, I want everyone to read my entire play through. Why? Because they are damn good, and I want literary managers to have the whole things to judge. (Yes, I see the contradiction here.)

Theatres, in order to achieve their noble goals of Producing Killer Art For The Masses, spend an inordinate amount of their time asking for money so they can stay open, have electricity, pay their taxes and rents, maintain heating and cooling systems, pay directors and (we hope) the actors, and keep the artistic director brimmed with skinny double soy lattes and Ramen noodles. All these items are highest on the “Necessities We Absolutely, Positively Need to Pay For” list 

What's far down said list is “People to Read All These Damn Submissions.” That is, people who know how to read plays. People with experience who know how to read plays. We've all seen the opp line: “Give us six months to a year to get back to you.” It could be they have only one or two people to read every play submitted. It could mean they really want to dedicate time to making sure they find the best work. Most of the time, I think, it means both.

And as long as I'm ranting, let me briefly discuss opps that ask for a second option: “Send us your best 10 pages,” or more commonly, “a 10-page representative selection of your play.”

Why is this different from asking for the first 10 pages? Simply because reading the first 10 pages takes us chronologically into your magnum opus, the same as the thousands of future sold-out audiences will experience. That's important. But if the playwright cherry-picks an arbitrary section of the work, the reader cannot reasonably extrapolate the assets and liabilities of the whole work. We're getting what the playwright feels is the best part of the play. I don't want that. If this is the best 10 pages, then I have to think the rest of the play is less compelling.

So why not just ask for the whole play and stop reading after 10 pages? Seems like the perfect answer, no? I remember someone telling me to “just get through the first one hundred pages” of this particular novel, and then “It will all pay off.” Granted, the second hundred pages were thrilling, but if I had not been urged to stick with it, I would have set the book down for lack of interest. Likewise, theatres can't have someone push you back into your seat through the first act waiting for act two to spark joy or other emotion. We all want your work to be fantastic, and sometimes we carry on reading counting on that glimmer of hope you showed in the first 10 pages, waiting for the worthy payoff that many times, sadly, does not come. For us, that's precious time spent. 

In this society which undervalues, or in some cases, negatively values the need for art to flourish and creativity to stir up the coagulated Zeigeist Soup, theatres have one overarching job: survival. The need to do whatever they can to pay the rent and the staff, keep the grid functioning, and find 30-foot hamster wheels for their ex-lover's surrogate father's updated version of Hamlet, now set in a steampunk Habit-Trail. They need plays that are sure winners. And they need to make sure they accrue those sure winners as efficiently and as fairly as they can. It behooves every dramatic writer to make those 10 pages count.

Hamlet’s Hamartia

So--theoretically-- if somebody whacked my beloved old man then proceeded to wed and bed my mom I'd resolutely be set on the path to complete, ultimate, and dare I venture--Biblical--revenge. The revenge story is almost always a gripping read. William Shakespeare, no slaggard at using whatever was lying around, employed this theme in many fashions, as in Romeo’s hot-blooded slaying of Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet and Prospero’s agonizing treatment of his brother Antonio in The Tempest. However, nowhere in his esteemed canon does revenge figure so dramatically as in Hamlet.

But there's a twist: unlike many other revenge procedurals where we watch the protagonist embark on a nonstop program of retribution, our woefully incapable prince dithers and procrastinates, dragging out the patience of both his co-characters and his audience as he struggles with the issue of intellectualism versus politics.

Basically, Hamlet’s problem is his ceaseless attempts to rationalize what he has been taught at a very progressive university against what he has been raised with: the traditionally violent course of action. For many other characters whose near and dear were ruthlessly murdered it might be a simple choice to enact revenge (one need only look at Malcolm and Macduff), but for the troubled Prince of Denmark, it is a tortuous and soul-searching process. Neither Malcolm not Macduff (as far as we know) were the recipients of a newfangled Enlightenment education stressing thought and rationality over knee-jerk lethal retribution. I argue that, Hamlet's moral, ethical, and political confusion, is his scholastic training that renders the prince hamstrung and confused.

