Desperate Acts

The Role of the Audience in the Process of Playwriting

Christine Roberts

Introduction

With the exception of a small group of playwrights who create their plays through workshopping techniques, most playwrights engage in this process of creation as a solitary act. Who then is the playwright writing for? Is s/he writing with a particular audience in mind or is the play driven by an exploration of themes and ideas which are then deemed more suited to a particular audience? Does the playwright write as a literary exercise or is the notion of its performative aspects taken into account at the time of writing? To a certain extent the answer to these questions clearly depends on the individual playwright, but the decisions made by a playwright are mediated by his/her access to the means of the production of these plays.

Theatre is a live, interactive medium so although plays are clearly written texts, in my opinion they should be written to be performed. It is here the first complication in the notion of audience occurs. For a play to be performed it usually means an acceptance of that play by an established theatre or theatre company. The Artistic Director of a theatre is driven not only by aesthetic concerns but also commercial ones. His or her (and as we will see later in this chapter, it is usually his) concept of audience may differ greatly from the playwright's. If his main consideration is to ensure a commercial success then clearly he will be looking for a particular type of play which will guarantee this. What of the playwright who is tackling themes which may not be considered 'mainstream'? Or is writing in a style which is not easily classifiable? What happens to these texts? In this chapter I aim to explore the variety of ways in which playwrights generally, and female playwrights in particular, overcome this second perception of the concept of audience; and why, despite their considerable success as writers they continue to be under-represented in mainstream theatre. As Lizbeth Goodman points out, if 'serious' theatre is safeguarded by men who regard women as the exception, then as they come under increasing threat from financial cut-backs and decreasing funds they revert towards safer territory.

There is a desire to see theatre as a place that is all about taking risks, as a place that is about experiment and not stasis. But clearly theatre is a place that allows for certain types of chance-taking and not others; it is possible for theatre to be a world that pushes boundaries, but leaves some intact.

I would maintain this happens for reasons not only linked to those of gender but also because of particular themes and styles adopted by playwrights of both sexes. So, how many of these considerations is the playwright aware of during the act of writing a play? Indeed, how many of these should the playwright be aware of when writing? What happens during this process?

The Act of Writing

The most basic of questions has to be, does the text of a play stand as a literary piece of writing? If so, the writer is writing with one audience in mind - the reader - who then becomes responsible for imaginatively providing additional information such as gesture, movement, use of time and space, etc. If, however, we accept Raymond Williams' notion that "the text does no more than prescribe an effect, of which the means must be worked out performance", the writer's relationship with both his/her audience and the actual written text is a much more complex one.

Playwright Sarah Daniels describes this process of writing for theatre as getting harder, not easier, the more she becomes aware of its complexities. She cites Bryony Lavery as describing it as "a big nutty fruit cake made up of the script, the director, the designer, actors, technicians and audience". Daniels continues to explain that when it works, it does so because everyone has invested talent and passion in it. A brilliant script, she suggests, does not necessarily make a brilliant play. Similarly, a dull script can 'glow' with brilliant direction, design and acting:

The playwright has to learn to 'let go' to enable the process to happen. There will always be things in a production which were not how I saw them in my head. The skills and imagination which directors and actors bring can enhance a play greatly. (Although, I am sometimes left feeling like a big nutty fruit cake all on my own and, at the risk of sounding sensational, however dangerously on the edge of wanting to shout, 'No, I didn't mean it like that at all').

Derrida's explanation of how theatricality is deferred is useful here. He explains that the dramatic component is encoded "in the writing itself: the clause structures, for example remain stable, as does the order of speech - but other aspects are differently coded, between dramatic writing (always in writing for theatre) and the context- specific conditions of actualisation".

Not all writers are so philosophical about letting their work go however. Arnold Wesker states in his seminar paper 'Playing with the writer's rights' that "when I go to a theatre it is the author's voice, his or her perceptions ... that I want to hear, not the actress's". He continues:

if the director is imposing his views in a stage production by cutting text, rearranging the sequence of events, placing the action in a setting different from what the author has imagined: and if the actress is interpreting the unfaithful wife as a ruthless woman, then how will you know what it was that the author wanted to say?

He also makes the case that given the many opportunities for misrepresentation in the theatre, many directors are now writing their own plays, many actresses directing their own performances and many writers 'sculpting their own work'.

No matter how much a writer wishes to control the interpretation of her/his work when writing for production s/he must be prepared for the encoding and decoding of the text which take place at many different levels. These stages are clearly indicated in Aston and Savona's Theatre as Sign System. They set them out as follows in four stages:

• The dramatist encodes the text in terms of her/his perception of its function as a blueprint for theatrical production.

• The director decodes the text, initiates a process of commission or collaboration with a production team and arrives at a mise-en-scene.

• The designer re-encodes the text to develop a portfolio of designs,...