by Robin Galen Kilrain~

Playwrights at Work: The Paris Review Interviews George Plimpton, editor

You’re familiar with their names: Beckett, Wasserstein, Shepard, Hellman, Albee and Pinter among them. And probably with the disparate styles of their plays, as well. The hows and whys leading to those end products, however, may have eluded you. Until now. It’s just such inside information that provides the basis for Playwrights at Work: The Paris Review. Part of that journal’s Writers at Work series, the book presents interviews, conducted by an assortment of querists from various theatrical and literary backgrounds, with 15 name dramatists. The resulting Q & As coalesce into an intriguing anthology of musings about both the art and the craft of writing for the stage — with whiffs of other personal preferences around the edges.

George Plimpton, founder of The Paris Review among numerous other claims to fame, questions August Wilson and serves as editor of the collection. The book’s introduction is supplied by John Lahr, who also examines the inner workings of David Mamet’s plays. James Lipton, no stranger to interviewing (undoubtedly, “What is your favorite curse word?” rings a bell), does the honors with Neil Simon. Laurie Winer, whom some of you may remember as a Los Angeles Times theatre critic in the mid-1990s, probes Wendy Wasserstein’s playwriting tics and tendencies.

Some of the other interviewers are less well known, but all have the skills to diligently delve — and to unearth fascinating responses, even when not in a strictly inquiry-and-reply format. The Beckett piece takes the form of an article, having been written after years of meetings, as friends, between the two writers. (Beckett’s renowned dislike of interviews led him to decline repeated requests for one by The Paris Review.) And Tennessee Williams’ thoughts are organized by topic, some of them a bit off the playwriting path: Cruising, My Funniest Adventure, and Death are amid that latter group.

Explorations indeed run across the board, and across the decades. From quintessential queries to tinier tattles, the book is dense with revelations. Opinions on the length of a play’s “gestation period,” the importance of the curtain line and the influence — or lack thereof — of critics crop up. Know who was nominated several times for a Nobel Prize and the unusual reason he felt he didn’t win? Or why George and Martha were chosen as names for the infamous sparing couple? Or which comedy scribe considers his “weakest suit” as a writer a blue one? You will, thanks to these conversations conducted between 1956 (Thornton Wilder) and 1999 (both August Wilson and a second sit-down with Arthur Miller).

Photos of the playwrights help complete their overall “portraits,” as do a number of reproductions of scribbled-upon manuscript pages, which afford an additional level of intimacy. A photograph of Arthur Miller building a platform beneath his desk appears in the same book as a page from an in-progress copy of August Wilson’s King Hedley III. Talk about “across the board”!

All these glimpses into the minds and methods of this group of writers should make watching, or simply reading, their work a bit more interesting the next time around. Everything old made new again. Or, at least freshly illuminated, informed by an abundance of surprising, inspiring and sometimes just plain amusing confessions and anecdotes.