I'm a playwright and it's great to read something interesting about the form. No one writes about it (except you) so thank you so much. I was astonished and interested by the idea that knowing the right people might be the most straightforward path to success. I don't think you're wrong, especially nowadays and perhaps in the U.S. My success was because I wrote plays like this young woman's hole play that felt alive when they were performed by great actors. Something zippy and real and visceral translated to the audience. So they came to see the next one. And that did the same thing, and so on. I learnt how to tell a story in 3D and although the plays are mostly all published and that's why they are done around the world, the actual making of me, the playwright was done by sitting in the audience and feeling where and when the audience seemed to suspend disbelief and get inside the moment. The key to becoming a playwright is creating the feeling for the audience: "What will happen? Will the girl be swallowed by the hole? Will she get to the party? I don't want anything bad to happen to her! What if I was in the city and a hole appeared like that?" That's the trick to being a storyteller in any form, but perhaps especially in writing theatre.
Or perhaps even to simply keep a record of what you did with a small, measurable set of copies that you don't have to store in a warehouse or (God forbid) a Brooklyn apartment forever.
After all, there's a very well-known twentieth century author who finished his career writing four plays and died before he wrote more. Of all the things most people read by him, they don't read the plays because they almost never know they exist. Even supposed scholars specializing in the man or familiar with his work. And we barely preserved those, but they're some of the best things he wrote.
Why not also at the start of a career?
Who cares what comes next. Not everything has to be some stepping stone, it can just be a snapshot of a great ice cream cone. In a way, that's what even the best theater is: tonight's show will never, ever happen again. I'm glad for the present, that's enough.
The dialogue seems annoying but with plays you have to see what the actors can do. These sound conceptually interesting, but I'm a bit tired of the glut of young, dumb people in contemporary literature. It's a such a youth-obsessed culture. And young people do have vitality and sex appeal, but they are also often naive, vapid, and childish. I don't think the next major literary movement will be "Valley Girl accented" (even though I loved "Licorice Pizza").
> It feels both true and aspirational: this is how young people are, and it’s how they should be.
I'm very tired of aspirational media generally, and I think it makes young people (especially young women) miserable to be endlessly told, "You must be hot and hedonistic and carefree all the time or you are not living up to your potential."
Yeah, I might have a longer response to Naomi re: this collection, but I think this gets at what I find so distasteful about it -- there is something very obvious about the way she is playing the ditz. Very Sabrina-Carpenter-is-man's-best-friend-wink-wink. I know this is a mean thing to say about a writer but one of the plays in this collection (which Naomi has quite kindly declined to mention) is written from the perspective of someone performing fellatio, ffs.
I do not think Ms Martinez is talentless but bluntly, I do not really see how she maintains a career when she can't coast on being young and hot. The next Annie Baker? Get real. The next Honor Levy, on the other hand...
This sounds great. And fun. And OF COURSE the brightest new American playwright talent is a twenty-year-old girl from Florida and is writing about parking lots !!! Lol. What fun for you to discover a new talent that has not yet surfaced. I had a similar experience finding Annie Baker. She was the playwright it-Girl from like ten years ago, and she has that same freshness. Every word seems radiant. She eventually won a Pulitzer Prize. The interesting thing about playwrights they can be the best in the world and still nobody knows who they are, except for a tiny group of playwriting fans . . . . thanks for spending the time and 23 dollars finding her and alerting the rest of us!
As someone who lived in downtown NYC during Cookie Mueller’s 1980s heyday, I’m fascinated by her recent rediscovery. The autobiographical short stories exude raw talent, her voice is captivating, sharp observant and funny. But she remains a rough diamond of a writer, her tragic early death and various sidetracks during her eventful life prevented her from developing. I’d be interested to read your take on her published work. Here’s a thing I wrote about the Semiotext(e) collection. https://markcoleman57.medium.com/book-review-paging-dr-mueller-e972e403917a
One of your best strengths as a commentator and writer on here is being willing to admit when you don't know about or understand something. It's genuinely refreshing
So cool to find a scene going on that is new and cool. There is always something good going on, and it is great when you find it. It would be cool if she took the hole-in-the-parking-lot play on the road. She could probably put it on in New York, and other places with an indie theatre scene.
