| why does edward albee hate directors? |
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commentary
by michael caines |
| published
23 september 2008 |
| originally published
02 march 2007 in the guardian uk theatre blog |
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special
assignment | volume 1
• number 15 |
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"Every
human is an artist. And this is the main art that we have:
the creation of our story." -Don Miguel Ruiz |
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| published
since May 2006 | Special Assignment is a series of artists'
profiles, events spotlights, and interviews. |
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Michael Caines
works at The London Times literary supplement. He has edited an anthology of plays by 18th-century women; is editing a book about the 18th-century actor David Garrick; and, one day, may finish his book about something called the 'Battle of the Romeos'. |
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Eamonn McCabe (Web site; eMail) made his name as a sports photographer and produced some of the most striking sports pictures ever taken—most of them published in The Observer newspaper, for which he worked during the late 1970s and 1980s.
His unrivaled body of work won him a host of awards including Sports Photographer of the Year 1978, 1979, 1981 and 1984.
In 1988, he came off the road and joined The Guardian newspaper as a picture editor with the brief of revitalizing the paper's picture coverage.
His impact was immediate and in the forthcoming years, he was named Picture Editor of the Year five times. Despite working full-time on the desk, he never gave up taking pictures and gradually moved into the field of portraiture.
By 2001, he decided it was take time return to his roots as a photographer.
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He's got Pulitzers and Tonys, and the revival of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" had rave reviews. So, is playwright Edward Albee softening with success?
No, of course he's not. The question, posed by LA Weekly, was followed by "Are there any hopeful signs in the American theater?" Albee replied as follows:
"We have no paucity of good young playwrights, and good older playwrights; we don't have the happiest environment for them to work in. Like in the art world and in literature, the theater's just as trendy, as dangerous and corrupt. The big problem is the assumption that writing a play is a collaborative act. It isn't. It's a creative act, and then other people come in. The interpretation should be for the accuracy of what the playwright wrote. Playwrights are expected to have their text changed by actors they never wanted. Directors seem to feel they are as creative as the playwright. Most of these changes are for commercial reasons. I know a lot about it because I'm on the council of the Dramatists Guild; but, of course, the pressures are on all of us. I'm in the lucky position where I just say, 'Go f**k yourself; if you don't want to do the play I wrote, do another play.' The forces of darkness would back down if everybody said that."
Bloggers have found much to debate in his pronouncement in recent weeks. They have found Albee to be out of touch, right on the money, and guilty of breaking some unofficial artistic entente. (The Mirror up to Nature has even expanded on the interview's references to Tiny Alice.)
"I'm tired of theater people talking like victims," adds theatre director Isaac Butler, in Parabasis. "We're not victims. Or we are, but so is everyone else, so what the heck does it matter?"
Albee has always thought it matters a lot that his plays are not distorted—"either through intention or inattention"—as when, for instance, the cast for a production of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" includes four men instead of two men and two women. Little noted, but springing from the same convictions, is his criticism in that LA Weekly interview of the film version of his most famous play: "The movie was so much tougher before they put in that awful soppy music. I don't like movie music, being told how to react. The music softened the film."
It is no less a distortion when a director, as Albee thinks quite possible, disguises a play's deficiencies. In his world, it's the writer who should be in charge no matter what. It is telling that Albee has also argued for the value of reading plays, cutting out those pesky middle men and women, the directors and actors. (Is he in the right job?)
Perhaps Albee, now in his 70s, simply hasn't met the right director yet. If so, he will be relieved to hear that there are understanding souls out there. According to Richard Eyre: "It's very rare that a production is better than the play: water doesn't rise above its source."
A pity, then, that Eyre called Albee's "Virginia Woolf" "melodramatic", and much preferred the production to the play.
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