I wrote my first play when I was in high school. My drama teacher had encouraged us to read as many plays as possible, and during the summer I read a play a day, all classics. Gradually, I developed a sense of dialogue and stage action, picturing scenes onstage rather than in a cinematic way. I watched people having conversations, and imagined what that conversation would look like on the printed page. I'm not sure how or why I decided to write a play of my own, but like many first-time playwrights, I wrote a play about the theater. Sort of an inward looking focus. So the play took place on a stage, in some kind of post-apocalyptic future. An old dottering actor clung to the ancient texts, and a couple of teenage delinquents looking for shelter came to hassle him. They think he's a crazy old coot, but he gradually gets them to act out scenes from their own lives, expressing their struggle to survive. At last the old man can die in peace, because he has passed on the holy torch of drama. I remember I took lines and speeches from several classics, including "King Lear" and "Oedipus Rex," and gave them to the old man, and the teens were heavy into slang. It's too bad no one ever saw the script but me, but it was a very personal expression, sort of like the teenaged "me" accepting the mantle of responsibility for an ancient and in many ways holy art form. Theatrical styles change, but the desire to express ourselves and enact our struggles is part of our essential humanity. I don't think I've written a contemporary or experimental drama like that since. For some reason, I've gravitated toward writing comedies, but I still take drama very, very seriously. About every 10 years or so I clean out my desk drawers and file cabinets, and come across the old typewritten manuscript. I'll never throw it away. |
