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What I'm really involved in when I'm writing is something that no one every mentions when they see any play. Writing is like trying to make gunpowder out of chemicals. You have these words and sentences and the strange meanings and associations that are attached to the words and sentences, and you're somehow cooking these things all up so that they suddenly explode and have a powerful effect. That's what absorbs me from day to day in writing a play.
-- Wallace Shawn
Sarah Schulman at the
opening of her play "Carson McCullers" with Enid
Graham
Q: Your plays center on relationships, on the socio-personal dynamics of characters who are either lovers, in love, estranged, or familial in some way. In some ways, though always stated, the plays are about family, and the ways in which we form/make family and community. How much of this focus is conscious on your part? And how much is simply where you are now as a writer?
Christopher Shinn: My plays always begin with ideas, debates, dialectics -- never with characters or relationships. This mirrors who I am as a person -- my own pain begins as a very intellectual idea ("Gay culture is threatened by idiosyncratic expression!") and ends as very personal emotion ("My boyfriend is mean to me!"). In between is the journey from the political to the personal (and back again). So although all my plays explore people in relationship to one another, and themselves, they begin with my thinking about economic systems, homophobia, racism, etc.
I am fascinated by the various tragedies of individualism - as created by an appalling capitalist system and, to a lesser extent, by our inevitable psychological and biological separateness. It is very moving -- and pathetic -- to watch people strive to form communities larger than themselves, whether that be a couple, a family, or a larger group -- as they struggle against an overwhelming and nihilistic economic system, and the indignities of psychic and physical dependency.
Q: You studied writing with Tony Kushner, David Greenspan, and Maria Irene Fornes, among others. All formidable writing presences themselves! And all of course very different from each other. What lessons did you learn? What stays with you over time as you write? And do you ever write with one of them in mind as your first reader?
CS: I read my training this way: Tony's teaching honored but also critiqued Irene's, while David's critiqued them both. Tony admired Irene's conviction that great writing came from the unconscious but he ultimately felt that truly great writing engaged clearly with politics and history, and that the unconscious couldn't be trusted to fairly or competently engage with those things. David spoke about drama through the lens of morality -- how characters make choices and how those choices affect their lives. He felt moral choices overrode psychological and social imperatives, which in a way linked his teachings to the religious beginnings of drama.
I don't write with any one approach in mind but I do enjoy the challenge -- ultimately impossible but still very fruitful -- of trying to integrate all three approaches. I was very lucky to study with three of the most interesting and vital playwrights our theatre has ever produced, and all in a short, intense period of time -- so no one approach has a claim over me, but they all have a clear and continuing impact on my writing.
Q: Do you feel a part of a community of writers? A kinship with other writers, living or dead? Do you have mental dialogues or actual dialogues with writers about the work and its making?
CS: I wish I felt more a part of a community. Playwrights aren't always particularly kind to one another. There is a lot of envy. Even with my success I still have it, and when I remember the jealousy (often disguised as "opinion") that infected me back in the day, I am ashamed of myself.
I wish playwrights had a kind of union -- I wish we could bargain and bemoan and stand up for another. For instance, how great would it be if a hundred of us got together in a public way and said, "Mr. Artistic Director of So-and-So theatre, your way of handling playwrights is often humiliating to them. Our members have experienced all kinds of offenses at the hands of your artistic staff." Then the theatre might be pressured to do something to change its ways. The way it is now, playwrights exist in isolation, and when they are mistreated by a theatre, they have nowhere to turn. They certainly won't criticize the theatre because they are afraid of alienating them. Having a kind of group could de-personalize these issues and make for a more pleasant career. Something like the Dramatists Guild is too big to do work like this, while a group like New Dramatists is too small to hold such authority. Something in the middle might be able to have a real voice in changing the free-for-all that is what playwrights can expect as they struggle to find a home in the world.
-- from an interview published in the Dramatists Guild Newsletter
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