Prose Is Not Verse (Even If It's Shakespeare)

I've written before that when The New Yorker prints "vocal chords" instead of "vocal cords" (something I have witnessed twice), it makes me think that the world is going to hell in a handbasket.

And now I have witnessed an even more shocking error in this publication, which caused me to throw down the magazine and storm off to blog about my fury.

From Hilton Als' review of Twelfth Night (in the Nov. 25, 2013 issue): "Olivia dodges the entreaties of her visitor, a youth whom her steward, Malvolio (Stephen Fry), drolly describes as 'not yet old enough for a man, nor young / enough for a boy, as a squash is before 'tis a peas- / Cod, or a codling when 'tis almost an apple.'"

Do you see what happened there? The magazine printed Shakespearean prose as though it were verse! Dividing the word "peascod" with a slash and a hyphen, even, for no apparent reason! (Shakespeare will enjamb lines of verse, but he never splits a word down the middle between lines of verse.) But there's no verse structure, no rhythm or meter, underlying these words! It's prose, dammit!

Who's to blame, I wonder? This suggests that the magazine's head theater critic, or possibly his editor, doesn't know the difference between prose and blank verse (or perhaps they mistakenly think that all of Shakespeare is written in verse). Which is a disturbing thought, to say the least.

Especially because when I heard Hilton Als speak in 2009, he suggested that "plays should be treated as literature" and that it's therefore OK to read them instead of seeing them. (A very strange attitude for a theater critic to take, I thought.) And if you are reading a Shakespeare play, rather than seeing it, you should definitely be able to tell the difference between verse and prose!

So I hope that this error is just the work of some entry-level bozo at the copy-editing desk, so I can go on with my faith in The New Yorker undimmed. (And there are some nice insights and turns of phrase, as well as an appreciation for the "poetic reality" of live theater and the craft of acting, in the rest of Als' review.)

"So-Called Post-Racial"

"It's fairly easy to get beyond [Thomas] Bradshaw's purposefully thin surfaces--unless, of course, you're unwilling to look at what contorts all America: racism, and the bullshit notion that it doesn't affect our view of sex and love in a so-called post-racial country."

--Hilton Als, "Critic's Notebook," The New Yorker, Sept. 28 2009

Given this vehemently expressed attitude, I am surprised that Hilton Als was as polite to me as he was last summer, when I met him and asked him my confused question about what playwrights should do if they wanted to write a post-racial play!

But at the same time, I can't help but wonder if my use of the term with Mr. Als – and my kinda-naive, bourgeois-white-girl-from-San-Francisco-by-way-of-Vassar attitude--is one of the things that provoked him to write this in the first place? The New Yorker isn't often this profane nor this angry, you know.

Previously: Theater à la Als
The "Post-Racial" World and Contemporary Playwriting

P.S. Sometime I must write about the playwriting workshop I had with Thomas Bradshaw as one of the perks for winning the Young Playwright's Contest (and if you know Bradshaw's work you know that he is a rather dubious choice to give a writing workshop to 15-to-19-year-olds)... but later, later.

The "Post-Racial" World and Contemporary Playwriting

I wrote that the Hilton Als and Michael Paller talk last month left me wondering about a lot of things. In fact, afterwards, as the two men chatted with the public and signed books, I went up and asked them about something that their talk had made me consider. I'm afraid my question was too complicated to get across in quick soundbite form, and I think I just confused them – but maybe I'll be able to make myself clearer in this blog entry.

OK. When Obama was elected, there was a lot of talk about whether we live in a "post-racial" society. Subsequent events, of course (e.g. the Sonia Sotomayor and Henry Louis Gates controversies) have given the lie to that idealistic notion – at least for America as a whole. You see, I don't believe that America is a post-racial country, but at the same time, elements of my day-to-day life do feel largely post-racial.

A major example of this is my office: it's fairly racially diverse, and there's never any racial tension, or even much discussion of our ethnic differences. Now, maybe I would feel differently about this if I weren't white. And maybe this is uncommon: I work at a white-collar office, in an extremely liberal city, staffed mainly by people under the age of 35 – and not a lot of workplaces fit those parameters. Nonetheless, my experiences lead me to conclude that post-racial segments of society do exist.

And I'm currently working on a short play set entirely in a similar office environment – young professionals in San Francisco. (Don't worry, it's not a roman à clef.) So I would like a racially diverse cast, but at the same time, I thought it would feel false to assign a race to each character. I am always uneasy about writing characters of different races – afraid both to reinforce old stereotypes, and to self-consciously break the stereotypes. Like, if you write a black character who uses hip-hop slang, you're reinforcing that stereotype (even though these days, everyone uses hip-hop slang); but if you write a black character who doesn't use any slang, it feels like you're trying to send a politically correct message: "Look! I realize that hip-hop slang is stereotypical, so I'm writing a black character who doesn't use it! Aren't I enlightened? Aren't I smashing stereotypes?"

So. Because trying to choose races for my characters was tying me up in knots – and because the play is set in an environment where race doesn't matter – I thought "I'll write this play so that each of the characters could be played by anyone of any race." I planned to put a note in the script saying that I would like a racially mixed cast, but did not feel the need to assign a race to each character.

But then I remembered the experience of the playwright Diana Son. Her first big success was the play Stop Kiss, in which most of the characters are young professionals in NYC, and thus they, too, live in a post-racial environment. So Son didn't specify the races of her characters, but just put a note in the script saying "The cast should reflect the ethnic diversity of New York City." But it turned out that most casting directors ignored that and cast the play entirely with white actors, something that left Son "very disheartened," she said in an interview several years later. And so for her next play, Satellites, she specified the races of all of the characters.