For a while I read mostly poetry, and to me the poetic experience of reading into blank space seems to transfer well into reading play scripts—where more is required of you the reader in order to bring the text to life. A lot of what I’ve read are the works of the more classic playwrights—Chekhov, Beckett, Harold Pinter—but a little while ago I also happened upon Annie Baker, who is currently rising in acclaim (she just directed her first film, Janet Planet, which is truly delightful!) and whose scripts I quite enjoy for their music-like movement from monologues to silences. Like Maya Martinez, Baker’s concerned with the young, and although there’s a wayward quality to her characters which can dip into nihilism, it’s always balanced by some enduring hope in life beyond the merely cliche. I’ll admit the phrase “modern-day Chekhov” is way overused, but there’s something so essentially Chekhovian about the comedy and tragedy she finds in the quotidian.
Agreed, a tipoff led to my non fiction book deal, but the fact that I had gone to the same in person nonprofit event as the editor was probably just as important.
An in person meeting with another editor led to some more publishing in magazines, again because of real life activity.
Such an interesting, honest, provocative piece. This is easy to say if you’re lucky and not trying to scrape by, but I do like to think creative work is its own reward. Looking forward to your book—I bet the deadline will work out fine. I can’t recall how I came across your Substack, but so glad I did, even before I saw the bit about your contest. That will be something—good for you and your judges for taking it on.
Oh no, never read the introduction! They're always so bad, you are not a baby bird you don't need pre-digestion
Amen
I'm a playwright and it's great to read something interesting about the form. No one writes about it (except you) so thank you so much. I was astonished and interested by the idea that knowing the right people might be the most straightforward path to success. I don't think you're wrong, especially nowadays and perhaps in the U.S. My success was because I wrote plays like this young woman's hole play that felt alive when they were performed by great actors. Something zippy and real and visceral translated to the audience. So they came to see the next one. And that did the same thing, and so on. I learnt how to tell a story in 3D and although the plays are mostly all published and that's why they are done around the world, the actual making of me, the playwright was done by sitting in the audience and feeling where and when the audience seemed to suspend disbelief and get inside the moment. The key to becoming a playwright is creating the feeling for the audience: "What will happen? Will the girl be swallowed by the hole? Will she get to the party? I don't want anything bad to happen to her! What if I was in the city and a hole appeared like that?" That's the trick to being a storyteller in any form, but perhaps especially in writing theatre.
Or perhaps even to simply keep a record of what you did with a small, measurable set of copies that you don't have to store in a warehouse or (God forbid) a Brooklyn apartment forever.
After all, there's a very well-known twentieth century author who finished his career writing four plays and died before he wrote more. Of all the things most people read by him, they don't read the plays because they almost never know they exist. Even supposed scholars specializing in the man or familiar with his work. And we barely preserved those, but they're some of the best things he wrote.
Why not also at the start of a career?
Who cares what comes next. Not everything has to be some stepping stone, it can just be a snapshot of a great ice cream cone. In a way, that's what even the best theater is: tonight's show will never, ever happen again. I'm glad for the present, that's enough.
The dialogue seems annoying but with plays you have to see what the actors can do. These sound conceptually interesting, but I'm a bit tired of the glut of young, dumb people in contemporary literature. It's a such a youth-obsessed culture. And young people do have vitality and sex appeal, but they are also often naive, vapid, and childish. I don't think the next major literary movement will be "Valley Girl accented" (even though I loved "Licorice Pizza").
> It feels both true and aspirational: this is how young people are, and it’s how they should be.
I'm very tired of aspirational media generally, and I think it makes young people (especially young women) miserable to be endlessly told, "You must be hot and hedonistic and carefree all the time or you are not living up to your potential."
