Chekhov on Ross Street

"Modern playwrights begin their plays with angels, scoundrels, and clowns exclusively.  Well, go seek these elements in all Russia!  Yes, you may find them, but not in such extreme types as the playwrights need.  Unwillingly, you begin forging them out of the mind and the imagination, you perspire, and give the matter up.  I wanted to be original: I did not portray a single villain, not a single angel (though I could not refrain when it came to the clown), did not accuse anyone, or exculpate.  Whether all this is well done, I do not know."

Anton Chekhov 
commenting on his early play Ivanov

In 2012 I wrote about watching Chekhov plays on DVD and video, lamenting that North Coast theatres hadn't done a Chekhov in decades.  This year we came closer with Christopher Durang's delightful comedy Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, done so well at Redwood Curtain.

Recently I've gone back to the DVD collection of Chekhov plays I mentioned.  I watched the 1981 National Theatre version of The Cherry Orchard, the Chekhov play most often produced these days, directed by Richard Eyre, with Judi Dench.  I watched the 1970 BBC production of The Three Sisters. And though I didn't look at The Seagull again, another viewing of the 1991 BBC version of Uncle Vanya confirmed my feeling that this is my favorite Chekhov play.  (I also took the very rare opportunity to see The Wood Demon, Chekhov's earlier play which contains much of Uncle Vanya verbatim, although there are significant differences between the plays.  The 1974 BBC production preserved in this collection is probably one of the few ever attempted.)

The character of the doctor (Astrov in Uncle Vanya) is present in both plays, and in both of these productions, seven years apart, he is played by Ian Holm.  My impression of Ian Holm was formed from the supporting roles he played in various Hollywood films--everything from Greystone: The Legend of Tarzan to Time Bandits to The Day After Tomorrow.  Many know him as Bilbo Baggins in various Tokien films, including the most recent Hobbit movies.  He is competent and sometimes memorable in the movies, producing a sense of confidence and ease when he appears.

 But his ease is deceptive--there are depths to his wonderful tour de force as Astrov. David Warner is an excellent and very relatable Vanya, and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio is fascinating in the very tricky role of the professor's young wife who everybody else is in love with.  But Ian Holm is a revelation, and it makes me want to find his King Lear.

Seeing this production again led to two firm conclusions: First, this 1991 version of Uncle Vanya is the best I've seen, and the best I ever hope to see.  The 1994 American version captured in Louis Malle's last film, Vanya on Forty-Second Street, is almost as good, but it is almost too contemporary and American.

Uncle Vanya is the only major Chekhov play I have never seen on the stage.  My second conclusion is that, with this version on DVD, I don't need to see it on stage.  A corollary of that conclusion is that no North Coast theatre appears capable of doing it well enough.  I suspect not many theatres are.  So I take back my lament that North Coast theatres don't do Chekhov.

Elsewhere:

Suzan-Lori Parks has an ambitious new play opening at New York's Public Theatre to high praise by the New York Times.  Her play Venus was produced at HSU in 2012.

Dan Kois at Slate on the pleasure of reading plays, specifically Annie Baker's The Flick.

Stephen Booth is a Shakespeare scholar I didn't know about until this article.  He's written specifically on Macbeth, the next Shakespeare on North Coast Rep's schedule for January.

Trouble in Chekhovania: A Review

 Once upon a time there was a man whose parents had named Douglas Fir Tree. His sister was Mary Christmas Tree. Carolyn Clay, long-time drama critic for the Boston Phoenix, told me this. Clay and Tree were engaged. If you made this up, would anyone believe you?

 So given what parents in the so-called real world are willing to do to their children, imagine--as playwright Christopher Durang did—that two American parents who are also college professors name their three children after characters in famous plays by Anton Chekhov. The result for Durang eventually was the 2012 comedy Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, now on stage at Redwood Curtain in Eureka.

 Additional inspiration came when Durang noticed that his home in the eastern Pennsylvania countryside resembled the bucolic settings of several Chekhov plays in which aging characters expressed regrets for wasted lives. Durang, whose first stage hit was Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You in 1981, was himself entering his 60s.

 Durang has written parodies and farces (including an unproduced screenplay with my favorite of his titles: The Nun Who Shot Liberty Valance.) This is different. It riffs on Chekhov but also stands alone as a contemporary take on perennial themes of regret and hope, disappointment and new beginnings, in Durang’s unique off-center comic voice.

