In a Word

Is it a sign of the economical times that most of the plays you see nowadays have economical one-word titles? Remember plays like “Oh Dad Poor Dad, Momma’s Hung Him in the Closet and We’re Feeling So Sad”? “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying?” Now we have “Art”, and “Proof”, and “Doubt”, and “Race” and driving up Eight Avenue in NY today I saw two new billboards for “Trust” and “Wings”. Is it me or are we running out of words? Or has the MTV generation rendered us as a society incapable of absorbing anything that long? Why try to explain to a potential date what “Angels in America: Millenium Approaches” is about when you can say “Let’s see ‘Shoes”!” “What’s it about?” “It’s about ‘shoes’!”

Are these plays, as good as they might be, the results of a challenge? Pick a word, any word, out of the dictionary and write a play about it. It’s as good an approach as any. I belonged to a workshop where someone got the idea to stimulate playwrights by choosing a “Word of the Week”. You had to write 3-5 pages using or about that word. Consequently, I stopped writing plays and starting writing 3-5 page skits. I wrote a few and then I stopped writing altogether. I couldn’t think beyond five pages. No idea I got seemed worth any more time than that. So I am in awe when Mamet and Kopet and Stoppard and the rest of the current greats of the dramatic world can slam out 90 minutes by riffing on a word.

And speaking of 90 minutes, what happened to the two act play, let alone the three act play with two intermissions? I think I know. Writers are afraid that, if they let people out of their seats at intermission, they will not return for act two, leaving the TV and film stars who have been hired because of the name recognition for NY tourists with no one to play to.