Edward Albee

Blanket statements scare me. Often, the blanket tries to do too much covering and ends up getting spread thin. That said, I think Edward Albee is spot on about his interpretation of how his work relates to the theater scene when he says, about making changes to his work, 'Go fuck yourself; if you don't want to do the play I wrote, do another play.' (LA Weekly, 2/21) He has that power. And I realize that disagreeing with such an icon may not be the most popular or intelligent thing to do. For the record, I think Mr. Albee is a great advocate for playwrights, and I like much of his work. But, for those of us lower in the food chain, telling producers and directors to fuck off may not be the for the best. I agree with him that writing a script is an act of individual creativity. Quite a different thing when it comes to making that script into a play, though. Collaboration can be a great thing, and it can suck, depending on the people involved. But to say “These are my words, and I will die defending them” can also be dangerous.

For example, I have a short play, Turtle Shopping, and this three-character piece has gotten a fair amount of exposure. In it, three Jewish women (mother, daughter, and grandmother) discuss, among many things, how the passing of generations erodes cultural bonds. In my text, the grandmother hails from Russia and has a thick accent, while the other two women have none. The first director to work the piece (John Ribovich, Calaveras Rep) suggested we keep the grandmother’s Russian accent, give the mom a New York accent, and leave the daughter with none. This one minor change added more dimension and depth to the play, and underscored the concept of cultural dilution. Now, I could have defended my text and said no to the change, but the play would have suffered.

I’m not saying writers should capitulate and compromise on every issue, but I do feel some discretion is called for. I spend a fair amount of time editing anthologies of short fiction, and if I were to make a blanket statement, it would be this: To a person, the writers who bitch the most about the process are those with the least amount of experience. The more established the writer, the easier they are to work with. I’ll leave it the you to figure out what happens with the bitchy writers during the next round of submissions. I will say that I’ve been pondering this issue for awhile. And this is what I’ve come up with - Writers hear all the time, in creative writing classes, seminars, and conferences, that their words are their own, which they are. They also hear that they must defend their words on pain of death. And they should defend their work. But not to its own detriment.

(This piece was first published in THE LOOP, v. 50)