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Comedy Script
Ideas
ON WRITING & DIRECTING - by G.L. Horton
JEH wrote on ICWP-L@LISTS.NETSPACE.ORG: "Folks, theatre
is a business. Playwrights are hawking a product. Playwrights
also are hawking themselves as people. In addition to writing
and marketing your plays-- market yourself. Conduct yourself professionally
and courteously AT ALL TIMES, even on these listserves."
I find this upsetting. It may be true-- it might be more advantageous
or at least safer to regard it as true-- but I have never thought
of this list as a place where writers are "marketing"
or "hawking" themselves. Yes, those who are good at
marketing have been kind enough to break the process into steps
so that those who are shy or temperamentally challenged can
get a better idea of what it might be possible for them to do
without damaging their ability to write something WORTH marketing.
But success in the worldly sense has never been the focus of
our discussions. We have been able to talk freely and learn
from our mistakes and failures, and perhaps we can even skip
a few lessons because others have shared their hard-earned ones.
This list feels safe, it feels like a refuge from competition.
Of course we want our plays to be perfect: but there's no reason
to have to pretend to be perfect people. We are talking to fellow
journeymen, and all we are looking to get from each other is
companionship as we make the journey toward the ever-receding
goal of mastery of a craft so difficult that our era may not
produce a single master of it. As Arthur Miller says in his
latest interview, 99% of the playwrights hailed as genius in
their time are forgotten. Here we take our art seriously. But
we can also let down our hair or announce we're dying it: we
can whine, gripe, rant, gush; admit our age or our phobias.
As writers we deal with the whole range of experience and emotion--
not just the nice ones. Our greatest asset-- our only real contribution
to the world as writers-- is our sense of truth and our own
authentic voices. We closed the ICWP archives so that we could
speak freely among ourselves. Please, let's not limit ourselves
to saying only what's professional and courteous and advantageous
to our careers. (9/20/04)
Archives—Essays and Commentary
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