Shakespeare could have had Hamlet educated anywhere in western Europe, (for instance, Hamburg) but he deliberately puts him at Wittenberg. George Bernard Shaw wrote that “Hamlet as a prehistoric Dane is morally bound to kill his uncle, politically as rightful heir to the usurped throne, and filially as ‘the son of a dear father murdered’ and a mother seduced by an incestuous adulterer” (Wilson 79). Seems like a pretty sound reason for revenge, I’d say. But the influence of Wittenberg’s neoclassical/Protestant training, Hamlet finds himself totally incapable of reconciling what he feels he must do to retain honor and salvage the future of Denmark—which is kill Claudius and avenge his father’s murder—and the impulse to constrain nature’s basest behavioral level through a rational, modern, progressive mindset, not to mention coupled with the threat of eternal damnation for murder.

To wit: Wittenberg was the home of Martin Luther, whose teachings destroyed the homogenous rule of Roman Catholicism. As Luther reacted so angrily to the excess and corruption that he found in Rome, so also did his adherents attempt to prohibit similar faults in their own religious lives, and instead of bowing to numerous intermediaries between themselves and God, cut out the thousands of earthly middlemen between themselves and their deity.

Shakespeare mirrors this rejection of excess and rejection through Hamlet, who sees his uncle (named a regicide by a spirit in the shape of his deceased father, but we'll get to that in a minute) carrying on late into the night, drinking and carousing: “The King doth wake tonight and takes his rouse/Keeps wassail and the swag’ring upscale reels/And, as he drains his draughts of Rhenish down,/The kettledrum and trumpet thus bray out/The triumph of his pledge” (Shakespeare I.iv.9). Hamlet plainly sees a direct corollary to what Luther railed against: the debauchment and moral diminishment of one who should have been respected and revered.

It is important to note that Hamlet only objects to his uncle’s (and now step-father’s) Bohemian habits and ignores—or is hampered in his ability to denigrate—Claudius’s abilities as king. In fact Claudius does indeed conduct himself quite ably as Denmark’s monarch, especially hammering out solutions to tricky situations such as hamstringing the impending attack of the Norwegian hothead Fortinbras in act II, scene ii, and later on when he handles Laertes deftly, both in act IV, scene v when Laertes comes to Claudius looking for blood to match his father’s spilled blood (and incidentally finds his beloved sister Ophelia gone mad from Hamlet's coarse abandonment), and in act V, scene vii, when he puts the grief-stricken youth in a position to “accidentally” kill Hamlet through a rigged fencing match. Claudius' ability to judge and negotiate a difficult situation and sway others to his point of view makes him a man who should be in power. He's no dummy.

Hamlet's situation would be more than enough for most any other victim to bear, and these others might not think twice about setting the matter straight and immediately and without a second thoght putting the usurper’s head on a stick. But Shakespeare set up his Hobson’s Choice well: Although Claudius is utterly odious to Hamlet, the Prince is held back from killing him by his newfound Protestant religious beliefs which include both a more strict reading of the Bible and the elimination of church intermediaries between the supplicant and God, putting the supplicant face-to-face with the Almighty. Both of these practices effectively serve to keep Hamlet from enacting bloody revenge.

The Bible clearly states that “Thou Shalt Not Kill,” and even though Hamlet ignores this in times of hot blood, causing the death of Polonius, he does, I believe, bear the weight of this commandment in mind throughout the play. It would be illogical for Hamlet, in times of sobering thought, to ignore what is possibly the best-known single line from the Bible, especially when he knows that being in a one-to-one relationship with The Almighty leaves absolutely no wiggle room. Hamlet has mused on the prohibition of wrongful death—in the form of suicide—before, when he bemoans “Or that the Everlasting had not fixed/His canon ‘gainst self-slaughter!” (I.ii.135). This commandment effectively prohibits the one course that Hamlet could pursue to quell his moral outrage. (There's a reason why barbarians don't go to college.)

So it is his intellectuality that ultimately stops him from killing Claudius outright, and here lies another paradox that tortures the prince. Wittenberg, considered a radical university for its time, taught neoclassicism. It is this neoclassicism that fills Hamlet with florid tales of antiquity, many of them overflowing with murder and revenge. If Hamlet was not confused before, he receives no help here. These sanguinely gushing tales seal the fate of the prince, who was (by his tendency to lean away from bloodshed in the first place) obviously of a nonviolent nature to begin with, by allowing him to avoid the realm of physical action and dwell solely in the realm of the intellect.