 Chekhov thought of his plays as comedies, but he usually neglected to include a happy ending. Durang doesn’t make that mistake. In 2013 Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike became Durang’s first Tony Award winner.

 The plays opens with Vanya and his adopted sister Sonia, both in their 50s, watching for the blue heron that visits the pond outside their farm house in a Philadelphia suburb on a late summer morning. They’ve spent 15 years taking care of their dying parents, and fear their own lives are over.

 Their stasis is stirred first by their prophetic housekeeper Cassandra, whose every sentence seems to begin with “Beware!” Their sister Masha arrives—she is a rich and famous Hollywood actress (Sexy Killer, Sexy Killer 2 etc.)-- accompanied by Spike, her much younger boyfriend and aspiring actor (a finalist for a role in the reality series Entourage 2.)

 Masha organizes them all to attend a costume party (she’ll be Snow White, her siblings will be the dwarfs), and incidentally has decided to sell the house. She’s been paying the mortgage (and to support her siblings), but she’s also aging and her career isn’t what it was.

 Meanwhile Spike finds Nina, an even younger aspiring actor visiting nearby relatives. She is thrilled to meet the immediately jealous Masha, and decides to call Vanya uncle. Though several offstage characters are important in causing what ensues, the focus is on these six as they deal with the consequences of the past, the illusions of the present and the possibilities of the future.

 The Redwood Curtain production is superbly cast. Though there are elements of caricature, these characters become individuals with their own minds and emotions, so the actors are required to inhabit and express their individuality.

 Gloria Montgomery confidently navigates Masha’s alternating flashes of ego and affection, anxiety and awareness. She also credibly works towards one of those sudden moments of emotional practicality that women seem to access while men remain swamped in clueless confusion.

 Christina Jioras creates a believable and sympathetic Sonia as she breaks out of her gloom and doubts, yet can’t believe her luck. Nadia Adame brings a sharp comic energy to the household as the psychic Cassandra, who mixes the exotic and the everyday with a feather duster that doubles as a ritual instrument, and a surprisingly effective voodoo doll.

 In their important supporting roles, Geo Alva plays Spike’s casual narcissism with a California flavor while Mira Eagle embodies Nina’s youthful spirit as she innocently discovers wonders of the past.

 Masha drives the action and Sonia makes the most transformative move, but the soul of the story is Vanya. Raymond Waldo (who has played Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya) performs brilliantly as this gentle man who misses the past and worries about the future.  Vanya’s angry, rambling monologue, accompanied by aimless wandering around the stage, seldom rises above cliche but still comically conveys his heartfelt fear of a dangerously thoughtless present.

 Even with such strong characters, some of the best moments are interactions. Jioras and Montgomery perform an amazingly realistic crying scene that is simultaneously heartrending and hilarious. The last scene strains for a feel-good finish but gets there anyway.

There are lots of laughs along the way. Most of the time Durang is so unpredictable that it seems the play is being written before your eyes.

 Director Jyl Hewston ensures her actors play the human nuances as well as the comic set pieces. Scenic and sound design are by Liz Uhazy, lighting by Telfer Reynolds and costumes by Jenneveve Hood. Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike is onstage at Redwood Curtain Thursdays-Saturdays through July 26. 443-7688, www.redwoodcurtain.com.

More Notes From Chekhovania

These are some additional notes on Durang and the Chekhovania play--but unlike the review, there be SPOILERS here arrrgh!

Speaking of which, Durang quotes a number of other works in this play, sometimes as "quotes," sometimes not.  One of the quotes ("fame, thou glittering bauble") someone attributes to Captain Hook in Peter Pan.  It's funny, especially because it's true--this is where the quote is from.  In the play Masha says "such an interesting thing for a pirate to say."  Gloria Montgomery goes a little further and tries it out pirate style: "Fame, thou glittering bauble, arrrgh!" A funny line which is not in my copy of the script.

Why a quote from Peter Pan?  Who knows, though it's likely that someone of playwright Christopher Durang's generation would know of Peter Pan through the Disney animated movie.  The Disney animated movie of Snow White (and what various generations know about it) becomes a droll plot point.

There's another quote that's given as a quote, though the author is never identified:
"True silence is the rest of the mind, and is to the spirit what sleep is to the body, nourishment and refreshment."  Masha thinks maybe she remembers it from some play she's done.  Maybe, but it was originally written by William Penn.  Penn was not only the founder of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, but Bucks County--where this play takes place--is one of the three oldest counties in PA, named by Penn.

