Wednesday, January 20, 2010

How Do We Get More Masterpieces? - Parabasis:

I was strolling through wikipedia today, and it's worth noting how many plays many beloved playwrights had written and produced before their masterpieces. Because we ignore the first half of the saying "took my whole life to be an overnight success," this gets obfuscated. Yes, there are some Young Geniuses... but there are a lot of Old Masters. My favorite example of this being Tony Kushner, who people seem to think wrote Bright Room and then Angels but had, in fact, written (and produced) thirteen plays prior to writing Millennium Approaches. Sam Shepard had over a decade of film and theatre writing experience prior to Buried Child. Tennessee Williams wrote eight plays before Streetcar. Eugene O'Neill had been writing for twenty years before he wrote most of what is considered his major works (and don't get me started on Moliere or Shakespeare).