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A Little Help from Alenier. I was reading your article on Gertrude Stein, and lo!, you made a discovery for me. I've never been able to remember when or where I directed Kupferman's IN A GARDEN. My god: 1949! I was 19 years old!! I didn't touch Stein again until 1961[?] when Carmines & I did WHAT HAPPENED. After that I couldn't stop. We went on and on...in circles... . So again, thanks for solving my history problem.
Larry Kornfeld, New York, NY
On Bettencourt in April. I enjoy your magazine immensely and I follow many of your writers every month, especially Mr. Michael Bettencourt. His article , "Good art slaps us in the face" is another one of his penetrating and very well-written articles. He is as good an article-writer as I see anywhere including here in London. But I must strongly disagree with him, this time, when he admonishes playwrights to forego character descriptions in their plays. A good drama can be a good piece of literature and a good drama can be as good a reading experience as a good book of fiction. I know that William Shakespeare did not include "character descriptions" in his plays but no one knows for sure if he did and, after all, he wrote his plays for his own actors and he managed them. George Bernard Shaw never shied away from detailed character descriptions which is why his plays remain the wonderful reading experience that they are and are of great assistance to actors who take on his plays. I was born in Asia and educated there and in America and in Europe. I am an avid theatre-goer and I even have some experience working in the theatre myself. I think that European playwrights tend to be writers first and "scripters" second and American playwrights tend to be "scripters" first and maybe writers second.
Anee S. Waterson, London, England
Bettencourt Replies: First of all, thank you for your kind comments and your intelligent response. I think you make an important distinction between the script as produced and the script as published/read. For instance, a director may completely ignore Eugene O'Neill's extensive character and stage directions in producing a play, but a reader would certainly benefit by them as an aid to imagining what O'Neill imagined as he wrote the play. In this sense, extensive documentation of the playwright's thought process, whether through character biographies or stage directions, is completely appropriate for the script considered as published literature.
My "beef" is with playwrights who rely upon up-front "biographizing" (if I may coin a word) as a kind of pre-perusal mind massage for the reader -- a prejudicing of sorts. They can certainly have in their heads all the character clues and cues they want as they write -- but those have to be embedded in the writing and extracted by the acting and directing because that is all audience members are ever going to have to rely upon, not being to avail themselves of the pre-perusal-mind-massage benefits of a written script to follow. And, more often than not, I find that the mini-bios promise more than the scripts deliver, so that the character descriptions become something of a Platonic ideal that is only approximately realized in the script's coarser reality.
Ultimately, though, my suggestion about using short character descriptions, if any, is really based on a argument about a freedom to write blindly and without an approved destination in mind. Perhaps it is only with American playwrights (and certainly not all of them), but the focus on character is often a focus on psychology -- that all stage-character behavior must be rooted in something explainable and traceable so that audience members are never confronted with behavior that can't be made transparent -- in other words, human impulses defanged and domesticated.
But characters are not people -- they are stage creations, artifices, inhabiting a space created by four walls, a floor, and a ceiling which is itself stocked with the machinery of artifice. If a playwright, from the start, wants his or her main female character to be in her mid-30s but concerned about her biological clock ticking and works at a job that promises more than it delivers and that because of this frustration is not sure whether to choose career or family -- and says all of this right up front as the complete working premise -- then the playwright has just boxed in his or her writing. The play then has to become something about that, which forecloses possibilities of discovery and even treachery by characters and the story. Instead, audiences get a kind of programmatic unveiling, replete with revelation and reversal and "upping the stakes" and the whole quiver of script-writing tricks that drive the action toward the fore-ordained destination of "resolution."
But if the characters are not treated as "people" but as stage-works, and this is demonstrated by simply a name-tag and a function, then the writer, I think, leaves himself or herself open to authentic discovery, which can only enliven the script and, looking further down the road, the work of the future directors and actors who (God and artistic directors willing) get a chance to bring it to life. (A writer I admire a great deal, the British playwright Howard Barker, always works from this approach -- if you haven't read his work, you may want to check it out.) The drive for psychological transparency and consistency can blandify the writing process and may, in the end, give the audience less a true picture of reality than a minstrel show of the confected realities (otherwise known as stereotypes) that we've imbibed from the media deluge in our culture.
That, anyway, is how I'm thinking about it today. Thank you again for your gently provocative thoughts and for supporting Scene4.
Interview with Julius Krinski. The best humorists here are free spirits and possible challenges to authority. 'I've seen the sunlight in Jomtien.'
Janine Y., Chiang Mai, Thailand
The Bloom of Romance..Scene4 is joy to read. There isn't anything else like it on the Internet. When are you going to publish a print edition? I'd like to hold you closer than a computer monitor.
Sandy McLin, Montreal, Canada
Rave for Renate. Stendhals's articles are always fascinating--alive, literate, full of interesting observation and wide-ranging knowledge. Love to read them
Toby Hiller, Oakland, CA
Elements of One. I really loved this movie and feel that Ms. Honig really knows what she is talking about . She really has a knack for knowing what a movie is about. I would love to see some more of her great and quite sophisticated reveiws of other perhaps more exciting movies.
Ethan Johnson, Portland, OR
Red Rhythms. I want to say how much I enjoyed Daystar's and Ned Bobkoff's report on the Red Rhythms Conference. I am of native heritage, so a report such as their's is particularly appreciated by me.Thank you.