Neoclassicism, like Lutheranism, lays down strict rules. Accented are structure, reasoning, and a focus on humankind; art should be a mirror to the image of man. Shakespeare clearly illustrates this through Hamlet’s exhortations to the players:

“For anything so o’erdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is to hold, as t’were, the mirror up to nature, to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure” (III.ii.20-26).

In modern terms...don't ham it up.

Hamlet’s classical training would have instilled in him the idea that literature was an art perfected by the Greeks and Romans and could only be achieved by prolonged study—a philosophical indoctrination. Hamlet’s adherence to this mode of thought further crippled his ability to “think on his feet”, or be able to act with relative quickness and surety. His slowness to action exacerbates the already tense situation, driving everyone around him nuts, and when he hamfistedly does break into quick action, people drop like flies, as evidenced by the impassioned slaying of Polonius and the “brilliant idea" of forging the letter that get Rosencrantz and Guildenstern killed.

As mentioned above, the other side of the Classical paradox is the subject material to which Hamlet would have been exposed, one that Shakespeare himself mined throughout his career for all it was worth. Many are the tales of murder and revenge that Hamlet would have encountered, especially those of ancients such as Homer and Seneca. Seneca figures importantly in Hamlet because Shakespeare modeled Hamlet—directly or indirectly—on Senecan tragedy, emphasizing melodrama, bloodshed and revenge. Particularly Senecan is the use of a wronged ghost to introduce the vengeance theme. It is obvious that Hamlet has absorbed the writings of the ancients because at nearly every instance he invokes their literature and mythologies. By my count, there are no less than 38 instances of conjuring up the worlds of the Greeks and Romans—most notably in the speech about Pyhrrus and Priam. He also frequently invokes the Christian god, seemingly without any more intent than dramatic effect. This attests to the prince’s confusion between reality and theory; if he cannot separate the two theologies in thought or speech, how much weight does he give to either?

Hamlet’s hamartia is his inability to decide between his duty and his philosophy. C.J. Sisson writes that Hamlet is “a man of urbane intellectuality and immune from...crude passions” (Sisson 53). In the 1948 Laurence Olivier-directed movie of Hamlet, Olivier subtitles the film “The Prince Who Couldn’t Make Up His Mind.” Both are correct. Hamlet is a man of the mind; thus neither kingship nor any other physical, ruthless vocation is for him.

And as if all this weren’t confusing enough for the poor kid, Shakespeare further turns up the paradox theme by introducing the father-ghost. Given the doctrine of Protestantism, which denies Purgatory and effectively closes out any transportation to or from either Heaven or Hell, it is therefore impossible that the ghost should be able to appear at all. Hamlet himself acknowledges this when he admits that death is “The undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns” (Shakespeare III.i.87). So how can the ghost of his father appear to him when liturgical teachings absolutely forswear this phenomenon? The only other possibility is that the apparition is a demon sent by the devil to bring wrack and ruin to Hamlet and Denmark. The ghost is real, remember: Horatio, Bernardo, and Marcellus have also witnessed it.

But this is Shakespeare again messing with not only Hamlet’s, but the audience’s minds as well (which is ultimately the playwright’s job). It is not ultimately important whether the ghost is the real thing because the play deals not with the ghost's legitimacy but Hamlet’s subsequent journey to decision. In any event, the ghost’s accusation is eventually proven correct by Claudius’s own confession in the chapel, thereby validating at least the original impetus for Hamlet’s troubles.

In the end, Hamlet never really does decide what to do. He constantly waffles among laying traps, playing insane, spreading disinformation, and blustering through ragings promising blood. At one point he asks himself, “Am I a coward?”, and at another he claims to be “Heaven’s scourge and minister.” What it takes to make Hamlet act is a series of events that push him along towards an inevitable conclusion. Shaw writes:

“He finds to his bewilderment that he cannot kill his uncle deliberately. In a sudden flash of rage he can and does stab at him through the arras, only to find that he has killed poor old Polonius by mistake. In a later transport, when the unlucky uncle poisons not only Hamlet’s mother, but his own accomplice and Hamlet himself, Hamlet actually does at last kill his enemy on the spur of the moment” (Wilson 80).

