HOW TO READ A PLAY / HOW TO PROMOTE A PLAY

A paper given to the European Theatre Festival in Bonn (1994)

(NB! And the strange heading was of course not my own choice!)

A strange heading, indeed - and I'm not quite sure how to understand it... I choose to interpret it as something like: How do we create an interest - or even better: How do we create an enthusiasm for new drama, new plays?

To draw a map, we must first learn the lay of the land. And let's face it: the theatrical landscape is different - perhaps not from country to country, but Europe is not a common marketplace when it comes to theatre-business. To promote a play in Germany or England is totally different from promoting a play in... let's say Norway. And so on.

As far as I understand this Biennale, one of the intentions is to give the playwrights of Europe an opportunity to learn more about each other. So let me try to give you an outline of the situation for the Norwegian playwrights and writers of today.
     There are approximately 400 authors of fiction in Norway today. The great majority must have some other means of support. But that's how it is in other countries too, I suppose?
     No Norwegian author uses an agent in Norway. There's no need for it. We deal directly with our publishers and the theatres, and they are bound - through agreements with the writers' unions - to use the same standard contracts for established authors and debutants alike. I say "unions" (plural), because instead of one large writers' assocation, we have found it practical and appropriate to have several smaller, completely independent organizations which work in close cooperation with each other. The Playwrights' Union has at the moment 167 members. And it functions like a regular trade union. It is recognized by the Government as well as the film companies,theatres, television and broadcasting companies as a regular workers' union, with the right to negotiate on behalf of its members. The concept of organized solidarity is an important one for Norwegian writers and artists. This means that we have standard contracts in all these fields I mentioned above. As a result a writer who sells his very first play gets exactly the same economic conditions from the theatre as a so called "bestseller-playwright". And the payment - I must confess - is fairly good. Aproximately 12.000 English pounds paid up front - as a guarantied advance for royalty - for a play. So there is no need to complain. But... even if we are paid well when a theatre uses one of our plays, how often are we asked, if we are asked at all? That's another question... It is no secret that the theatres mostly go for the classics and safe plays from abroad , in other words: a play which already has been performed with sucsess somewhere else (mainly England and North-America). In this way the theatre doesn't have to take any big risks. The product has already been developed and tried out by others. In defense of the theatres it must however be said that economy-wise they are all balancing on a tight rope, and they are often big organizations with a lot of people on the payroll - even a full house is in some cases not enough to pay the rent and the salaries... and the truth is that without the economic support from the Ministry of Culture we would have to close all the big theatres in Norway. But anyway, the result is that the theatre feel they can take fewer and fewer chances. So experimental theatre is rare these days . And most writers in Norway turn to writing books instead of writing plays, because - in our country at least: to get a play performed is not as easy as getting a novel published. And further: when you write a novel you can more or less do what ever you like. Not so when you write a play. On the one hand: Norwegian playwrights are still living not only in the light from Henrik Ibsen, but also in the shadow of Ibsen - and on the other hand: the international musical-madness is everywhere - and most playwrights find that it always helps their plays to get accepted if they put a few song-and-dance numbers into tem... Therefore, when someone asks - as was the main question at this panel meeting at the last biennale, two years ago : "What do present authors write for the theatre today?" - it is very tempting to answer: "They write - alas - whatever they think the theatre is willing to play. And the theatre plays what they think the audience is willing to see." And this is of course a rather depressing answer, and if some of you think otherwise she or he is probably working in that corner of the sales-and marketing-division where everything is ok as long as it sells... But it ought to be something to worry about: Why is it that almost every country has its fair lot of good and even exellent novelists, but very few real good dramatists? Why is it that so many good pencils seems to loose their sharpness when they touch the theatre?
     Truly... this can not only be the writers fault?
     So: How do we create an interest/ an enthusiasm for new drama - and how can we create an atmosphere where the playwrights feel they are free to write just as they like about whatever they like to write about... in other words just as freely as an average poet or novelist? First and foremost: If the theatre is to continue to be a place of life and not just a museum, the theatre has to recognize its own need for fresh blood, that it is of vital importance to deal with living writers and not only with the dead ones. Otherwise we can easily end up like our noble cousin, the opera. I mean: it is well and good to play Mozart and Verdi, but not every night! Don't misunderstand me, I like opera, but it is a parody when an art form is content with just repeating the old masterpieces over and over again. What would we say if the publishing houses suddenly stopped publishing new novels, but only printed the classics - every year, in new editions and with new covers? The theatre today is situated somewhere in between the opera and the publishing house. It is still - like the publishing house - willing to use new material, but it seems to prefer - like the opera - the good old classics, something the audience know... Every art form has a responsibility for taking care of its own cultural history, its own roots. Every art form has a responsibility for taking care of their classics and bringing them safe and sound into a modern time. And every art form does that - in one way or another. In the theatre we do it very well and nearly more than enough! But: even if we have an obligation to look into the past, it is nonsense to stay there, more or less to live in the past. Because every art form also has an obligation towards its own time. And should first and foremost be a mirror of its own time and its own social surroundings. It is good to listen to the old tales, but every generation must find its own storytellers and its own poets and playwrights and composers and painters and, you name it! And even if we should be tempted to compare them - our artists of today, our playwrights of today - with the masters of old times and perhaps find that the live ones are not exactly of the same quality as the dead ones , as some critics often enjoy doing, I have only this to say: "Too bad!" Because whether we like it or not, these are the only artists we have, and we've got to make the best out of each other!
     The theatre must struggle to continue to be a controversial place, a dangerous place - not only that safe and familiar place you go to experience the scenes you have seen and heard a hundred times before - and where everything is just a question of aesthetic shades. If the theatre wants to be a place where the new and day-to-day burning problems in our world can be discussed, and not only a show-case for the old and eternal questions...then the theatre is really in need of new plays and new voices. Always! And this is something the theatre should say loud and clear every day! It should try to attract and get in contact with writers now working in other fields - simply by telling them that the theatre is interested in hearing their special and personal voice.
     I say "their personal voice"... and that brings me at last to the core of the question about "the problem of reading". Today we have - almost everywhere - something we may call "the Directors theatre". I may be wrong, but it seems to me that for this group of theatre-workers it is more important to put their own personal label and trademark on a performance , than to give the text an opportunity to be a flower in its own right. This is an old discussion, and I don't want to bore you with it, but just an example: in the theatre it is quite common for the director to rip out whole scenes from the manuscript and instead of starting on page 1, to start on page 20 instead, and then perhaps put something from page 1 into a scene on page 40 instead. And so on. I ask you: what would the musical world think of a conductor who did the same? If a conductor wanted to start a symphony by Beethoven with the second movement and wait until the end before he played the first? It is important that the theatre give up the arrogant attitude of "we are the only one who know what works on the stage and the writer knows nothing outside his own desk, and therefore he needs our help to mould the play the way we want it", it is important that the theatre stop treating writers as children and clumsy beginners, this patronizing way of dealing with writers is a dead end - and it has been the reason why many good writers have turned away from the theatre. Instead of always saying "write the way we want to play", it could be rather refreshing if the theatre more often tried "to play the way something was written"- at least, just as an experiment...

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