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Good Idea - Bad PlayDateline: 20th June, 2004There has been an interesting, if short, discussion in the newsgroup rec.arts.theatre.plays recently. Someone had had an idea for a play on a political theme and was appealing for an experienced wirter to co-operate with him to write it. I didn't contribute to the discussion because others beat me to it and I didn't want to post what would have been, essentially, a "me too" note, but I had to agree with the claims of far more experienced writers than me, that plays which set out to argue a point of view tend to be poor plays. Now I make part of my living writing issue-led pieces for corporate clients. Later this week, for example, we begin rehearsals for a 25-minute show on workplace stress. The client likes the script and it is both amusing, which is what the client wants, and covers the main stressors. It is intended to spark discussion among a conference of delegates and will, we believe, do the job well. But, although I do consider myself a playwright, this is not what I would call a play: it's entertainment with a serious theme. I have not seen Guantanamo - Honor Bound to Defend Freedom (although Philip has seen and reviewed it), but I did see The Colour of Justice, another of the Tricycle's issue-based plays, and was impressed by it, but for me it was a dramatisation, not a drama. What made it work was the fact that we, the audience, knew we were watching what had actually happened. Had it been a piece of fiction, I doubt that it would have held our attention so firmly. But what, you may argue, about pieces such as 7:84's The Cheviot, the Stag and the Back, Black Oil or Joan Littlewood's Oh What a Lovely War? Aren't they successful issue-based plays? Successful, yes: plays? no. They are entertainments with very serious points to make. They manipulate their audience through music and song, structured around popular entertainment genres, the Ceilidh and the Pierrot show. But a play is about the interaction between characters, interaction that may be physical or verbal or, most likely, both, and the problem with issue-based plays (as distinct from documentary dramas) is that characters become symbols rather than real people, speaking words which are required by the idea rather than coming from the character itself. Now someone is going to throw Brecht at me: what about Mother Courage, then? Yes, Brecht emphasises his socialist and dramatic ideologies and cites socialist versus capitalism and the idea of epic theatre as being central to his work, but in act they are not - he is far too good a dramatist to allow his plays to be dominated by theoretical considerations. What comes first is the characters: their actions arise from deep within rather than from following an ideology. Mother Courage is first and foremost a person, an individual, and only secondarily a symbol. If a playwright sets out to support an ideological or political standpoint, then he'll produce agit-prop or a political treatise: if, on the other hand, he allows the piece to be character-led, he'll produce a real play. It will be a play infomed by his ideology, of course, but the reason we, the audience, will watch it, become involved in it and even be inflenced by it, is because we will be moved the what happens to the people, for they are real - not cyphers or symbols but real human beings with whom we can identify. Good idea - bad play? Far too often, I'm afraid. Articles Indices:
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