Tag Archives: Ntozake Shange

The Playwright’s Voice and/or Intentions…

by Robin Byrd

The collaboration part of theater should not to come at the expense of the playwright’s voice and/or intentions. Is that a true statement?

I have been thinking about this — how intent/vision plays a big part in the end results of play production. But, whose vision should win out – if there is such a thing as winning in this case. Should it be a battle to get the story you wrote told, should you have to pick which part you will let go for the sake of someone else’s vision? Getting it to the stage is a big deal, getting collaborators who see the play as you do is an even bigger deal. I think the collective vision should be the playwright’s vision, first and foremost, and all other visions should move that vision forward, not stifle it, change it, ignore it but add to the layers of it. Tied up in all that intent, is a playwright’s voice which is life…blood, the culmination of many journeys, a song whose rhythm is pain and joy, a sound flung up to heaven echoing back at us…

I wonder about these things. What if after all one’s striving over the perfect line, it is missed in delivery or rearranged or deemed non-important; I hope my intent as a playwright is not lost…and I hope collaborator choices bring something wonderful to the piece and do not take away from my intent or my voice. I hope they ask me questions… while I am a living playwright.  But, most of all, I hope that I speak up if and when I need to, whether or not it is expected or welcomed to make my intentions known.

Intent. What is the playwright’s intent? That question is asked in literary settings when studying fiction, non-fiction, poetry and drama; it is also asked in acting class during scene study. It is a question that I strive to answer in all my work. It is the thing that makes a story stay with you…

Some interesting articles I found about intentions:

Pulitzer Winner Bruce Norris Retracts Rights to German Troupe’s Clybourne Park Over “Blackface” Casting

Playwright Katori Hall Expresses Rage Over “Revisionist Casting” of Mountaintop With White Dr. Martin Luther King

Playwright David Mamet Halts Play over Gender-Bending Casting

Heated exchanges at La Jolla Playhouse over multicultural casting [Updated]

Mike Lew – Playwright on Casting Actors of Color

‘For Colored Girls’ Movie: Ntozake Shange’s ‘No Madea’ Rule

 

I think about these things because I want to make sure that all of my work is filled with my voice and my intent without confusion and I don’t want to have to worry about it once the piece takes wings.

So, Yes; it is true that the collaboration part of theater should not to come at the expense of the playwright’s voice and/or intentions…  What do you think?

For the Girls Who Tell Stories…

 

My month – last month – started off well, full of good intentions with the exception of scrambling for references for a certain competition.  It’s always hard to ask – again.  It’s not hard to know who to ask just hard to ask someone to write that reference one more time and you hope you won’t have to ask next year because you’ll be successful and there will be no need to ask again – you hope.  Near the middle of the month – September, the heaviness that accompanies the submission period hit me like a brick…  This time of the year is also the most demanding period of my “day job” which causes the inevitable fight to replenish myself in order to just keep up with everything.  For some quick R & R, I found myself sneaking moments with Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” which I had never read and even though I have the beginnings of the perfect play to send…somewhere, I couldn’t stay away from the book.  It was like balm; reading it renewed me…like watching the sun set over the Pacific does.  That’s the thing about a good story, it pulls you into that world and out of yours for a moment.  I found Scout’s voice very comforting even though some of the subject matter was not.  I think it was the pure innocence of the child that grabbed me.  It seemed Atticus, Miss Maudie, and even Aunt Alexandra tried very hard to keep the children viewing the world through unskewed eyes.  As long as I could see the events through Scout’s eyes, I could see the patches of light in the middle of the gray. 

There are things about fiction that I try to bring to my playwriting like the full on description of the world to be materialized in some way in my plays and the lingering of sorts, the way a book lingers with you after you have come to know the characters or come face to face with the clear essence of the piece.  I had that experience this past weekend with Jennie Webb’s play, “Yard Sale Signs” about mothers and daughters (playing at the Rogue Machine Theatre).  It’s a comedy but it is so rich and full of stuff, I have to admit, there was a point early in the piece where I heard myself think, “Don’t you dare do that here and now”.  Who cries at a comedy?   So, I laughed instead, it was easy to laugh because it’s a really funny play.  I wasn’t sure I understood it all till the ride home when I couldn’t stop thinking about it, then I woke up the next morning thinking about it.  I’m still thinking about it.  I had never seen a play like that before, it caught me off guard so I promptly put my guard up.  Didn’t matter, it lingered.

The most important thing I came away with from Jennie’s play is that I need to work my  “Mother things” into the mix with approaching deadlines.  Live theater – it is truly a living breathing thing with a voice.  What really draws me to theater is the “right now-ness” of it – right now you are in the characters’ world and they are flesh and bone and if they stumble, you see it unfold, you feel it jumping out at you and you may even jump with them or in response.  You can’t push pause or sit the actors down till you are ready to get back into it; it’s an “off and running” thing and “ready or not”, it’s a “right now” moment.  But, if it’s a good moment, it lasts a lifetime…

I talk about going there as a writer but the flip side is going there as an audience member.  I should have cried like I wanted to.  Laughing and crying are tied together and sometimes the emotions that cause one to laugh are the same that cause one to cry.  I hope I can get back to see “Yard Sale Signs” again.  I’ll sit in the back and just let the jewels of truth have their way with me… 

It’s all the special moments that make theater so exciting, so spellbinding…like when I saw “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf” by Ntozake Shange.  I had forgotten those moments until I saw the trailer for the movie “For Colored Girls” based on Shange’s play; the movie will open November 5th.  I tell you, I have to watch that trailer almost every day.  I had to re-read the play and that’s when I remembered…it was after seeing that play that I really began to search for my voice as a woman which has everything to do with my voice as a writer.  It was the first play I had ever seen at a real theater and there were brown girls just like me up on that stage but they were more than just brown girls, they were women talking about women’s things and feeling women’s feelings.  It is impossible to have a true world view without hearing from the women and the men…

So…

for the girls who tell stories…/ and climb trees alongside their brothers, reaching the upper branches to look out on the world/ who dance in spite of the offbeat rhythms running through their lives/ who sing in the wrong key till they learn the notes were never theirs to sing any way/ for the girls who find their own song and their own way to sing it/ who create from wombs, from words, or from living/ having more than a little “somethin’ somethin’” to give/ for the girls who dare to have a say…

i say… thank you…/ i’m listening…