So my questions for Als and Paller were: in our quest for more diversity in the American theater, is it better to write roles that can be played by actors of any race, or to write roles specifically for a certain race? What if you lack confidence in your ability to write for people of specific racial backgrounds? What if you remember Diana Son's cautionary tale and realize that even if you write "this character can be played by an actor of any race," people often interpret this as "if no race is specified, then the character must be white"?

I am no closer to answering these questions, and dealing with race in my playwriting still leaves me very self-conscious at times. Nonetheless, for the project I'm currently working on, I decided to go with the option of not specifying races for my characters, and simply stating that I would prefer an ethnically diverse cast. Does this mean that I'm just passing the buck to the casting director? Or that I am keeping an open mind and providing opportunities to actors from all backgrounds?

Theater à la Als

On Thursday night, I attended a discussion between Hilton Als, theater critic at The New Yorker, and Michael Paller, dramaturg at ACT. The topic was "Outsider Artists Inside the Theater" – a subject that could seemingly be interpreted in several different ways, but which the two men mainly used to talk about diversity (race, gender, sexuality) and the American theater. These are complicated issues, and the discussion tended to leave me of two minds, rather than making my thoughts clearer. Maybe it was supposed to. That's why it was a conversation instead of a lecture, right? That's why the basis of theater is dialogue and not monologue, yes? So here are some of the questions I'm asking myself, and the things I'm conflicted about.

One subject that got mentioned was the necessity of producing plays written by "outsiders" (that is, members of historically disenfranchised groups). Paller pointed to ACT's production of a play that dealt with Japanese-Americans returning to San Francisco after having been in the internment camps – he said that it got a great response from the Asian community and brought many people to ACT who had never been there before. And that's all well and good, but wouldn't the real measure of success be how many of these new audience members came back to see another play at ACT the next year – a play that did not have a specifically Asian theme? If the effect of producing plays by gays/minorities/women is an increasing polarization of the audience (blacks go to see black plays, women go to see stories about women), is that really progress? Maybe it's naive of me, but I still dare to believe that good art is universal, and that nothing is gained from going to see plays or movies only about people who are "like you."

(Hilton Als saw this from a different perspective. Speaking of plays like The Color Purple and the all-black Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, he said, "I'm happy that they're bringing in new audiences, but do they have to be such crap?" He wants to see more plays like for colored girls... that speak genuinely to the black experience, and fewer crassly commercial appeals for black people's money.)

In talking about the difficulties faced by minority actors, Als brought up the story of a talented black actress, Susan Batson. (Als claims that black women and Asian men are the two groups most often misrepresented or underrepresented in the American theater.) Batson grew so dissatisfied with the typecasting and racism that were pervasive in the New York theater of the '60s and '70s that she stopped performing and became a highly regarded acting coach. Her clients now include such movie stars as Nicole Kidman and Brad Pitt. "It's wonderful that she found something that she's really talented at, and can be happy doing," said Als. And part of me wants to agree with this. But another part of me wonders, "Isn't this just another example of a black woman disappearing behind the scenes, devoting her life to helping porcelain-skinned Kidman and blue-eyed Pitt – white people who grab the fame and the glory? Is this progress? Is this the best we can hope for?"

One final thing that has me conflicted is Hilton Als' attitude toward theater and theater criticism. Als says that in his reviews, he tries to treat theater like literature; when he sees a new play, he tries to fit it into the context of the writing that has come before it. Paller read aloud from Als' recent review of the David Adjmi play Stunning, and asked Als to discuss it. Stunning is about some Syrian-American Jews and their black housekeeper, and Als' review compared it to the works of other authors, such as Bernard Malamud, who have written about the relationship between blacks and Jews. On the one hand, Als' approach argues for the inherent dignity of theater and of the playwright – treating theater as an important component in the narrative of American culture. Too often, Als said, we think of the playwright as someone who merely creates a blueprint for the actors and director to fill in, rather than as the instigator and the driving creative force. And he says that anyone who is serious about culture must try to read or see the important plays of the year, the way that they would go see the award-winning movies.

But then, Als followed that up with a comment along the lines of "So playwrights should try to get people to read their work, that's the important thing, and they shouldn't care if it doesn't get produced." Which, excuse me, sounds like a very strange thing for a theater critic to say. It singlehandedly discounts the contributions of the actors, director, and designers in creating the theatrical experience. It insults the playwright by suggesting that she should limit her aspirations and be content to write "closet dramas," rather than works that will be brought to life on the stage. And also, it's counterintuitive: I think that in this country, even fewer people read plays as literature than attend the theater, so if Als got his way, theater would be even further marginalized. Trying to get people to see live theater is hard, but there are ways to promote it and make it sound fun: it's a night out on the town, you might get to see great acting or singing or dancing, it's amazing to laugh or cry along with your fellow audience members. Whereas trying to convince people to read plays because it's the "important" thing to do makes play-reading sound like a boring old slog.

Furthermore, sometimes Als' insistence on treating theater as literature makes it seem like he's just using the play he's reviewing as an excuse to talk about something else that he thinks is more important. That's kind of how I felt about the Bernard Malamud references in the Stunning review (which I also think have the effect of making the reader feel stupid for not having read, or even really heard much about, Malamud). It also seems that Als is somewhat notorious for writing irrelevant intro paragraphs, which further reinforce the impression that he'd rather be discussing something other than the play he's ostensibly reviewing. I don't always love the theater criticism of Als' colleague John Lahr either, but I much prefer his idea of the theatrical experience. "The John Lahr recipe for telling whether a play is good or bad is if you can shut your eyes when you're in the theater and get all the meaning – it's a bad play. You didn't have to be there," he has said. As opposed to suggesting that the best way to experience a play is to read it.