Playwrights from other disciplines have a greater intuitive grasp on the formal requirements and possibilities of theater as a medium, and thus the translation of their stories into dialogue and movement can be much smoother. “I’ve never come to playwriting as an actor, but I’ve always been jealous of those who have,” Urban says. In his experience, actors’ familiarity with scene pacing and the structure of character interactions helps them to write scenes that flow in real time and maintain dramatic tension. “And if you’re a director, you imagine plays existing in three-dimensional space, so you can imagine one of your own,” Urban says.
This prior knowledge has limited use, however: much of what a playwright gains from collaboration comes simply from the basics of collaboration. Experience in another discipline will not help a playwright detect any gaps between what is on paper and what is in their head. “When you have that dialogue internally, it doesn’t work,” Urban says. Other people can bring out unexplored elements, alternate interpretations, and new ideas entirely.
RITES OF REVISION
While a play benefits massively from the revision process it undergoes from each reading or staging, Urban emphasizes that the process never really ends. He tells the story of Tony Kushner, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1993 for his play “Angels in America”—but then revised the play’s second half for a revival in 2010. “And you know what?” Urban says. “It was better. If Kushner can win every single major award and still revise his play for a revival, then I would say there’s no reason any playwright should stop revising.”
New logistical setups—new stages, new budgets, new actors with different tones of voice—inevitably alter a play every time it is staged. Looking to the reevaluations Urban has in mind, the deeply collaborative nature of theater—and particularly some playwrights’ sense that no one, themselves included, possesses a uniquely “right” interpretation of characters or events—is likely a part of what propels this drive to revise continually.
—Staff writer Austin Siegemund-Broka can be reached at asiegemund-broka@college.harvard.edu.