Susan Deer Cloud, Binghamton, NY
The Proverbial Basque. Thanks for the hilarious article on "Basque Proverbs". It was a terrific hoot and at the same time, sad that Steve Esquerrč is no longer with us. He was an original and there's a lot more in his writing than meets the eye.
Jerry Reinstein, Cheyenne, WY
A Soiree Invitation. If Jonathan Hardy is anything, he's a hell of a conversationalist. I'd love to be there when he's "deep in his cup" and totally "gone".
Marty Migdal, Miami, FL
A Wider View. I especially enjoy Andrča Carvalho's articles. Her interviews of Brazilian theatre are very stimulating. I wish those people toured. And I wish you had more writing from other parts of the world.
S. Karis, London, UK
Attention NY Times. Bravo, Scene4, for the insights of Anthony Tomassini. With all of its recent tawdry journalism, the NY Times needs all of the Tomassini it can get. When they are ready to.replace their Executive Editor, he has my vote.
Analee Trent Jacobs, New York, NY
January Kudos. Just this evening I've had a moment to begin the joy of reading the current issue of Scene4. What a delight: the new format is right down my alley, and I loved walking down it with the vibrant, gutsy truth of Ms. Zachai. I suppose I just prefer hearing the personal truth spontaneously expressed without the necessity of the didactic proof of the expert's quotation.
Ed Sorrell, Los Angeles, CA
Bravo, Bobkoff, Banff, Bear Mountain. Thanks so much for Ned Bobkoff's survey of the Summer Arts Festival at Banff Centre. It's one of Canada's proudest events and he captured the thrill and spirit of it all. I only wish he had had the time to explore the rest of its rich program.
Elaine Mortensson, Toronto, CANADA
On The Road
I enjoyed the latest installment #5 of Karren Alenier's "The Steiny Road To Operadom". She keeps it interesting and informative. My special favorite was #4 for the verve and sense of community she brought into the telling. Thanks, and keep it up.
Hilary Tham Goldberg, Arlington, VA
Genet's 'The Blacks'. Back in the sixties I had the opportunity to see the Negro Ensemble Company's ground breaking production of Genet's "The Blacks". The cast was superb: James Earl Jones, Arthur French, and a host of other equally fine performers. Michael Bettencourt's reaction to the Classical Theatre of Harlem's production of "The Blacks" intrigued me. After reading his reaction to an audience member being subjected to embarrassment and manipulation, a white person made to feel that she was part of the establishment perpetuating racism, I hope I would have had the courage to slap the actor taking advantage by improvising off him with wit and endless good will. He would then be in the same place I was. I would be standing up, facing him squarely, and he would be on stage, facing me squarely. In the strange and wonderful environment of the theatre, we would be, finally, after all these years of separation and discrimination between audiences and actors, EQUAL. Wouldn't that be great? He would have to break out of his appointed role as a performer, and I would have to break out of my appointed role as an audience member. We would be both be taking risks together; improvising as one. We would be improvising on equal ground for the job of working on stage and getting paid for it. And if I beat him at it, and if I won, based on the audience's applause, if I did his job better than he did, I might get his role - finally getting the break, I've been looking for all my life. He'd be out of a job, and I'd have the opportunity to step in and replace him. And I wouldn't be ashamed about it either. I'd cover my face with grease paint. I'd do his job in black face. Wouldn't that be a clown show? To paraphrase Kipling: If you can keep your wits when all about you are losing theirs, why not?
Ned Bobkoff, Rochester, NY
Just a small thought from over one ocean. Your Hannah seems to be saying 'If you're not for us, you're against us'. Who rang that bell before? A known fact from the apes: whatever alpha does drips down to the crowd. Now, I'm wondering whether the group stopped its nightly offending (your description) a member of the audience after your published letter - just another small thought. The great ideas of what one should have done when the fatal incident occurred, sadly, come afterwards only, if at all, to most of us. At the time your letter struck me as a bit of an overkill, addressing the agencies and trying to stop the funding, even though you made a clear case. Would Americans, in general, be somewhat more aggressive these days?
Jona Oberski, Amsterdam, NL
Jean Genet is not dead, you know. Like Elvis and Saddam, he is constantly spotted, most recently in Las Vegas swimming in a Soleil fish tank. And to Michael Bettencourt's and Ned Bobkoff's responses, he smiles. Their responses are precisely, exactly what he wanted in "The Blacks" and in most of his work. He was and is a provocateur, and they were provoked. He once said that he hoped to compose a piece that drove the audience out of the theatre and brought each of them back the next night. Now that would be a "clown show"!
Arthur. Meiselman, Baja North
Creatively Speaking, Mr. Challis. Out of a life of divergent careers, the "play" and its art have seduced and captivated me -- I cannot, nor do I wish, to escape. For its here that I have found that one place to be truly me -- and free! In the beginning I thought this was so because I could hide behind the character and could not be judged nor blamed. But what a joy to discover that's an illusion. The very richness of the art is the "informing" of the character with my own history. I hesitate to name or label the almost-infinite incidents of that spiritual psychology --whatever it's appearance -- because, I feel, naming so often "judges". And for me it has always been the judgement that restricted the expression. The truth sets one free and humanizes the characters we play. The applause is a recognition that we, as actors, have shared the truth of some part of our history and it's vibration has touched the soul of the audience. Thanks for your thoughts.
Ed Sorrell, Boston,MA
'Yea' to Nathan Thomas. (You) asked: "If a group of actors truly showed the depths of tragedy, would the audience be receptive?" I'd answer yes. That's why I love the theatre so much. It's all about the truth.
Tara Melinsky, London, UK
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