There are other quotes and partial quotes, especially within the prophetic rambles of Cassandra, housekeeper and psychic, whose namesake in Greek mythology is talked about.  Some of her lines quote the Greeks, but also "The Owl and the Pussycat" by non-Greek Edward Lear.

Chekhov Echoes

Some are obvious, such as Sonia crying “I am a wild turkey!” instead of “I am a seagull!”  Or the debate on whether 11 or 12 cherry trees constitutes a cherry orchard. Or the famous actress watching an experimental play by her son (in The Seagull) or in this play, her brother.  In this play Vanya at least mentions the repeated theme of Uncle Vanya: we must work!  However this Sonia has a more contemporary and probably practical point of view.

 There are many other echoes, some quite elegant. Durang’s Vanya is concerned about climate change, as is a different character in Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya--Dr. Astrov who says at one point: "We have destroyed the forest, our rivers run dry, our wildlife is all but extinct, our climate ruined...but I pass by the woods I’ve saved from the ax. I hear the forest sighing...I planted that forest. And I think: perhaps things may be in our power. Perhaps the climate itself is in our control.”

Vanya's Tirade

Nina persuades Vanya to present the play he's written to all the others. Most are attentive but Spike doesn't understand it and grows bored, texting and "multi-tasking."  This sets Vanya off on a tirade about what's been lost in a speedier world where experiences aren't shared in the same way.

But his specific examples are oddly off.  He talks of them--mostly from the 1950s--as his own childhood experiences, but the character is supposed to be 57 in 2012, and a lot of what he talks about came earlier.  The Disney version of Davy Crockett, for example, first aired in 1954.  Vanya wasn't even born until 1955.   These are memories of somebody a decade older.  And some sound wrong.  He says he watched Bishop Sheen on Sunday evenings before Ed Sullivan.  Bishop Sheen was certainly a TV phenomenon, but he was broadcast nationally on Tuesday evenings opposite Milton Berle. This show went off the air in 1957.  He came back with a syndicated version in the 60s-- individual stations picked the air time so it's possible that some stations aired it on Sundays then.

In fact, a lot of the culture clash in this play doesn't make specific sense unless the "present" indicated as the play's time is actually about ten years ago.  But maybe it's worth it just for Vanya's observation on "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet": "In retrospect they seemed medicated."

The Tony Award

This play earned Durang the Tony for Best Play on Broadway in 2013, in what I dubbed the "Resurrection Tonys."  Career-wise (not that we care about such things), Durang hadn't been hot since the 80s--say around the time that Cyndi Lauper broke big in the pop charts with "Girls Just Want To Have Fun."  But in 2013 both Durang and Lauper got Tonys--as did the 88 year old Cicely Tyson, whose decade was the 70s.  It's a tribute to hanging in there, doing your work, staying visible, maintaining and expanding your friendly contacts, being open to being asked, and mostly, hanging in there.

Generations

This play profits from Durang's experiences since his early success.  He's been one of the most successful teachers of playwriting anywhere, nurturing new talent at the Julliard School.  So he's been in touch with younger people, particularly in the theatre.  Nina in this play may learn towards a cliched innocence--and at first there's a hint of All About Eve in her heroine-worship of Masha--but she winds up as an appealing and important character, even younger than Spike and also with ambition, but with a very different sensibility that is nourished by the best of the past.

When she talks about sensing a decision point in what kind of actor she will be, Nina also has some very droll lines that are (like a lot of Stoppard's in Shakespeare in Love, for example) inside the profession humor but very funny.

Style of the Play

In my review I assert that this is not one of Durang's parodies, and stands on its own.  Here's a different view on that by a critic who reviewed the pre-Broadway New York production.  He calls it a "vaudeville"--a series of sketches more or less--and suggests it is for "educated" audiences who will grasp all the Chekhov mixes and matches (he describes a bunch of them.)

Judging from original cast photos, I suspect it was in fact played more broadly in New York than it is being played in Eureka. ("If you hate exaggeration," playwright David Hare wrote, "New York is never going to be the city for you.")  I think that's probably true of most New York comedies, especially when the characters represent stereotypes or at least familiar types to New York audiences.  Conversely, North Coast productions quite often find the more universal aspects of these plays.  That's partly because the actors generally can't play (or are uncomfortable playing) stereotypes, including variations on ethnic types.  And audiences here are less familiar with the nuances of such approaches.  For example, a recognizably Jewish character may be very funny to a New York (and Jewish) audience, but here, even if it could be done well, maybe not so much.

