a rant to robert cohen

[bedlamsbard]

The author of my theatre book has reached whole new levels of FAIL. Now he's talking about playwrights.

Don't you fucking dare call literature just an "arrangement of words", you bastard. Damn straight writing plays is different from writing novels or poems, but that doesn't make it any better or worse, just different. Don't martyr yourself because you have to write for people. Don't pride yourself on saying that a play is so much more work than a novel, or a short story, or a poem, because it's not complete until all the pieces -- the actors, the setting, the music, the costumes, the director -- are all put together, because the novelist and the poet and the short story writer will all laugh in your face. It all takes different skills, you pretentious bastard. Just fucking stop comparing them, because all you're doing is making yourself look like an idiot. SERIOUSLY NOW.

Comments

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

Damn straight. And I can't not read this through a novelist's eyes, and he is fucking brutal towards anyone else. An arrangement of words. My god. A play is just an arrangement of words on paper too until the actors make it flesh. This guy is such a theatre snob; it's unbelievable. I quote:

Because drama is often though of as a form of literature (and is taught in departments of literature) and because many dramatic authors begin (or double) as poets or novelists, it may seem as if playwriting is primarily a literary activity. IT is not. Etymology helps here: playwright is not playwrite. Writing for the threatre entails considerations not common to other literary forms. Although by coincidence the words write and wright are homonyms, a "playwright" is a person who makes plays, just a wheelwright is a person who makes wheels. This distinction is particularly important, because some plays, or portions of plays, are never written at all. Improvisational plays, certain rituals, whole scenes of comic business, subtextual behaviors, and many documentary dramas are created largely or entirely in performance or are learned simply through oral imporvisation and repetition. Some are created with a tape recorder and the collaboration of multiple imaginations and may or may not be committed to writing after the performance is concluded. And others, though dramatic in structure, are entirely nonverbal -- that is, they include no dialogue, no words, and very little that is written other than an outline of mimetic effects.

This guy has clearly never had a serious conversation with a novelist, short story writer, or poet. Hell, with a musician. He's coming down to fucking etymology. Writers make stories. We might as well be called storywrights; we just happen not to be. I cannot believe the nerve of this bastard.

not everyone has the luxury of editing a work-in-progress

[realpestilence.livejournal.com]

It occurred to me, also, that a play is more likely to be adapted after it's finished, because it *can* be, as each performance shows it's weaknesses and strengths. But novels, poems, songs, etc...they are static once published. A new version can be published, a later edition; but there's always going to be that one, *first* version, that will resonate at the true form for the author (and reader), I'm sure.

Re: not everyone has the luxury of editing a work-in-progress

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

This is true -- this is why a lot of the time with plays you'll see that they also note the original cast, because they'll have affected the play itself. (See, I learn some things in that class.)