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Finn Egerton

How to Start a Play: Edward Albee vs. David Henry Hwang

“I’m going to get assaulted on the subway someday,” Edward Albee said on Theater Talk in 2007. “I’m always looking at people and listening to them.”


Let’s say writing is a battle and your enemy is the blank page. You need a strategy, and you need some weapons. So when I looked for words of wisdom from great playwrights of the past and present, I tried to organize what they said into these two categories, for a better chance to actually be able to use their advice.


So what are some strategies and weapons that work for starting a play? What are the first thoughts you have? Characters? Themes? Dialogue? Personal experiences? TL;DR: all of these.


Today I wanted to look at two opposite approaches from celebrated playwrights, Edward Albee and David Henry Hwang, drawing from discussions I’d read and heard. What are their strategies and weapons? (Is this too violent?)



EDWARD ALBEE


Strategy


“I wait a long time before I write a play down. I’ll keep it in my head for a long time until it wants to translate itself into something coherent on the page.”


“A play begins in the unconscious. And so you don’t really know what begins it. Very seldom have I known why I’m suddenly thinking about writing a play. Obviously a part of my mind has made all the decisions. And I’m going to write a play about some things. Before I’m aware of it.”


“I’ve familiarized myself throughout my life with theatrical literature. And I’m aware of the fact that I’ve written [28 or 29 plays]… But every time I sit down to write a play, I write the first play I’ve ever written. And I also try to write the first play that anybody’s ever written. And so I completely ignore everything that I know and go with whatever that particular thing needs and wants to be. You have to, otherwise you’re writing thesis.”


Weapons


“I begin with characters, and find out who they are. And then, if I know who they are, really know who they are, then I can trust them to be in the play. Then I start writing the play.”


“I tell my students: write in sequence. I also tell them: know your characters pretty well before you write them. I do a kind of author’s version of actor’s improvisation with my characters before I trust them to be in my play. If I know who my characters are, let’s say, I’ll take a walk and think up some situation that can’t be in the play. And I will invent dialogue for the characters, and put them in this situation that can’t be in the play. And if they can handle themselves as three-dimensional characters in an improvised situation, then I know that I know them well enough to trust them in the play.”


Albee’s talk sort of reflects how I think his plays turn out (makes enough sense, right?). There’s a good balance of strict thinking and organic thinking; he says if you don’t start a play in very particular frame of mind, you’re just “writing thesis,” putting it in very black-and-white terms. And his plays are almost always exploring gray areas.



DAVID HENRY HWANG


Strategy


“I always feel like I write a play because I feel like I need to write that play. And there are certain times where I don’t feel like I need to write a play.”


“I think it takes a while for a play to gestate. And that’s a sort of work also.”


Weapons


“My trigger is… [there’s] really something that I don’t understand. I have a question, and I write the play to find out how I feel about it deep inside. I like to have a vague idea of where I’m starting and where I’m ending. And I do kind of take another play as a model. Almost all my plays are based on other plays. I think eventually they become their own thing. But it just is kind of like a jump-start that helps me get going.”


What I found interesting at this point is that Hwang’s practical approach is the complete opposite of Albee’s. Albee talks about stripping down expectations of what a play even is  before starting a new one, returning to first principals—to borrow from a few business gurus (who say they’re borrowing from physics).


Hwang, on the other hand, takes in stride the inescapable fact that we’re all influenced by what came before us, and sometimes to such a specific degree that we might as well start from a place very conscious of that. Albee’s way sounds ideal, like it will produce more unpredictable, raw, and original work, but will it? Hwang’s remarks feel almost like a confession to me, as though he knows there’s an ideal he’s eschewing in favor of what works for him.


And that’s ultimately what matters. Albee sounds resolute in his description of the blank slate approach, though he’s written literal sequels to his own plays, directly continuing from something that has gone before.


My takeaway is this: having any strategy or tool at all is more important than what that strategy or tool is.

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