(Another factor mandating a more fundamental approach here is the necessarily simpler set, lighting scheme, effects etc.  This is taken to an extreme at Redwood Curtain, at least since NCRT performed Les Miz on pretty much the same set as Oedipus.  The Durang play set is really generic. You'd think they could at least have the wicker chairs called for in the script.)

What's interesting about how the play is performed is what it says about the play itself: is it strong enough to entertain, or simply to hold together, when it isn't done so broadly?  The plays that succeed here are.  The ones that aren't become painfully obvious.

There's also the intimacy of Redwood Curtain, where very broad acting may not work so well--especially by those without the skill levels of the best international actors New York can access.  Still, to make it work as a kind of burlesque may requires another level than we have available here.  Durang wrote Masha for Signourney Weaver, who played the role in New York: an aging movie star who arguably short-circuited a stage career to make a series of blood-drenched movies, played by somebody with pretty much that resume.  The interplay of actress and character had to be part of the experience for the audience.

But here the actors played their parts as people North Coast audiences might well recognize from their lives rather than their media consumption.  Geo Alva's portrayal of Spike was stylized but only slightly.  His Spike might not be part of daily life here, but he probably is in certain parts of southern California.  The other rather sly bit of stylization was Raymond Waldo's portrayal of Vanya, but it was to emphasize the Chekhovian qualities, the Uncle Vanya crossed with Konstantin in The Seagull, whose play within that play he attempts to emulate.  That Vanya in this play is gay becomes a slight part of the plot, but like Durang himself, he doesn't draw attention to it, at least thematically.

Characterizations like this make it a different play perhaps, but the play is up to it.

The Resurrection Tonys

It's hard not to see an extraordinary theme in this year's Tony Awards, and it's one of the favorite themes of show biz bios: after the rise and the fall there's the resurrection.

It's not really that dramatic in these three instances, but there is something interesting in figures whose names were much more prominent decades ago, suddenly reemerging with arguably the highest honors of their careers.

I'm talking about the 1980's pop star Cyndi Lauper, whose legacy was "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" and several other hits, at least one of the iconic videos of MTV's first years, and some less celebrated but pretty solid songs on several LPs, as we called them then.  Then she pretty much disappeared for decades, media-wise.  But somebody didn't forget her, because she got the call to write the lyrics and music for Kinky Boots, the current Broadway hit the NY Times describes as being "about a drag queen who helps save a struggling shoe factory."  Not only did this show win the Best Musical Tony, but Cyndi Lauper won for her songwriting--moreover she's the first woman to win for both music and lyrics who didn't have a male composing partner.

Christopher Durang became about as big a star as a young playwright could be with his Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You in 1979 and 1980.  Other comedies of the 80s, such as Beyond Therapy and The Marriage of Bette and Boo (which was staged a couple of years ago at HSU) entered the contemporary canon and are still produced across the country.  But though he's continued to write plays that got produced at various places (he had a work commissioned in Pittsburgh a few years ago, I seem to recall), his public profile seemed to be more as a teacher and mentor to younger playwrights.

But on Sunday, it was Christopher Durang standing up on the stage accepting the Tony for Best Play for his comedy Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike--his first Tony Award ever.

The most amazing win however belonged to Cicely Tyson, who burst onto the scene with her Academy Award nominated performance in Sounder in 1972, and Emmy Award-winning performance in The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman in 1974.  Her career had actually begun earlier, in the 1950s. She was in Jean Genet's The Blacks in 1961, the longest running non-musical on Broadway in the 60s, with a cast that included James Earl Jones and Maya Angelou.  I used to watch her every week in my favorite (and short-lived) TV series, East Side/West Side, which starred George C. Scott and also featured another now-veteran Broadway actress, Elizabeth Wilson.  That was 1963-64.

Cicely Tyson never entirely disappeared from television, theatre and the movies, but the fact is that she is 88 years old--and at this age, she won the Tony for Best Actress in a play, portraying Lady Bountiful in a revival of  The Trip to Bountiful.  She'd already won the Drama Desk Award and Outer Critics Award for the same role. (And yes, that's her in the photo at the top from last Sunday.)

So what does this all mean?  The 2013 success of  Lauper and Durang aren't unprecedented--Broadway often calls the controversial young artists of a previous generation while ignoring the current controversial young artists. That Cicely Tyson is not even better known, given her long career of notable work, may be partly due to her consistent portrayal of somewhat controversial black characters.

