New Forms

The letter below came to me from a listserve I am on. I assume it was actually published in the Times, but I missed it. It is a pretty brilliant response to the overall tone of Charles Isherwood's reviews (I posted a link a few days ago) of the Humana plays.

To be frank, I didn't read the review that carefully. I was glad to see good work rewarded and I glossed over the bits where a major critic made draconian declarations about what playwrights should be tackling with their work. That part is a little frightening.

If he thinks these are simply not good plays, that is one thing. (And not true, in my opinion). But to dismiss the stretching of boundaries and the exploration of new territory in dramatic literature in one sweeping gesture, well, yeah, that's certainly not the future I want for the theater.

Treplev said it best: "We need new forms. New forms are needed, and if we can't have them, then we had better have nothing at all." I don't personally believe that we need new worlds at the exclusion of the familiar, the identifiable, but it is important to remember that what now appears as familiar was indeed once a new and revolutionary form itself.

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Dear Editors:

It has been a hard year for playwrights in the Off and Off-Off Broadway theatre, and on Wednesday, April 6th, Times critic Charles Isherwood brusquely revealed why. Two sentences in his review of the Actors Theater of Louisville's Humana Festival of New American Plays have overnight become the year's most quoted lines of criticism among playwrights. They are certainly the most chilling.

In the process of praising one Humana play and disparaging at least one other, Mr. Isherwood writes, "There's not much point in aiming high if you can't hit your target. And is it really necessary for playwrights to dream up new worlds?" Mr. Isherwood's ambition-deflating premise would, I suspect, shock even him, if he thought about it in any other context. Would he suggest that scientists, political activists, athletes, or, even, artists of other disciplines never attempt to reach beyond their grasp? Does he truly believe that writers should set their sights only on what they know they can achieve? I doubt that, if he examined his statement, he'd find it defensible. But this lack of self-examination, this assured condescension towards writers, has distinguished Mr. Isherwood's tenure on the Times. Personally, I would hate to envision a theatre without some of our great over-reachers-from Eugene O'Neill to Tony Kushner, Suzan-Lori Parks, and August Wilson.

Isherwood's rhetorical question also demands an answer: Yes, it is necessary for playwrights to dream up new worlds, just
as it is necessary for playwrights to dramatize with passion and precision the one we live in. Shakespeare led the way, and his new worlds were brave and full of wonders. So are Caryl Churchill's and Lee Breuer's, as well as those of several lesser-known artists whose imaginations have failed to excite Mr. Isherwood's own this season. This critic's bias toward the small, realistic, and conventional blinds him to his principal responsibility: to evaluate work on its own terms-what it's trying to do and how well it accomplishes that.

By negating ambition and invention, your critic, who through the prominence of the Times holds unmatched sway over potential audiences for new plays in non-commercial theatres, encourages producers and artists alike to think small, stay safe, avoid experiment, and limit themselves to the naturalistic and the known. One playwright told me that reading Mr. Isherwood's statement she saw the great works of all art forms disappear one by one. By exercising this limited and limiting critical perspective, Mr. Isherwood discourages new great works of theatre from ever appearing at all.

Todd London
Artistic Director
New Dramatists