Shaw then goes on to add that “This is no solution to the problem: it cuts the Gordian knot instead of untying it” (80). Shakespeare knew his audiences and their taste for action and shed blood, so ending the play this way was most likely more satisfying than just offing Claudius (especially after five whole acts). The Bard's instincts were wholly on target, creating possibly the most famous work for stage until, say, oh...Hamilton?

Works Cited

Shakespeare, William. Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Pocket Books. 1992. New York

Sisson, C.J. Shakespeare’s Tragic Justice. Metheun and Co. Ltd. London, England.

Wilson, Edwin. Shaw on Shakespeare: An Anthology of Bernard Shaw’s Writings on the Plays and Production of Shakespeare. E.P. Dutton and Co. Ed. Edwin Wilson. 1961. New York.

Young, Karl. The Shakespeare Skeptics. The Century Co. 1925. New York

Development, Part XVII

In my endless quest for places to send my scintillating scribblings, I routinely come across opportunities for play development. Most of these places are unfamiliar to me; I don't know who runs them, I don't know what they mean by “development.” I cannot comment on their programs without having experienced what they have to offer and I do not know what they try to achieve without knowing what their programs consist of. I do apply to most, however, because I have work that has been written, rewritten, rewritten a few more times and is now in a state equal to staring at a word on a page until it becomes a collection of meaningless hieroglyphics and ceases to have any meaning whatsoever. When I get to a certain point of revision, I then stare at an entire play and wonder what any of it means.

Okay, maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration. I'm a dramatic writer; hyperbole comes easy to me.

The concept is the same, however, and my history with the practice of developmental workshopping is a largely favorable one. Most of my plays have been through a professional workshopping experience with dramaturgs who understand how plays work--not just on the page, but on the stage as well. Understanding both is critical because having a play that reads grippingly on the page is one thing, but as many of us know, translating that text to a real production brings with it myriad problems, adjustments, and quite possibly, rewrites.

Some development programs are quite famous and many of us are familiar with their names. Others are not so well known, but may very well offer a program that could benefit many of the plays ready for the process. (I say “could” because, like Speedos, not every program fits every play or playwright.)

In my mind, knowing my own writing process pros and cons, and knowing full well that what looks beautiful in my own head may not translate as clearly and dazzlingly to others, I have to approach each development opportunity as a blank slate. I cannot expect every program to fit me or my work like the aforementioned Speedo. I have to be prepared to take from the program that which I believe benefits my work while also being prepared to pass on those things that I think are not appropriate.

Many places offer a developmental process, and each one varies in one or more ways from the others. But let's put that aside; the success or failure of any development process ultimately resides with the playwright. I can recommend several director/dramaturgs that I have worked with right now whose judgment I rely on and who I would work with again in an instant. With each process I have benefitted greatly and yet I have also had instances where I have had to reject some of their ideas and suggestions.

I'm a working playwright. I apply for as many development opps as I can. They are opportunities for dramatic growth and I always seek out an objective alternative to the On-Tuesday-It's Brilliant-On-Wednesday-It's-Shit nightmare I have to go through. It's not easy by any means, but I'm willing to bet that every development experience a playwright goes through makes them a better writer in some way.

Oh, and by the way...I wrote a book on the subject. If you're unfamiliar with development, you might want to give it a read:
Workshopping the New Play: A Guide for Playwrights, Directors, and Dramaturgs.

De-confusing “Cast Appropriately"

Casting Call
BEN: Male, 35-40, large-boned, seems dangerous but really a pussycat. Dark blond hair.
ALVY: cast appropriately.

The above confuses some people. Why does Ben get all this specificity, and Alvy none at all? Doesn't the playwright care about who plays Alvy? Is the playwright too lazy? Is the part so small and unimportant that the playwright couldn't be bothered?