Actually none of them truly "disappeared."  Cyndi Lauper kept making music, won awards, became an LGBT activist, wrote a best-selling book, and bam, she's suddenly "resurrected."  But the return to the biggest stage is fairly rare.

Still, there are stereotypes here to be broken.  These awards also reveal a little to us about the enduring mystery of what happens to people who have been very successful, especially those identified with a particular character or show, and then seem to disappear.  The short answer is that if they are persistent, they simply keep working, wherever and whenever they get good opportunities, and make themselves available.

Actors know (and writers learn) that there are rhythms without rhyme or reason in the level of opportunities available over time.  Actors keep on acting, even if it is playing a role in the reading of a new script in somebody's living room.  Writers do what they must to keep creative, and to get through periods of rest and gestation. And of course they all must make a living, cope with relationships and family responsibilities, etc.  Perhaps the crucial move is to stay in touch with the power centers of Hollywood and New York, while pursuing those other opportunities elsewhere.

Still, there are so many pitfalls along the way, and so much depends on chance and being ready for it, that resurrections such as these three really must be celebrated, even as we view them with awe.

This North Coast Weekend

HSU opens The Marriage of Bette and Boo by Christopher (Sister Mary Ignatius...) Durang, for two weekends beginning Thursday (Dec. 3) in the Gist Hall Theatre. It's directed by Jody Sekas--well-known on the North Coast as scenic designer and consultant for some 80 shows at various local theatres, but this is his first time directing since his student days. There's much more at HSU Stage, but I can't resist quoting once again a little speech that indicates what an antidote this play might be to the usual holiday fare:

Matt, the scholarly son of the unfortunate title couple (and a stand-in for Durang in this obliquely autobiographical play) reads from a mock essay: “Holidays were invented in 1203 by Sir Ethelbert Holiday, a sadistic Englishman. It was Sir Ethelbert’s hope that by setting aside specific days on which to celebrate things...that the population at large would fall into a collective deep depression. Holidays would regulate joy so that anyone who didn’t feel joyful on those days would feel bad. Single people would be sad they were single. Married people would be sad they were married. Everyone would feel disappointment that their lives had fallen so far short of their expectations.”

Beginning Friday (Dec. 4) for two weekends, A Very Playhouse Christmas: A Television Special presents the fabulous Tannenbalm Sisters (Jacqueline Dandeneau, Tinamarie Ivey and Zuzka Sabata) hosting a zany fake Christmas special, with different local guest artists for each performance, including Lynne and Bob Wells, Art Jones, Joan Schirle, Sienna Nelson and the Arcata Interfaith Gospel Choir. It's all at the Arcata Playhouse (see the site.)

Elsewhere in this Dickens of a Christmas on the North Coast, Ferndale Rep continues Oliver!, North Coast Rep continues A Christmas Carol and Dell'Arte takes A Commedia Christmas Carol on the road. I review that one in the Journal this week, and I'm planning to publish the whole novel here.

This North Coast Weekend

The first and second year students of Northcoast Prep present Cervantes’ comic classic, Don Quijote de la Mancha, adapted and directed by Gretha Omey, on Wednesday and Thursday, May 20 and 21, and Saturday and Sunday, May 23 and 24, in the Gist Hall Theatre at HSU at 7:30.

North Coast Repertory Theatre opens Mel Brooks musical comedy, The Producers on Thursday, May 21 at 8.

On Friday and Saturday (May 22-3) the Arcata Playhouse hosts a circus adaptation of Alice in Wonderland by the San Francisco Circus, at the kid-friendly time of 7 pm.

The Arcata Arts Institute will be performing Jean Paul Satre's one act play, No Exit, and monologues from the works of Christopher Durang on Thursday and Friday at 7:30 pm in the Arcata High School Multi-Purpose Room.

The second group of thesis plays by Dell'Arte School students is performed May 21-24, at 8 p.m. in the Carlo. As noted below, the HLO/CR production of the musical Little Women concludes Friday and Saturday at 7:30.

Does This Explain It All?

I'm fascinated with a dialogue in the March/April issue of the Dramatist, in which playwrights Marsha Norman ('Night, Mother, and--among other works, the book and for the musical The Secret Garden, seen recently at Ferndale Rep) and Christopher Durang (Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You, which coincidentally was also on stage at the Rep recently, performed by the teen ensemble.)

