A homeless man is reciting a poem on a train in New York. It’s horrible to say what I’m thinking here but there’s no getting around it – this is an awful performance. Clichéd and emotive and far too quiet. I give him a quarter anyway. In the following weeks I come to realise that I gave the money because I am Australian and an Australian has a healthy sense of pity. A New Yorker reacts differently. No matter that the performer is destitute, a bad show is a bad show and he should be judged accordingly. This time the critic was a white guy in a sleeveless sweatshirt.
White Guy – (Interrupting) “Louder is better pal.”
Homeless Man – “Gimme a quarter.”
White Guy – “Give me a second draft!”
No one knows showbiz like New Yorkers, and that was precisely why I was here. I’d been invited to take part in a playwrights conference run by Young Playwrights Inc. (YPI), a group formed by legendary composer Stephen Sondheim to encourage students to write plays. YPI were keen to spread their concept around the world and I would be Australia’s ambassador, later returning with a clear idea of how to write a play the American way.
I found that the city’s 19 million theatre critics created hardened playwrights. They were smart, but more importantly they were survivors. A survivor makes a good teacher – they understand the battles that students wage every day. Which is perhaps why I found the standard of teaching so distinguished at the YPI conference.
Each day a certain practitioner appeared with a unique method of torture that would help us bleed a good play. One made us write four scripts in twenty minutes; “when the mind thinks it’s finished, it’s just getting started!” Another drew on our most painful experiences to create ideas, like that beloved suicidal Sarah Kane once did. Writing is hard enough without having to recall the time our mother first shooed us away from her delicious nipple, but the plays we created in these dark moments were honest and, at times, moving.
Out of all the inspiring teachers, the most disappointing was in fact the most “successful.” About seven playwrights in America make a living from their craft and Alfred Uhry is one of them. In fact Mr Uhry has only ever written two things in his life; Driving Miss Daisy – the play, and Driving Miss Daisy – the film, both stories inspired by the relationship his grandmother had had with her black driver. It won Mr Uhry all the big awards: an Oscar, a Tony and a Pulitzer. Predictably, Mr Uhry’s advice was therefore to “write what you know.” The strugglers, however, said we must write everything we know, and also everything we don’t know, just as long as we’re writing everyday. Again, torturous, but I preferred it.
The YPI course itself was lead by a highly intelligent playwright named Lucas. Like most genii, Lucas was awkward in social situations, but when the topic turned to his art, his shaggy hair would suddenly straighten and all that knowledge would pour out in one infatuated stream. His passion for the craft was endearing and we quickly became good friends.
Lucas was like Socrates in that he constantly rebounded our queries with the answer “what do you think?” He gave us few answers, preferring to glean the knowledge we already had to form our own opinions. Lucas had just three rules for us: the play must have action; the characters must have solid desires; and in all things there should be clarity. Everything else would be open to experiment.
But in the actual NYC theaters, I noticed that the most popular plays actually followed one other strict rule; “magnify.” If there is conflict, magnify it and make it great conflict. When there is comedy, make it bold comedy. Tragedy? Epic. In these theatres the characters were loud, violence was bloody, emotions were deeply felt. This was the ultimate New York cliché, but it drew the crowds in their thousands.
Spring Awakening was the first show our group saw at the Atlantic Theatre that showed New York’s tendency to exaggerate. Based on Franz Wedekind’s play of the same name, Spring Awakening was an alt-rock musical about a dozen youths facing their sexual initiation. The directors had ‘New Yorkified’ this once restrained 19th Century German play with a rock band and a sexy young cast who leapt about in their petticoats. There were sex scenes, beatings, suicide, nudity – everything the audience asked for they got. So New York lapped it up. The show, which had apparently been in development for nine years, has now made it to the Eugene O’Neill Theatre on the Broadway main stage.
Not everything I saw in New York was good though. I noticed a trend among a few playwrights who had aspired to something original, but at the last minute had panicked and picked up a copy of Robert McKee’s Story, turning what could have been an exciting risk taker into an overly structured bore. They had ignored New York’s rules, which I didn’t really understand until one of my last trips on the subway.
Another homeless man was performing for money, banging his drum and bellowing “I on da train / it da poor do-main / I aint got no money / but I still got ma honey”. He then sent out his much prettier girlfriend, ‘honey’, to pick up the winnings. This performance had a more successful run than the shy poet’s had had a week earlier. I’m not convinced it would’ve done so well in Australia; it was too brash. To be honest I gave more to the poet. But this duo were doing well because they understood the New York showbiz law – louder is always better.
Tom’s new play The Bones Love Gringo was developed at the conference. It is slated for a February 18, 2008 opener at fortyfive downstairs in Melbourne, Australia.
