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Trying to catch up on my happenings, as a lot has been going on and I’ve been negligent in my posting. A few weeks ago I went down to Cleveland State University to sit in on a class whose guest was Jeffrey Jones. It was a pretty interesting time just sitting and listening to the stories that Jones was telling about all sorts of things, including his own writing process and current project to tales of his days with and around the Wooster Group in New York and earlier days when theater was just breaking out in the 60s with folks around like Sam Shepard and Fornes and even an early encounter with David Mamet, etc, at the theater door: “It’s Mamet, the writer.” (Sexual Perversity in Chicago). I should make clear, right away, that I’m talking about Jeffrey Jones the playwright (Seventy Scenes Of Halloween) and NOT the pederast movie star of Amadeus fame.

I also heard from David Todd, my one-time professor who now works down south at Otterbein, who had recently referred me to Jones’ blog: http://jeffreymjones.blogspot.com/, which is quite interesting, revealing, and often aggressive: with Jones not being shy about his opinions when it comes to things theatrical. To tell the truth, I wish he posted more often. One entry that I found especially of this type was entitled “How Theatre Works” from 2008: http://jeffreymjones.blogspot.com/2008/11/how-theatre-works.html; and at some point I’ll post a response to it as I found some of what he had to say quite surprising given his own style of play creation and works.

In his talk at CSU, Jones touched on how he created plays: for instance, that he has a strong interest in creating a “pastiche” of other materials, such as Harlequin romances (bodice rippers) and Nixon’s White House tapes, etc. That is creating a collage of materials and seeing what comes out of it. In terms of his process, he says that he likes to set up a rule or process and to follow it to see where it leads. For instance, on the Flea Theater website Jones has a workshop listed which discusses a process that he uses for play creation. For an even more elaborate discussion of Jones’ approach, take a look at Broadway Play Publishers.

In some ways, the very act of creating plays in this manner flies in the face of the traditional notion of the playwright as authority or playwright as author. The notion of “author” has been a subject of much speculation in general over the past thirty to forty years (See Barthes, Derrida, Foucault, etc.). For instance, what to make of a playwright such as Charles Mee and his (re)making project. Me, who does not “write” the words of his play, but instead “orchestrates” the words of others (found texts) into a play. But beyond this, the question was raised in the discussion regarding the “new trend” of “devised theater”–that is, plays being created using a physical process or a theatrical/spatial approach, rather than a scripted approach. Often you’ll find actors and a director working to create plays as an ensemble, possibly using myth, fairy tale, or other found texts as a guide that is then reinterpreted or re-constructed. This approach to playmaking often cuts out the playwright or, in some cases, has been seen by playwrights as a direct attempt to cut the playwright from the process. Jones’ thoughts on this–while being familiar with this approach under various names–including that used by the Wooster Group, or even Shepard/Chaikin–are that playwrights create story and pattern. Playwrights are responsible for the orchestration of events, and Jones felt that this is not a likely outcome from devised theater or spontaneously created pieces. Jones felt that, while actors may be able to create a character or even a series of actions that have some meaning in a given context, they are, in his experience, not likely to be able to create an overarching story, a grand pattern, and that the pieces are unfocused, and thus lose power, energy, and possibly meaning over the course of the event. Playwrights, as the name implies, are supposed to be master builders of story. Playwrights should be familiar with how story works and the energy potentials of its various constructs, rhythms, and events–be they in a beat unit, a scene, or in larger blocks across the play–even if they intend to violate these rules or work against them. Some actors may have an understanding of the constructs, rhythms, and events in story, but most do not. Directors had certainly better.

I have taken steps into this arena of playmaking by pastiche or collage, though not to the extent that Jones has, nor do I have his track record, pedigree, etc. My thesis play, Patterns, for instance, was a collage of generic forms, as well as a collage of various texts brought together to reflect and refract one another: an effort to force meaning to be created by the audience who experiences the play and, in some ways, to deny that I as the playwright am the sole source of meaning with regard to the text. (That is, not to deny my importance entirely.) My play Andrew Jackson ate my Homework: A racial farce, is another example of this approach to playmaking. The problem that I have run into, or have noted to myself, when writing plays that reject the Aristotelian dramatic structure–or at least one of the issues–is where does the play end? Or how do you craft the ending without falling into the trap of “forcing” the ending or dulling the play, somehow–that is, as Jones might have it, without killing the energy, power, and meaning. This is a question of editing and has been addressed in many locations by playwrights smarter than me, one of which I have pointed to before: an interview with Wallace Shawn in an issue of American Theatre. For Jones, the question of where or when a play ends is when you, as playwright, have exhausted the material or your ability to create new things with the material. Or, to use the words from Jones above, when you set up a rule or process and trace it out to see where it leads, it is precisely when you have run out of leads that the play must be done–in one sense. Then there is the cleaning up. For Jones, this represents the other important facet of playwriting, which he posited in a question: “is it tight”? That is, have you gone back into the work and edited every line to make certain that it is as tight and clear and clean as it can be? That there is no fat, no laziness, nothing imprecise? Has the waste from each line been removed?

The event at CSU was lively and important for me, and I look forward to my efforts at revising the plays mentioned above using Jones’ guidance and thoughts for both ending and tightening plays.

This talk was very emotional and, yes, I admit it, choked me up.  Jordan came at the talk from a very emotional place and it was affecting.  I have given two eulogies in my life for grandparents (Ruth Hayes and Frank Warden) and I wrote from a very personal and emotional place and Jordan’s talk hit me right in the same place, so I was quite affected by it.