They were talking about a playwrighting class they taught together at the Julliard School in New York. The students, described as a year or two out of college (grad students then?), numbered only four in the beginning, though the next year another class of four was added to the four who remained for a second year.

After describing how they came to teach the class together, the playwrights talked about their approach and how things worked out. Early on, Marsha Norman described the effect of the second year students on the first years': "They're also very good about helping the first year writers learn to talk in the Julliard way. We really do speak about plays in a very particular language, to the point that when they leave us they go out and start writers' groups and still kind of travel in this pack. Which is great, because what you need as a writer is to feel that you're in some kind of group that's going to help you. You can't make it if you're out there by yourself."

There is no denying the truth of those words I've put in bold. But the spectre of a pre-elite is pretty stark, as is the danger of groupthink. Going to "the right schools" is pretty much defined by the advantage those schools provide, not just in excellent teaching but in excellent connections. Theatre is susceptible to this, especially since it requires that people work together. Actors need producers need playwrights need directors need each other. Right now the road to success in American theatre (as well as TV and movies) often runs through Julliard, Yale Drama, Carnegie Mellon and no more than a half dozen other programs. (Here on the North Coast, it runs through Dell'Arte, and in design and technical areas, HSU. )

Those eight students are likely to be among the most serious and most talented, but they are also most likely to be from upper middle class big city families. Now they are being formed into packs, which will hurt them a little (if they come up against other gangs) but will help them much, much more.

There are other ways to form and become part of groups that support and advise each other. The young black playwright from HSU, John ADEkoje, is now plugged into a couple of strong support groups: Boston University, which has a production arm in the Boston Playwrights Theatre, and an informal but very involved group of black playwrights on the East Coast.

The summer Playwrights Conference at the O'Neill Center in Connecticut also was an institutional support mechanism, which re-generated and broadened itself every summer with a dozen or so new playwrights from various backgrounds and parts of the country. That's much less the case there now, and it's more of a pre-elite situation. O'Neill participants never forgot each other, or what they learned there: not only how to approach plays, but how to support each other.


This isn't all that interests me in this dialogue. Norman and Durang have interesting things to say about how they approach the class, which also suggest what playwrighting and theatre are like these days. The playwrights are encouraging, positive and supportive, but they try to get the student to focus on some practical matters. Norman suggests that "On page eight you have to tell the audience when they can go home," meaning that early in play, the audience should know what the question is that the play is asking, so when it is answered, the play is over.

"Rules" like this are distillations of experience, and I especially like suggestions that get writers (and others involved) to think about what they're doing from the audience perspective. August Wilson told me that one of the most useful pieces of advice he got at the O'Neill was to make sure that at the beginning of the play, the audience knows where the action is, and when. It's very simple, but it's smart, because if the audience is trying to figure that out, they miss what else is going on. And we all make sense of things based on time and place.

Something else that emerged from this class I learned at the O'Neill and elsewhere: it is very useful for a playwright to see the play read by actors, and to get actor feedback, because it is usually specific to their character, or to how that character might or might not say something. That's another major advantage of a place like Julliard, which attracts excellent acting students.

Another "tool" that Marsha Norman uses also suggests that not everything works for every play. To test the attraction or power of a play idea, she has everyone write five sentences about their play ("This is a play about___. It takes place___. The main character wants___. It begins when___. It ends when___. ) Then after each 5 sentence summary is read, students are asked which ones they remember (other than their own.) Norman says that out of 20, the most that are remembered is usually five. And then she asks, which would you pay to see? The money question, in both senses. Usually it's one, or two.

Two would be about right. It's the ten percent rule which governs the arts, and possibly a lot more. When he was director of the O'Neill, Lloyd Richards told me that it's uncannily consistent: of the plays that come in, 10% are passed on by the first readers. Then 10% of those are considered worthy by the judges. And so on.

But I wonder if this exercise doesn't have some pitfalls. I'd like to see added to the mix those five sentence descriptions of a few other plays, like say Waiting for Godot. It would be interesting to see if it makes the cut. (Maybe it's worth mentioning in this regard that Christopher Durang told me that the reason he stopped sending plays to the O'Neill was that he was afraid the first readers would screen him out and he'd be crushed.)

But this isn't to criticize their teaching techniques. I'm frankly in awe of the whole thing--of the attention and care they give, the discussions they have about every student's work. But I'm also very aware of the many of us who never got and never will get that kind of attention and support.