ISSUE 16 DRAMATISTS PLAY SERVICE SPRING 2015 ROUND TABLE with JOHN PATRICK SHANLEY, Dramatists Play Service POLLY PEN, and LYNN NOTTAGE is very fortunate not just to publish and license the best BY PETER HAGAN, PRESIDENT American playwrights, but also to have four of them sit on our the publishing conversation. As a woman of always going to be slightly different from that of the color, I also see my role as one of advocacy; agents. Our plays are creative extensions of Board of Directors. I want to make sure that there’s a diversity ourselves — we live with them for long periods of of voices being published by DPS. time; we keep them close and protected until we release them into the world. The founding charter of the Play Service, back in As time has gone by, have you seen your Then we entrust our plays 1936, called for the Board to be split evenly position as a playwright member change? to others for safekeeping: between playwrights (all members of the initially agents, and eventually Dramatists Guild) and agents. Back then, the star John Patrick Shanley: When I first served on publishing companies like playwrights included Howard Lindsay, George the Board, I was skeptical and challenging DPS. For better or worse, Abbott, and Sidney Howard. Today our stars are and, frankly, young. But over time I morphed agents can approach the Donald Margulies, Polly Pen, Lynn Nottage, and from opponent to colleague. business of publishing with John Patrick Shanley, who have been members a certain level of objectivity of the board ranging from five years (Nottage) to PP: Ways of thinking about how theatrical and distance; however, it’s over 20 (Shanley). I asked three of them some work is best accessed are changing rapidly. always hard for the playwright questions recently about their experience serving I’ve found myself increasingly invigorated by to remove passion from the on the Board. (Donald Margulies was away my fellow Board members’ pleas to try to stay equation. The advantage of promoting his new movie at the Sundance Festival.) ahead of things rather than playing catch-up. having a Board made up of What do you see as your role as a playwright Do you think that the agent members of playwrights and agents is member of the Board? the Board have a different agenda than that it ensures that the the playwrights? governance consists of Polly Pen: I hope to be a voice for my fellow equal measures business writers and colleagues at the Dramatists Guild. PP: I’ve always felt that the Board has a and passion. I particularly try to bring the perspective of a unified agenda — but it has often taken a musical theatre writer whose work lives mostly binary approach to realize goals, with agents JPS: The thing that’s struck Top-Bottom: Lynn Nottage, Polly Pen, John Off-Broadway and in repertory theatres. and playwrights taking turns looking through Patrick Shanley, and Donald Margulies me over the years about the both telescope and microscope. agents I’ve served with is Lynn Nottage: [My role is] to ensure that the how much they love the theatre and how much bad playwright’s voice is an active and engaged part of LN: I do feel that our investment as playwrights is behavior they’ve seen. The theatre is a rough beast, and these agents have a certain combat-weary look Do you have a play which you are particularly such as LAS MENINAS and ONE MORE RIVER and death-row humor. They also have an almost happy is published by the Play Service? TO CROSS. Hopefully, those plays will have a rabbinical zeal for disputing the fine points of various life beyond the page. WILLIAM INGE: REDISCOVERED deals. (When this aspect comes to the fore, the PP: I remain amazed and cheered that DPS BY CRAIG POSPISIL playwrights on the board look quietly bewildered.) published my musical EMBARRASSMENTS. This JPS: The first play of mine which DPS published work, written with Laurence Klavan, tells the tale was DANNY AND THE DEEP BLUE SEA, back in Dramatists Play Service is proud to actually a revised version of his first play, FARTHER OFF away many of the emotional barriers and stigmas that What would be your advice to aspiring playwrights of the novelist Henry James’ disastrous and FROM HEAVEN. So, really the first four plays he wrote all went along with them. Inge’s plays, therefore, can feel 1984. It’s a big day in a playwright’s life when announce that we will be publishing two who want to get their plays published? humiliating experience as a playwright. The play became hit Broadway plays. That’s an amazing run. “old-fashioned” or quaint to contemporary audiences. his