The story that Jordan tells is of her incredibly strong-willed, strong-spirited grandmother (Mary) whose strength clearly resonates in Jordan.  Jordan’s tale is unfortunately not that unique, as she admits.  My grandmother, Ruth Warden–not Ruth Hayes–grew up on a farm in the great depression and had 10 siblings.  She worked tirelessly herself on farms, in canning factories, and scrubbing floors, and finally as a nurse.  She was a strong woman whose work ethic and practicality make me blush like the girl I am compared with her.  My wife, Kirsten, can tell similar stories of her grandmother.  The early part of the 20th century produced strong women, and men, the likes of which we don’t find too often anymore in our age of entitlement.  I don’t think I ever heard Ruth Warden, my “Meme,” once say the word “owe” as in, “he…she…they… owe me.”  Or “I deserve.”  Whether she thought it or not, I do not know.  But by all signs I would say that she did not.  She simply did what needed to be done.  This, too, is the tale told by Jordan of her grandmother.

The point, and focus, therefore, being as it is on strong women, is that there is an imbalance in the number of women playwrights being produced, especially given the number of women playwrights working, and Jordan sought answers to the “why” of this.  As well, she worked with several other playwrights, including Martha Norman, to establish the Lilly Awards, named after Lillian Hellman, to recognized women in theater.  And yet, as Jordan points out, after all her grandmother went through in her life, the idea that she is complaining that her theater career is not as it should be seems somewhat frivolous.

Jordan notes that was in looking with a friend at the list of plays that were being produced in the upcoming year, and noting that there were less women on that list than the usual “one in five slots to which we were accustomed” that she finally decided to do something.  Jordan says that she firmly believes that if the “production rate had stayed above the 17-20% mark that she would have kept her mouth shut.”

Jordan then listed the common arguments to which she was exposed and to which she often listened:

• That established writers are overwhelmingly male;
• That male artistic directors were just more drawn to male works;
• That male writers write more dramatically, while females write more poetically;
• That drama is more commercial that flowery and poetic script;
• That things will get better in the future when there are more women artistic directors;

The problem for Jordan was that she had been hearing those arguments for years: since she was a student, and now, no longer a student but a teacher at Columbia, and things still had not changed.  Jordan then looked at her 2001 NYSCA report which noted that 17% of productions were by women playwrights and then Jordan examined the TCG list of top ten plays (she refers to it as “most often produced plays”) and noted numbers here, where are unclear to me–17% of first productions and then double that the next year? 34%?  For clarification as to the significance of this discovery, Jordan called her date to her senior year high-school valentine dance, which was Freakonomics author Steven Levitt.  While Levitt told her that she really hadn’t discovered definitive proof of bias in the American theater, as Jordan suggested, he encouraged her to find someone who had a statistical bent to look at the issue more closely.  In the mean time, as she googled about on the subject of bias in the arts, she discovered the study Orchestrating Impartiality by Claudia Goldin and Cecilia Rouse; which found that when orchestra performers auditioned behind screens (blind auditions) the representation of women and minorities in orchestras vastly improved.  So, Jordan found Cecilia and met with her: Emily Sans was guided toward the project as her thesis.  She did three studies:

• Supply (are women present in the same numbers as men?)
• 30% of submissions are women (artistic directors reporting)
• Doolee/TCG — 30% representation
• Tough, because it doesn’t match up with women’s experience.
• Hard also because of the reality, which is making a living as a playwright is hard. Jordan notes that as hard as it is for men to juggle responsibilities and playwriting, it’s harder for women and the attrition rate is higher–less supply.
• Audit study
• 4 scripts read by various artistic directors
• Reported, variously, as authored by men or women
• No bias on subject of excellence with regard to the sex of the individual playwright
• However, Sans did find that women respondents regarding the plays believed there would be:
• Fewer tickets sold
• More negative reviews
• Top talent would be harder to attract
• Artistic directors would not want to produce
• Would not fit with the theater’s mission
• That is, if the script was “penned” by a male, it was not viewed as having these challenges.
• Sans found bias — “A really interesting kind” — “self-fulfilling prophesy” or “women in theater are just reporting honestly what they see and know to be true”.
• Broadway Study
• 10 years of Broadway plays
• Throughout outliers
• Judged plays against plays, musicals against musicals, and one-person shows against one-person shows.
• Shows by women made on average 18% more money, but were subject to shorter runs than shows by men.  This was the strongest evidence of bias in economic terms, because, of course, why would investors willingly cut short runs of plays that are making more money?
• The only way that there is a problem with the study’s judgment is if each show by a woman cost 18% more to mount than did a show by a man.  But, as Jordan pointed out, on average plays produced by women are produced in smaller spaces and have smaller cast sizes than plays by men.

Jordan then goes on to note that women dominate theater in high school and college.  In writing departments their numbers are similar to those of men at the graduate level. Agents rep around 50/50. Theaters state that 30% of scripts are submitted by women, and in turn that theater produce 20% of those scripts.  “That’s what happens to female writers: attrition.”  Jordan then casts the argument and findings in terms of race to highlight the discrepancy and “merit” considerations.

Per my comment above with regard to my Meme, Jordan’s grandmother never complained or bemoaned what had happen to her.  And she won’t complain about her own position.  But all things being equal in any conditions and circumstances, men will do better than women in terms of making a living in the theater, or Jordan suggests, any art: except the orchestra: which holds its auditions behind screens to ensure that the race and gender of the applicant is hidden.
While Jordan notes that the fact that only 1 in 5 women playwrights get produced is a small problem in a small context that many people don’t care about.  But she notes, as given the story and history of her grandmother, that the problem isn’t just in theater: it’s bigger than that and reflects the whole of our society.  Further, Jordan encourages that if it’s our small problem in our small area than it is ours to fix.  And that by fixing it, and putting the stories of more women on the stages “we will help in the best way we can to re-define in the audience’s mind: who, and what women have always been, are, and can be.”