What I’ve learned as of Saturday, June 9th

In order of priority to me.

1. These professional designers have a lot to offer. But whoever we use as designers, we need them in the rehearsal room.

2. Writing is a solo sport. Directing is a team sport. Our personalities causes us to gravitate to one direction or the other. I am not at all certain that playwrights who come from the writing side of the business (as against actors or directors) have the skill sets necessary successfully direct a play even if they wrote it.

3. LCT’s hypothesis for their playwright as director theory would have been better served if the five plays had been more finished products so the rehearsal time could have been used to test the hypothesis rather than working on the basic structure and dialog of the play. I was pretty thoroughly criticized for this opinion although two directors approached me after the session to agree with me. The criticism’s were based on a statement from LCT not to worry about a product of any kind. That the emphasis was to be on form and process. I think that all of the playwrights took advantage of the opportunity to develop and refine the dialog and structure of their plays to the detriment of what I viewed as the overall goal of LCT.

4. So far, I believe that the playwright as director model is flawed and in most cases will not work. Looking at the Tam Lin lawsuit (which, unfortunately, did not resolve the right of Directors to copyright their blocking and direction of the play) and other emerging changes in the American Theater (most notably the increasing use of multimedia presentations as part of the play) is moving the theater towards a modified Disney model where the producing organization will own (or at least license) the product (which includes the play itself) to other theaters. (That is probably the longest sentence I have ever written.) The licensing theater may buy the script outright from the playwright or enter into some joint licensing agreement.