Yeah, I might have a longer response to Naomi re: this collection, but I think this gets at what I find so distasteful about it -- there is something very obvious about the way she is playing the ditz. Very Sabrina-Carpenter-is-man's-best-friend-wink-wink. I know this is a mean thing to say about a writer but one of the plays in this collection (which Naomi has quite kindly declined to mention) is written from the perspective of someone performing fellatio, ffs.
I do not think Ms Martinez is talentless but bluntly, I do not really see how she maintains a career when she can't coast on being young and hot. The next Annie Baker? Get real. The next Honor Levy, on the other hand...
This sounds great. And fun. And OF COURSE the brightest new American playwright talent is a twenty-year-old girl from Florida and is writing about parking lots !!! Lol. What fun for you to discover a new talent that has not yet surfaced. I had a similar experience finding Annie Baker. She was the playwright it-Girl from like ten years ago, and she has that same freshness. Every word seems radiant. She eventually won a Pulitzer Prize. The interesting thing about playwrights they can be the best in the world and still nobody knows who they are, except for a tiny group of playwriting fans . . . . thanks for spending the time and 23 dollars finding her and alerting the rest of us!
As someone who lived in downtown NYC during Cookie Mueller’s 1980s heyday, I’m fascinated by her recent rediscovery. The autobiographical short stories exude raw talent, her voice is captivating, sharp observant and funny. But she remains a rough diamond of a writer, her tragic early death and various sidetracks during her eventful life prevented her from developing. I’d be interested to read your take on her published work. Here’s a thing I wrote about the Semiotext(e) collection. https://markcoleman57.medium.com/book-review-paging-dr-mueller-e972e403917a
Everything about this is fantastic. Good luck with the deadline.
Nan Goldin’s work introduced me to Cookie Mueller. CM populates so many of Goldin’s portraits, all heartbreaking.
You’ve got this book thing! Stress only as much as needed to get it done. Good stress! We will be here.
Off-topic, but the London Review of Books has a pretty cutting review of Ocean Vuong's work: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n11/tom-crewe/my-hands-in-my-face
Really put me in mind of your 2023 piece: https://www.woman-of-letters.com/p/ridiculoud-extended-metaphors-are
One of your best strengths as a commentator and writer on here is being willing to admit when you don't know about or understand something. It's genuinely refreshing
I’m a fan of PUP, especially their math books. The title of your book sounds super interesting. I’ll look forward to its eventual printing!
So cool to find a scene going on that is new and cool. There is always something good going on, and it is great when you find it. It would be cool if she took the hole-in-the-parking-lot play on the road. She could probably put it on in New York, and other places with an indie theatre scene.
For a while I read mostly poetry, and to me the poetic experience of reading into blank space seems to transfer well into reading play scripts—where more is required of you the reader in order to bring the text to life. A lot of what I’ve read are the works of the more classic playwrights—Chekhov, Beckett, Harold Pinter—but a little while ago I also happened upon Annie Baker, who is currently rising in acclaim (she just directed her first film, Janet Planet, which is truly delightful!) and whose scripts I quite enjoy for their music-like movement from monologues to silences. Like Maya Martinez, Baker’s concerned with the young, and although there’s a wayward quality to her characters which can dip into nihilism, it’s always balanced by some enduring hope in life beyond the merely cliche. I’ll admit the phrase “modern-day Chekhov” is way overused, but there’s something so essentially Chekhovian about the comedy and tragedy she finds in the quotidian.
“Usually don’t see it online.”
Agreed, a tipoff led to my non fiction book deal, but the fact that I had gone to the same in person nonprofit event as the editor was probably just as important.
An in person meeting with another editor led to some more publishing in magazines, again because of real life activity.
Such an interesting, honest, provocative piece. This is easy to say if you’re lucky and not trying to scrape by, but I do like to think creative work is its own reward. Looking forward to your book—I bet the deadline will work out fine. I can’t recall how I came across your Substack, but so glad I did, even before I saw the bit about your contest. That will be something—good for you and your judges for taking it on.