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International Theatre Conference: Directing and Authorship in Western Drama Panel
One Dr.
Pamela Monaco, U of Maryland |
| Playwrights have adopted various strategies for sharing ownership of their texts. For some, the writing of the play involves the active collaboration of those in the premier production. Neil Simon, for example, no longer completes a play before rehearsals, knowing that directors and-or performers will alter the text in numerous ways. Anna Deveare Smith, as performance artists of her own material, uses the words of others to create her texts, but recently she has come to rely on her creative team, including the director, to help shape her work. These are deliberate choices. Maria Fornes finds directorial interference so frustrating that she no longer lets others direct her work professionally. All the above recognize that unlike the other literary genres, drama encourages active participation and works through collaboration. Nowhere is this partnership between the text and the director more striking than in foreign productions of a play. In these cases, often the author is unaware of the productions, which are often of plays having received acclaimed productions in the country of origin. There is little if any opportunity for the director to interact with the playwright, necessitating the director's input. Often, the alterations to text reflect cultural differences and are made to enhance the favorable audience reaction to the text. How do these changes transform the play? What does these changes reveal about the society's assumptions about the culture of the playwright, and how do these perceptions shape the audiences' appreciation of the work and the playwright? Using the examples of Proof and W;t, both recently performed in Estonia, this paper will examine the ways the director transforms the texts from American plays to Estonian productions, putting the director's and ! the Estonian culture mark on the texts. In particular, the paper will illustrate the types of questions the text raised for the directors, the directors' perceptions about the texts, the authors' intentions, and America, and the critical reception of the plays as works 'by' the directors. |