Actors, Directors and Writers. Oh My.

Photo by Paolo Chiabrando on Unsplash

A local theater recently staged my three scene, one act play for an eight night run. 

This play previously had a staged reading of the first scene, a performance of the first scene, been a selected project at two playwright conferences and won 2nd place in the Writer’s Digest Writing Competition, Play Division. This full production was its first full bore go.

Over a year ago, we were cast and in first rehearsal when everything closed down because of the pandemic. For a while, we thought, we’d be back on in a month, or by summer or … whenever.

Then came relief. Businesses reopened. We unmasked (for a bit anyway.) Recast and were in rehearsal.

And here’s where it gets weird.

I’ve watched staged readings of this play and a couple of my screenplays. I’ve won prizes and awards. Been published in newspapers and the Congressional Record. But one afternoon I had the strangest reaction as I watched the actors run lines. They repeated words I wrote, words that lived in my brain for years, words that evolved on paper.

My secret, silent writer’s heart yelled, “Mine!” 

I actually caught myself reaching one hand toward the closest actor as if to bring my words back home.

Luckily, I sat back and listened. Watched. Saw that these words meant something else to those people.

Then there were lessons the theater had to teach me.

Some might say, once feet hit the stage, the playwright's job is over. 

Some directors and actors would like no less than to see the back of writer if they must see her at all. Not considering that their first impression of the work, no matter how talented they are, will not be as rich as that of the person who created the work and lived with it for however long it took to bring it to the stage. 

We’re told to respect the director’s vision and the actor’s choices, but how about some respect for the text. Not using the playwright as a resource is a mistake. A short-sighted, egocentric mistake.

Now I know there are writers who do not know how to behave. Who disavow the fact that the characters they created now belong to the creative person who will walk them into real life. Those writers disrupt and make everyone’s job more difficult. They should be stowed in the broom closet or out on the street. Not every writer is like that.

I knew if my work moved an actor to create, that made the work richer. I was okay with that which is how I kept my secret, silent writer’s heart quiet while she yelled, “Mine mine mine.”

So, I gave one note to the director out of sight and hearing of the actors, as requested. When she told the actors, “We usually cross out all the stage directions,” and my brain exploded like a mushroom cloud over Nevada and my secret, silent writer’s heart yelled, “It ain’t radio, bitch,” I just sat there.

Oh my.

What did we do before Google?

I looked up playwright/director relationships and found out, it wasn’t just me. HALLELUJAH. But gee. Not everybody, but enough that Google had no trouble spewing multiple hits.

I’ll say this about that.

It is a misguided, mediocre director who advises actors to ignore the playwright’s stage directions. Here are three reasons.

1. It ain’t radio.

2. Stage directions are where the subtext hides.

3. If we’re speaking of playwrights like Tennessee Williams or Arthur Miller, stage directions are where the literature lives. They are how we know Stanley is going to rape Blanche and Willy Loman’s a dick. That literature is the art that inspires the art the actor creates. Why go without it?

So, I skipped the rest of the rehearsals and concentrated on my premiere night outfit aiming for writer cool not old lady-going-to-town.

I remember how nervous I was waiting out the first night of the first time Driver’s Ed was performed in the old home town. I wrote about it here.

This time was different. There were contracts. Everybody got paid. People had to buy tickets and commit to a night at the theater. Ads and posters appeared around town.

Would they laugh? Would they walk out? Would we be a Covid super spreader event?

They laughed. They enthusiastically applauded between each scene. It was cool. It was weird. It was not what I’m used to. The script that played a million times in my mind was out in the world.

During the second night’s performance I sat in a hallway, out of sight of the stage in the dark and listened to where the laughs were. 

Listened to the audience. 

First line gets the biggest laugh. Midway through the play a line gets a sustained laugh that bubbled on past the next three lines. Listened to when the language quieted the audience. Heard when they came back. It was one of my best writer experiences.

That night sitting on the floor in the dark, hearing an audience brim with laughter and applause, my secret, silent writer’s heart whispered, “Mine.”