first play is published. F. Andrew Leslie, who volumes of previously unpublished short But I think that’s a disservice to them and to Inge. These has only managed to have one production, but plays by iconic American playwright LN: Play publishing is essential to the life of the was the president of the Play Service back then, But Inge was unable to enjoy his success. He was a are rich works, and Inge was rarely less than brutally hon- it’s a deep favorite of mine, and there it sits in the play. Look for a publisher that has a roster of asked me if I would like the book jacket to be William Inge: THE APARTMENT COMPLEX gay man in a time when it was virtually impossible to est in how he wrote about the world as he saw it. Catalogue, waiting for someone to discover it. and SOMEWHERE IN AMERICA. Here is be himself openly. He struggled with depression and playwrights that [you] admire, a commitment to blue, since the word “blue” was in the title. I said representing new voices, and a strong record of an excerpt from editor Craig Pospisil’s alcoholism, spending years in psychoanalysis and at As I considered the unpublished works and four other LN: I must say that I was happy when DPS yes, and the jacket has always remained blue. licensing plays to a variety of venues — professional introduction to the upcoming collections. A.A. He clashed with a number of his directors, and a short plays of Inge’s we once published but which were decided to publish my more obscure works I’m proud to serve this organization. now out of print, an imme- and nonprofessional. Young playwrights often poor review would send him into a tail- diate division was appar- forget that a play can have a vibrant and prosperous In the fall of 2013, I was looking for plays to include in spin. If Inge couldn’t “These are raw works … But what ent. Many were set in a life at high schools and colleges. a second volume of Dramatists’ Outstanding Short THE INVISIBLE HAND examines the with a contemporary feminism, sparkling dark, impersonal apartment Plays. The agent for the William Inge estate sent me truly be happy when they may lack in polish, they make power behind global capitalism to energy, and athletic momentum. SENSE his plays were popular, complex in large city; others PP: Once you have your work in production, a short play by the late author called THE LOVE DEATH up for with the naked emotions create, manipulate, and destroy societies. AND SENSIBILITY remains a classic for he was even less able took place in small towns, things move so quickly — don’t be shy, make and mentioned that he had more. “Can you send me Inge brings to the page.” Nick Bright, an American Citibank a reason, and Hamill’s fresh adaptation to find peace when the more reminiscent of the set- sure you remember to invite theatrical all of them,” I asked. And soon nine more arrived. employee working for the corporation’s encapsulates what makes Austen’s novel times changed and his tings of PICNIC or DARK AT publishing companies [to see it]. Pakistan arm, is resonate more than two centuries later. Ten unpublished, largely unknown short plays by run of hits ended. In THE TOP OF THE STAIRS. I kidnapped by one of the pillars of 20th century American theater reading his play THE LOVE DEATH, I sensed a real truth collected seven of the plays together under the title THE Islamic militants was definitely something exciting to discover, and I in the words and the emotions. After learning that he’d APARTMENT COMPLEX, which is an acknowledgement of EDITOR’S PICKS and held for ran PUNK ROCK became more excited as I read the plays. These are killed himself, it’s clear that THE LOVE DEATH — and an unfinished collection called COMPLEX that Inge was By Haleh Roshan Stilwell som. What seems by Simon raw works, and I mean that both in terms of the tone like a straight Stephens of the writing and in terms of the roughness of the I’M GONNA forward good- plays. But what they may lack in polish, they make up PRAY FOR guy/bad-guy for with the naked emotions Inge brings to the page. YOU SO dynamic is thrown, With his smash Broadway hit THE HARD though, as Nick To be completely honest, I wasn’t overly familiar with by Halley begins to manipulate his kidnapper’s CURIOUS INCIDENT William Inge’s plays. I’d seen the movie version of BUS Feiffer intentions, promising them far more OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME, STOP many years ago, and I saw the recent Broadway lucrative solutions than a one-time Simon Stephens proved adept at revival of PICNIC, but I only had a passing familiarity flush of cash.