The Plays and Playwrights

the plays and playwrights The Architecture of Story analyzes three successful contemporary American plays to highlight how they are made and how they may inform your own writing decisions. ■ doubt: a parable Set in a Catholic elementary school in the Bronx in 1964, Doubt: A Para- ble depicts the efforts of a principal determined to expose and drive away a priest whom she suspects of child abuse even though she has no factual evidence of his guilt. The play received its world premiere at the Manhattan Theatre Club in 2004 and was transferred to the Walter Kerr Theatre in 2005—the playwright’s Broadway debut. Directed by Doug Hughes, Doubt received uni- formly rave reviews and won just about every award it could, including the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the Tony Award for Best Play, and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding New Play. Playwright: John Patrick Shanley A writer and director for both stage and screen, John Patrick Shanley has established himself as a major American dramatist of his time. His plays include: Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, Savage in Limbo, The Dreamer Examines His Pillow, Italian American Reconciliation, Women of Manhattan, Beggars in the House of Plenty, Four Dogs and a Bone, Psychopathia Sexualis, Cellini, Dirty Story, Sailor’s Song, Defiance, Storefront Church, and Outside Mullinger. In addition to his Oscar-nominated screenplay adaptation for Doubt, Shanley’s screenplays include Moonstruck, which in 1988 won both the Writer’s Guild of America Award and the Academy Award for Best Origi - nal Screenplay, and Five Corners, which in 1987 won the Independent Spirit Award for Best Screenplay. Other film scripts include The January Man, Joe vs. the Volcano, and adaptations of Congo and Alive. His teleplay Live from Baghdad received a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Miniseries, Movie, or Dramatic Special. Shanley grew up in an Italian-Irish neighborhood in the Bronx in the 1960s and was himself a product of the Catholic school system. An influen- tial teacher at his grade school, St. Anthony’s, inspired the character of Sister James in Doubt and attended the world premiere of the play as his guest. While Shanley says that Doubt is not autobiographical, his experience at xv St. Anthony’s was a key source of material for the play. In an interview with the Houston Chronicle, he explained: “I’ve always remembered that church school, the way the Sisters of Charity dressed, the way people behaved, the demarcation between men and women, between the convent and the rec- tory, and where the power was.”1 ■ topdog/underdog Topdog/Underdog explores the competitive relationship of two African- American brothers living in poverty with different visions of the American dream. One is a thief who wants to launch a lucrative three- card monte scam even though he has no skill at card hustling. The other is a reformed three- card monte dealer who wants to work within the system and earn an honest living even if the job is demeaning and underpaid. The play received its world premiere at the Joseph Papp Public Theater/ New York Shakespeare Festival in 2001 and moved to the Ambassador The- ater on Broadway in 2002. Both productions were directed by George C. Wolfe. In 2002, the play received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Play and Drama Desk Award for Outstanding New Play. Playwright: Suzan- Lori Parks A playwright, screenwriter, and novelist, Suzan-Lori Parks is the first African-American woman to receive a Pulitzer Prize for Drama and in 2001 was named one of Time magazine’s “Time 100: Next Wave/Innovators.” Her plays include In the Blood, which was a finalist for the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Drama; Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom, which received a 1990 Obie Award for Best New American Play; and Venus, which in 1996 also received an Obie. Other full-length plays include The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World, Devotees in the Garden of Love, The America Play, Fucking A, Father Comes Home from the War, and The Book of Grace. She also authored 365 Days/365 Plays, the result of a year- long project in which she wrote a play a day. Her screenplay credits include the Spike Lee filmGirl 6. Parks is the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant as well as grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Rockefeller Foundation, Ford Foundation, Guggenheim Foundation, and others. 1. Everett Evans, “Shanley’s Award- Winning Play Is Opening Doors,” Houston Chronicle, May 22, 2005. xvi the plays and playwrights Talking with the Academy of Achievement about her writing process, Parks explained, “My writing all comes from listening. The more I can lis- ten, the more I can write.”2 And, though she sometimes spends months or years developing a play, she found herself writing and completing Topdog/ Underdog in only a weekend, an experience she described as magical. “I wrote for three days, or 72 hours,” she said. “Wrote, wrote, wrote, wrote, and I thought if I looked up, I would see someone pouring silver liquid into the back of my head. That’s what it felt like. It was just like ‘I know.’” ■ the clean house Set in a “metaphysical Connecticut,” The Clean House centers on three women from different walks of life: a married doctor, a maid who would rather be a comedian, and a restless housewife. Things get messy when the doctor discovers that her maid has stopped cleaning, her husband has fallen in love with another woman, and her sister has been secretly cleaning her house so that the maid can have more time to think up jokes. The Clean House received its world premiere at the Yale Repertory Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut, in 2004, and its New York premiere at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater at Lincoln Center in 2006. Both productions were directed by Bill Rauch. Among other honors, the play earned the 2004 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and was a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Playwright: Sarah Ruhl Sarah Ruhl’s work has been produced across the country and around the world. In addition to The Clean House, her plays include In the Next Room or the vibrator play, which in 2010 was a Pulitzer Prize finalist and Tony Award nominee for Best Play; Passion Play: a cycle, which earned the Pen American Award and the Fourth Freedom Forum Playwriting Award from the Kennedy Center; Dead Man’s Cell Phone, which received the Helen Hayes Award; and Demeter in the City, which received an NAACP Image Award nomination. Other full-length plays include Melancholy Play, Eurydice, Orlando, Late: A Cowboy Song, Three Sisters, Stage Kiss, Dear Elizabeth, and The Oldest Boy. In 2003, she received the Helen Merrill Emerging Playwrights Award and the Whiting Writers’ Award and, in 2006, a MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant. A poet turned playwright, Ruhl has described her plays as “three- dimensional poems,” which often draw from ancient Greek tragedy and 2. “Interview: Suzan-Lori Parks,” Academy of Achievement, Washington, DC, June 22, 2007, http:// www .achievement .org /autodoc /page /par1int - 1. the plays and playwrights xvii other mythic sources to explore “the interplay of the actual and the magical.” In an interview with playwright Paula Vogel, she explained, “I come into the theater wanting to feel and think at the same time, to have the thought affect the emotion and the emotion affect the thought. That is the pinnacle of a great night at the theater.”3 Her inspiration for The Clean House was a conversation she overheard at a cocktail party. A doctor was complaining about her cleaning woman, who had become too depressed to clean. The doctor medicated the woman in hopes of reviving her interest in her job, but the woman still refused to work. The doctor’s comment on the situation became one of the most memorable lines in Ruhl’s play: “I’m sorry, but I did not go to medical school to clean my own house.” 3. Paula Vogel, “Interview: Sarah Ruhl,” BOMB Magazine, no. 99 (Spring 2007), http:// bombmagazine .org /article /2902/. xviii the plays and playwrights.

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