Author's Intent

ON WRITING & DIRECTING - by G.L. Horton

NA wrote: "I have a problem with the legitimacy of those 70 years. Copyright law has legal status over authorial intent but not necessarily any ethical or aesthetic significance. Better to talk to the dead author than the estate when seeking the theatrical intent of a work."

Certainly there are authors who do not support the severe and extended copyright laws.

There is a "copyleft" and a "Cultural Commons" movement, and I'm proud to count myself a member. I have no interest in having my artistic work supply my heirs with material comfort, and they are certainly no more likely to be moved to understand and promote my "authorial intent" than any one else who might be attracted to my work and want to produce it and/or use it as raw material for art work of their own.

I am grateful to every artist whose work has been freely available to me and has enriched my life beyond measure-- and I've only experienced what's been free or comp-ed or cheap, because I've lived my life at the lower end of the income scale. I only hope that I can add my mite to the spiritual and intellectual treasures that are the common heritage of humankind. When my work is in its vulnerable infancy, I fight to have it take a material form that satisfies me, because my own aesthetic sense, and my sense of truth, is the impetus behind not just that particular work but everything that I undertake. But I live and learn, and I will die: leaving some things completed, some unfinished, some failed. I practice letting go: the visions and revisions will belong to others.

GO wrote: "Actually, you don't have the right to alter a painting or sculpture either. In France that right is even more profound-- even if I OWN a painting I cannot chop it up and resell it."

The reviews of the current Rubens drawing show point out that Rubens bought drawings by earlier masters and altered them with a few lines and shadings to make them "his". We would consider this defacement, yes? At least I did when I read about the modern artist who bought an old master drawing, erased it, and signed and sold it as "his" work of art. But altering or incorporating earlier work has been SOP in the arts though most of history: playwrights and producers recycled plots and characters just as painters based new Pietas on earlier pictures.

And the master painter not only incorporated elements of other artists' designs, he assigned much of the painting to his apprentices, executing only the "cartoon" and the finishing touches himself.

NA wrote: "Since stage directions are protected by copyright, could/should the playwright insist on the letter of that protection, or is it the spirit of the stage direction that we honor? What about casting, for example, changing sexual or racial identities of characters? What about location--i.e. setting a play in a location different from that stipulated by the text?"

If Isherwood's NYTimes review is to be believed, the Classic Stage Co.'s production of "Happy Days" with Lea DeLaria is a clear case of the abrogation of the author's intentions-- though the reviewer seems to be uncertain whether it is through the collaborators' artistic choice or incompetence.

It will be interesting to see if the Beckett estate, which has enforced the author's strict intentions by refusing to license or getting a court order to shut down productions that make changes in lines, stage business, setting, gender and color (whether of the actors or of the characters) will move against a production that adheres to the letter of Beckett's script but flies in the face of its meaning.

I should make it clear that I think that freezing-drying a play is insane if not immoral. The writer should strive mightily to get the play incarnate at least a few times in a way that satisfies the authorial intent, and then let go: allowing it eventually to fall into the Public Domain where others may indeed use it to "write their own damn play" -- that's the way the living art form works, when it works. But not to insist on "getting it right" for Art's sake according to his vision in the first place is also insane.

GO wrote: "I haven't read the review... but I wonder, isn't part of the problem here that producers and directors sometimes forget that the playwright doesn't only write WORDS-- that silent scenes are also the playwright's domain? I would say that what Beckett did is not write 'directions,' but that his text IS the unspoken."

But Beckett DID write directions, shufflings and banana eating and specific prop handling and changing chairs and the like-- very detailed business.

A majority opinion on this list seems to hold that no aspect of the production is the playwright's domain, because the writer's job is to supply text, character, situation, setting-- but only as suggestions which the collaborators are free to use or amend as their inspiration dictates.

MZ wrote: "Why did Beckett insist on such stringent guidelines? Is he the only one or were there others? I mean was he racist? Sexist? Or did he have a specific reason for the limitations?"

It is Beckett's model for how his art functions. He chose his actors by type and voice, coached them extensively with line readings and business, insisted that the physical manifestation of the piece be exactly what he had in his mind when he envisioned it. He only worked with directors who agreed with him on this. He also resisted answering any questions about motivation or meaning. The model is much like a shamanistic ritual: do it and do it precisely and it will "work": understanding--- particularly psychologizing" -- is not necessary.

I dislike and disapprove of this authoritarian attitude for political and personal reasons. Beckett is not a model for me as an artist, nor am I attracted to the authorial voice behind his work. OTOH, in spite of my resistance, whenever I see Beckett performed just as he insists, by utterly devoted and type-cast actors trained in the Beckett way and directed according to Beckett's specifications, the experience reduces me to a puddle of pity and awe. One definition of a poem is that it is a set of words put together in such a perfect fashion that if one of them is changed the whole is damaged. Beckett is a true poet of the theatre--- dammit!

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