Word: playwrighting
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
UNLIKE THE many great playwright who never lived to see posterity linker with their masterpieces. Samuel Beckett is paying the price for being the living author of a classic...
ALTHOUGH BECKETT'S representatives intervened at the wrong time, with the wrong people, and in the wrong manner, they did raise an important issue. How far should a playwright's control of his work extend? Some states and some European countries have laws to protect the integrity of a playwright's creations and reputation. But theater is a collaborative art which ends on the stage, not on the page; the playwright rarely has the last word. For those playwrights who know more about literature than the facts of life in a theater, this is often a blessing...
...others, like Beckett, it seems to be a curse; not only is theater a collaboration, but to license a theatrical production is, in effect, to license interpretation. Verbatim fidelity to the text exists only in the playwright's imagination, and often not even there, Practical and artistic considerations invariably necessitate deviations from the printed page...
Although this protection leaves authors at the mercy of both actors and directors, the directors pace the biggest danger because, by changing the setting, pace and tone, they can disguise the very nature of the play. In the playwright's mind, there is a point, undoubtedly difficult to define, at which such changes over to be direction and become perversion...
FROM THOSE grossly distorted productions which misrepresent his work and endanger his reputation a playwright does deserve protection. But the only way to ensure this protection is to state in acceptable limits of interpretation explicitly in contracts with literary agents. If Samuel Beckett felt so strongly about the setting of Endgame, the licensing agent could then have warned the ART of Beckett's criterin and prevented an unnecessary controversy...