Playwright's Summer Camp

As I have for the past two years, I spent the month of July with the National Playwrights Conference at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center in Waterford, Connecticut. While a network was deciding that it wouldn't approve the star casting on one of my projects, a cable company was deciding to put another in turn-around; while Heidigate was heating up in Hollywood, I was deep in rehearsal every day as a dramaturg with three new playwrights, and attending a staged reading of a new play by professional actors every evening. It was a lot more fun in Waterford than it would have been here.

The Eugene O'Neill Theater Center occupies a beautiful piece of high ground that looks out over Block Island Sound. It is comprised of two indoor and two outdoor theater spaces, and an old clapboard mansion that serves as office, dining, library and some sleeping quarters. Two miles down the road is the Monte Christo Cottage, boyhood home of Eugene O'Neill and the setting of his plays "Ah, Wilderness" and "Long Day's Journey into Night." The Theater Center is the host, year-round, to theater workshops and conferences for playwrights, musical theater, critics, puppeteers.

Founder and President George White established the National Playwrights Conference in 1966, and since 1968 it has been under the artistic direction of Lloyd Richards, Tony Award winning director for August Wilson's "Fences" and for twelve years the Dean of the Yale School of Drama. Dedicated to the development of talented writers, the NPC has nurtured nearly 300 playwrights and has developed more than 430 plays. Among the playwrights have been Thomas Babe, Lee Blessing, Charles Fuller, John Guare, Oliver Hailey, Israel Horovitz, David Henry Huang, Albert Innaurato, Jerome Kass, Arthur Kopit, Leonard Melfi, John Pielmeier, Joseph Pintauro, Robert Schenkkan, Charles Schulman, John Patrick Shanley, Wendy Wasserstein, and August Wilson.

The Conference exercises its commitment to writers by offering them the opportunity to work on their plays in the company of other professional theater artists. This process, having evolved and expanded over the years, remains the core of the Conference. Preparations for the 1993 season began late last fall when some 1300 manuscripts were received at the NPC office. The works were considered over a seven month period which culminated with the selection of ten writers for the stage division of the Conference and two for the media division.

During the first few days of July at the O'Neill Center each playwright read his or her play out loud to the assembled playwrights, staff, directors and dramaturgs (a director and a dramaturg had been assigned to each writer by the Artistic Director.) This three-day marathon created a strong bond among all the participants and set the pace for long days of rewrites and rehearsals. Then a company of fine actors arrived to begin the process of bringing each playwright's work to life. Incidentally, none of the actors had any idea in advance what plays or what parts they were to perform, yet many of them so enjoy the experience that they are back for the fourth or fifth year.

Each play receives four days rehearsal during which the playwrights are encouraged to rewrite based on discoveries made while watching the actors develop their characters. (The writers were vying with each other to see who had the most colored pages in their final script.) Each play is given two staged readings before the public, visiting theater professionals, and Conference personnel. The performances have limited production values: actors carry scripts, sets are modular and lighting is used to create a mood. Actors wear their own clothing. But the audience - ah, the audience. It laughs and cries and is silent or noisy, and it applauds. The value of this feed-back to the writer is immeasurable, and because the actors carry the book, whole new scenes can go in before the second performance.

All involved in the Conference meet in the morning after the second performance for a critique. Lloyd Richards leads a panel which includes the playwright, the director and the dramaturg in a discussion of the play's problems, the solutions attempted in rehearsal and performance, and the resulting conclusions. The critique is then open to everyone in the Conference for comments and suggestions to the playwright, who usually wears dark glasses and remains stoically silent. No comments are allowed on performances or direction. The play's the thing. Every playwright stays on for the whole Conference, continuing to work on his or her play while contributing to the process for the other playwrights.

Once the actors arrive, the Conference grows to over a hundred persons who work together, eat together and live together - writers in monastic rooms at a local State Hospital ward, and actors in a nearby college dormitory. Everyone, from the Assistant Technical Director to our leader Lloyd Richards, feels absolutely free to give the writers advice. Every night after the performance, the Pub on the property, aptly named "Blue Gene's", rattles with talk of plays and players. A major function of the dramaturg is to help his writer sort out the good ideas from the bad. There are plenty of both.

As mentioned above, two of the scripts which go through the process are media pieces - movies for television or screen. The original idea, developed fifteen years ago, was to familiarize theater writers with the craft of writing for television and film and to assist them in transforming their theater projects into media ones.

New York television producer Herbert Brodkin had a commitment from ABC to do one MOW each year which originated at the O'Neill Conference. Neither Herb nor that wonderful commitment are still living, but the Conference remains a marvelous testing ground for writers who want to do original work for the screen or Movies of the Week. Submissions for media plays have been in short supply for the past few years, so take this as an invitation to participate. You, too, can have an all expenses paid vacation in New England. Any writer who wants more information is welcome to call me.

Philip Barry is an independent producer of television movies, is a Co-Chairman of The Caucus and a member of the Editorial Board of the Caucus Quarterly.