Bouquets and brickbats

My play, “Sticks & Stones,” is being produced this week by Evolution Theatre Company in association with CATCO is Theatre. Working with the director and the actors over the course of the last two months has been fascinating and instructive. It’s also been a damn fun time.

I’ve had the opportunity to learn about all that goes into the production of a play. I don’t mean just lighting and sound and blocking and design – critical as those things are. I mean the deep study and fine analysis by the actors and the director – of the script as a whole, and of the pages, and of the lines, and of the individual words. I’ve been able to see what each person brings to the script of himself or herself, how they incorporate their specific experiences into the play, and the ways in which their personal interpretations bring shading and tone and nuance to the characters I have created, the words I have them speak, and the situations in which I have placed them.

Many times the production has turned out exactly as I thought it would when I was writing “Sticks & Stones.” On more than a few occasions, I’ve been bowled over (in a good way) by a different take or a fresh insight, and I’ve come to appreciate that a play is built through the collaboration of the playwright, the director, and the actors. The experience has been positive and rewarding.

Most of it.

I say “most of it,” because criticism is always a given, whether from lay persons or critics for hire.

I’ve experienced a bit of push-back over my choice of subject matter and over the characters I’ve created, specifically the character of Kylie, who is a trans-woman.

For those folks who have pushed back, I believe that the question they are asking me is:

     “by what right did I create this play?”

Because I am a gay cis male. Because I am not transgender.

So, given who I am and how I identify, how can I possibly understand a transgender person, and what can I ever know of the life experience of transgender people?

As a writer, it’s hard for me to understand that kind of limitation being imposed on imagination, invention, and creativity.

I’ll share a couple of examples to better illustrate what I mean.

I recently finished a novel. The title is “The Little Red Chairs.” The principal male character in the story is, of course, male. He is probably middle aged. He is Serbian. He has committed genocide. He is a war criminal.

The author of the novel is Edna O’Brien. She is a woman. She is 85 years old. She is Irish. She has not committed genocide. She is not a war criminal.

If a writer can write only about what he or she is, or what he or she has actually experienced, then, logically, Edna O’Brien should not have written “The Little Red Chairs.” How can she ever know what it is to be male? What it is to be Serbian? What it is to have committed genocide? What it is to be a war criminal?

Another example. One of the most famous and most highly regarded American short stories is “Hills Like White Elephants.” In the story, a woman and a man sit in a bar and talk. It takes time to understand the topic of their conversation. Eventually you figure out that she is pregnant and they are discussing abortion. The story was written by Ernest Hemingway.

Again, if we begin with the proposition that a writer can write only about what he is or what he has experienced, then Hemingway should not have written “Hills Like White Elephants.” He was not female. He could not get pregnant. He never had an abortion.

Final example. This past week the Playwright’s Festival offered four short plays commissioned from local playwrights. The qualification set by Evolution Theatre Company was that each play had to be about an LGBTQ character or theme and the plot must involve politics.

Four plays. Four playwrights. How many of those playwrights are gay? One. Me.

So, of the four plays, one was written by a straight woman and two were written by straight men.

Coming back to the proposition that writers should write only about what they have experienced and who they truly are – by what right did Amy and Jack and Sheldon create their plays? What could they ever know about LGBTQ people or their life experiences?

Like nearly every person on this planet, I want to unleash my imagination.  I want my creations to be treated with dignity. I want respect for my inventions. I can’t tell others “you must praise my writing or you dishonor me.” Nor can other people tell me, “Cory, your writing must defer to my point of view or you disrespect me.” Setting those conditions and insisting on that approach mean that what is being sought is obedience, compliance, and conformity and not imagination, invention, and creativity.

In addition to push-back about my right to create this play, I’ve read criticism about other issues which, to my mind, seem little more than a single individual’s myopic fixation on “courtroom drama” and so-called “pseudo-legalese.”

But, the choices I’ve made please me.  The choices I’ve made appear to please the director and the cast. Most importantly, the comments I’ve directly received from audience members and the comments that those audience members have posted on social media, indicated that the choices I’ve made please them as well. The critic in question and I do not see eye-to-eye on these matters, and probably never will.

Ah, well.

It’s pretty rare to find a piece of writing that is universally liked. There’s always something somewhere for someone to take issue with. I read lots of things that I don’t particularly care for. Some writing and some writers I avoid entirely. What they have on offer is simply not for me. And therefore I have to accept that what I have on offer will probably not be to everyone’s taste, and that means that some people will criticize, while others may avoid my writing entirely.

Over the years, I’ve saved some quotes that address criticism, up to and including criticism that amounts to outright dislike and rejection of one’s work. These quotes give me some comfort and a certain degree of hope.

The first, by Stephen King, sums things up nicely:

“If you write, someone is going to try to make you feel bad about it.”

The next two quotes, by JRR Tolkien, appear in the foreword to “The Lord of the Rings,” and illustrate points I made earlier (I have added my own emphasis to the first quote).

“Some who have read the book, or at any rate have reviewed it, have found it boring, absurd, or contemptible; and I have no cause to complain, since I have similar opinions of their works, or of the kinds of writing that they evidently prefer.”

“It is perhaps not possible in a long tale to please everybody at all points; for I find from the letters that I have received that the passages or chapters that are to some a blemish are all by others especially approved.”

Barbara Kingsolver provides the final quote:

“This manuscript of yours that has just come back from another editor is a precious package. Don’t consider it rejected. Consider that you’ve addressed it ‘to the editor who can appreciate my work’ and it has simply come back stamped ‘Not at this address’. Just keep looking for the right address.”

As of this week, I have sent out “Sticks & Stones” to the public at large, which includes a great many self-imposed critics and editors. And it appears that:

1. my play is a tale that does not please everybody at all points, and
2. some people are returning it to me, stamped “not at this address.”

Fine. You seldom please everyone.

I can only say to the persons who are returning my story, “your address is not everyone’s address, and what is true for you is not unquestionably true for every person everywhere under all circumstances and for all time.”

For everyone else, I say, “go see “Sticks & Stones.” Form your own opinions. Talk about the play and the characters.

I think that a good play is one where, when it ends, the audience leaves the theater questioning and arguing – about the characters, about their motivations, about their choices, and about what the play ultimately means and says.

I’ve seen that happen the last two nights.

That tells me that I’ve done something right.

That is an experience that is enjoyable, and gratifying, and rewarding.

And that’s good enough for me.