Or is it a typical situation in which the regular actors at a particular theatre get all the juicy roles and there I am again, last to be picked, knowing I'm going to hear the dreadful words: “Oh yeah. Sapio. Right field.”

When as a playwright I instruct directors to “cast appropriately,” I mean the play has, in terms of physical requirements, a non-specific role. Thus I don't care if you cast an actor who male-identifies, female-identifies, is non-binary, tall, thin, blonde, bald, Asian, physically different . . . or not. I use “cast appropriately” because the question is not the visual physical relationship, replete with all of its subliminal cues, but the resulting dynamic between the onstage actors. It has to work onstage, and those prattling about in the gaslight need to appear as if they were truly intended to be there.

My first play, Headstrong, has one of those roles: an agent who shows up mid-play to provide the unexpected twist necessary to hurl the play into its screwball second half. What matters is that actor playing the part must be breathlessly hopeful in anticipation of meeting their literary idol, annoyingly bubbly, and so briskly incessant with their non-stop, true-believer monologue that you wish their character had been the one who’d been murdered (and now being ickily disposed of).

When I first wrote the play I was told that I couldn't, nay shouldn't be vague in defining this character. That in order to be “professional” I needed to be specific with my casting requirements. But when it matters little or none at all what the physical presence is, but matters a lot that the resulting chemistry is correct, then I feel that it would be inappropriate to narrow down the casting choices because of my own biases. I may have imagined and indeed have written the role with a woman in mind who is in her fifties, desperately lonely, who reads two Gothic novels a week and swoons over the Fabio-esque cover art. (A stock character, but one that gives me an initial voice to the entity when I do not have a specific human being to cull from.) But—what if in the audition queue for this role there was a gentleman in his senior years with serious acting chops who could perfectly fit the lead in The Adventures of Mister Magoo? Think of the possibilities then. Or what if the right actor was someone completely different? Plays are living, breathing entities that live uniquely in different situations. It is fitting that flexibility be built in to allow for different dynamics, different experiences. “Cast appropriately” simply means no more that “find someone who makes the proper dynamic happen onstage.”

We can fling words back and forth onstage all night long, and with luck and thoughtful assignment of actors to roles, they will flow mellifluously and with true intent and effect because the people onstage fit each other. They work perfectly together because of some non-quantifiable, ethereal...magic. They're right together, and that's it. I can't describe how it happens, but I know it when I see it.

I have a seriously talented actor friend who measured six-foot-four, and back in the day wore a mane of blazing red dreadlocks and a full bushy beard. Because he fit the dynamic for a particular part and had the right chemistry with the other actors, I had no problem sticking him in a onesie and a crib and told him he thought he was three years old. To say he nailed the role would be a criminal understatement. This actor might not have been the obvious first choice to play someone who sleeps in a crib and thinks he's three, but because of who he was at the time his casting was perfect. His grasp of the part was instinctive and his dynamic with the other cast members was seamless and fluid. In a production of Macbeth that I directed, my Banquo was played by a female because she had the right mix of ballsiness and rough carriage and she was pretty damn comfortable—scarily, in fact--with a sword. Richard III in my play Kynges Games was played completely believably by a woman—because she had what it took to do the part truthfully. I could have specified Richard as “early 30's, dark hair, medium build, slight case of scoliosis, brash, lacks a sense of humor” and so forth, but I wasn't into strict verisimilitude. The part of Richard needed the correct personality to make it real. I wanted my Richard up there, and my friend Holly had that in spades.

On the other hand, when I do take the time to specify actor parameters, I do so because the mechanics of the text demand it. The actor must be of a certain age either because their actions and beliefs are of a certain time period or the number of their years is a critical plot point. Or they may be of a certain financial situation. Or of a particular physical reality. When I say Ben is “Male, 35-40, large-boned, seems dangerous but really a pussycat. Dark blonde hair” I mean that the script needs someone of those exact characteristics to make the dynamics of the play work. Even the seemingly innocuous requirement of blonde hair means something. It's not a trivial whim because in my wildest, most secret dreams I want to see a young Gerard Depardieu play the part. It's me, the playwright, giving the director, actors, and reading audience the clues necessary to make the script work as best it should.