As long as we continue to reward plays that wallow in angst and have nothing to offer in the way of good, compelling storytelling, playwrights will have little incentive to challenge themselves to become better dramatic writers. Unfortunately, a lot of new plays which I have experienced -- including some highly lauded works -- have tended to disappoint me because the authors have assumed that their personal feelings about something are sufficient justification for a play. I respectfully disagree with that premise. A play is not an essay. It is not a soapbox on which the playwright stands to expound opinions and emotions, no matter how vigorously felt. A play is a dramatic representation of life, and life is not merely feelings. It is actions, as well.

All too often, I find myself watching a play in which the characters aren't doing anything. They talk endlessly about their pain and suffering as they sit around the kitchen table. But that misery isn't dramatized. We never get to see it; we only hear about it. This is frustrating to me because, from my standpoint, it does a disservice to the playwright by turning the characters into whiners whose opinions (i.e. the author's opinions) become obfuscated by self-pity. And even more frustrating is the fact that these characters just don't do anything about their problems. Lamentation is boring when it doesn't precipitate a course of action, and it is that course of action which more often than not is the element which draws me into the story and gives me a rooting interest in its outcome.

I have a personal philosophy about playwriting which I like to call my "Window Philosophy." The theory behind it is that, when you write a play or other dramatic work, you are, in essence, calling your audience over to a window and coaxing them to peek inside. Within the vast majority of any community's windows (I'd guess at least 99 percent), the activities going on are the rather mundane tasks of everyday life. That isn't to say that the people inside are dull people or that they don't possess any of a number of personal conflicts that constitute high drama. It's just that most of the time people are engaged in not-so-compelling-to-watch activities such as reading a newspaper, drinking coffee, cleaning the bathroom or the like. When you, as an author, call me over to peek inside a window, it should be to witness something out of the ordinary -- that one percent of the windows where people are actively engaged in some highly dramatic happening. These are the moments I w! ant to see on stage, not just the aftermath and its woe. Call me over to where the "action" is. ....*END