A response to “The Real Reasons Playwrights Fail” by Mat Smart

When I read this post on the HowlRound blog this morning, I was seeing red. RED. I was the proverbial bull and Mat Smart was waving the red flag. As an “emerging” (that word never sits exactly right with me…emerging from what exactly? A hole in the ground? My own ass?) female playwright currently in the thick of semi-self producing her own show, to be told right off the bat that because I am not fully “emerged” I must be “fucking lazy” was enough to send me on a Twitter commenting frenzy that involved me inadvertently offending white males by implying that white male opinions were invalid. Sorry, white men. I love you guys, seriously. That isn’t what I meant. I feel compelled to explain myself a bit. I DID lose my temper, as did many of my fellow playwrights this morning. People were upset.

Here’s why.

The first thing in Mr. Smart’s post that annoyed me was this:

I am not qualified to speak for all “emerging” playwrights because I am a straight, white male, and I don’t have a trust fund. I live on the $19,000 to $31,000 I make per year from a combination of playwriting royalties, commissions, fellowships, teaching, and working part-time at a real estate company. I am not qualified to speak for all “emerging” playwrights because I like to write linear plays with dramatic action and a climax where the protagonist makes a decision that changes him or her irrevocably. The diversity of we—the “emerging” playwright—is vast and necessary and I am unable to speak for all of us. However, this is what I believe, with all due respect to my peers:
our general laziness,
inability to commit,
defeatist attitude,
lack of talent,
and unwillingness to truly listen and change—
are the real reasons we—the “emerging” playwright—fail.

Follow me down this rabbit hole of subtext here, won’t you?

I can’t help but find it incredibly irritating when straight, white men who are being produced on a fairly regular basis summarily dismiss the concerns, fears and frustrations of minority playwrights in one fell swoop (“minority”, for ease of simplicity here, can mean women, people of color, LGBT, or some combination of those and other variables). While the fact that Mr. Smart is a white straight male does not invalidate his opinion, the fact that he brought up his race and orientation at all makes it matter in the context of the conversation. I might have not been so put off had he not mentioned that. You cannot tell me you’re a straight white male who gets produced/paid and then poo-poo my concerns as a female playwright and THEN tell me it’s because I’m lazy and untalented. Don’t do that. That might not have been how he meant to come off, but that’s what happened.

Also, if you’re going to accuse us of “failing”, please define “failure”. What does failure mean, in this post? Not getting produced? Not getting paid? I know a lot of folks in that boat, but I certainly wouldn’t call them “failures”.

Let me extract this one sentence from that chunk that really got my goat:

I am not qualified to speak for all “emerging” playwrights because I like to write linear plays with dramatic action and a climax where the protagonist makes a decision that changes him or her irrevocably.

Uh….okay? Congratulations? Your plays are awesome? I am not really sure exactly what he’s trying to say with the linear plays thing, except that it comes off as a passive-aggressive knock to plays that…aren’t that. Additionally, if he can’t speak for ALL emerging playwrights, then where does he get off telling us we’re lazy (“fucking lazy”, actually), untalented, defeatist, unwilling to change, and failures? Failures! What a nasty, nasty word.

I’m going to agree with Mat Smart that a lot of us get discouraged easily and have a defeatist attitude. This is absolutely true. After years and years of rejection, struggle, and disappointment, it is sometimes hard to feel like you can overcome the obstacles set before you. It is true that many of us feel like the system is broken. And why? Because, in many ways, it is. Mr. Smart talks about $19-31K as if that income for a playwright is tenable. Perhaps that income level is okay in some places, but in most major cities, that’s barely scraping by. Forget having a family. Forget having savings. Forget traveling. I’m sorry, but if that’s what “successful” playwrights are being paid, that’s an indicator of a broken system. That’s a major, major flaw in the institution. Most of us have a problem with the institution and not with individual producers or artistic directors. We know there are only a few slots and a lot of us. We get that.

We don’t want to be defeatist. Most of us try really hard not to be. It’s just hard not to be defeatist when you keep getting defeated.

Mr. Smart also asserts the following:

And as long as it doesn’t make you too desperate or crazy—there is a nobility in this endurance, in this brand of foolishness. There must be a sense that “I am going down with the ship.” And frankly, it is a commitment that I don’t see many emerging playwrights make.

There is no nobility in starving. There is no nobility in futility. Romanticizing the struggle and the heartache isn’t something for people who have other things in their life besides writing. Some people have families. Some people want to travel and make time for their friends. We shouldn’t have to choose between having a career and having a life. A lot of us have to work full time jobs in order to make ends meet and can’t write every day because we have children to feed or sick parents or are promoting our next show. In my opinion, that is 100% okay.

It also seems a bit stupid to go down with a ship that most of us aren’t even on.

Can we work harder? Sure. We can all work harder. I meant to work on a play last weekend, but wound up drinking a glass of wine and watching Jersey Shore and then going out to dinner with my husband. And why? Because I was really freaking tired and I like spending time with my husband. Does that negate the 80 hours I put in between day job and rehearsal last week?

I can say with almost 100% confidence that nearly every single playwright I know works their ass off at theater. I hope he doesn’t get mad at me for saying this, but my best friend and fellow playwright Alejandro Morales gets up at 6:00 am every fucking day and writes for at least an hour. He shows up and does the work. He’s one of the most talented people I know. He is the co-artistic director of a theater company and he has self produced most of his career. He still has not been produced by a major theater. Is that because he’s “fucking lazy”? No. Is that because he’s not committed? No. Is that because he is entitled? No. Is that because he is untalented? Hell no. So…why? There’s a lot of reasons that this could be, and some of them may even be his fault, but none of them are simple. Has he “failed”? We have no way of answering this. Putting the onus of blame on the playwright is oversimplifying a problem larger than any of us are capable of articulating.

Then, there’s the talent issue. Mr. Smart asserts that some writers get produced simply because they are more talented than everyone else. While that may be true in some cases, it certainly is not in all. I can name a few playwrights who get produced regularly who I don’t think are exceptionally talented. In fact, I think some of them are bad. It is incredibly naïve and wrongheaded to say that talent will ensure success OR failure. Luck has an awful lot to do with it, as does perseverance. Are there bad playwrights? Yes. Of course there are. But who is telling them they are bad? Who is to say they can’t get better with time? When all writers are ever told is “stick with it”, how are you supposed to know? We are not supposed to look at rejection as an indicator of our talent. We are specifically told not to do that. So, pray tell, how are we supposed to know if we suck?

I expect this rant will piss some of my peers off, but it comes from the place of hoping we can lift each other up.

Well, Mr. Smart – let me address you directly now. I agree with some of the points you made. I don’t think you’re 100% wrong, because no one really is when talking about something this complex. I’ve got to call you out on one thing, though; you didn’t write this piece hoping to lift anyone up. Give me a break. You wrote this to get a reaction. You sat on your high horse and condescended to a really large group of people who are already feeling pretty kicked around. Don’t bullshit a bullshitter. Your Google Alert is going to be going off for days, and even weeks. An artistic director might be more apt to read your play now because they remember who you are. You have a lot to gain from what you posted, and a lot of people will agree with you. I suppose I can say that you started a conversation, and conversation is never bad, so here I am taking the high road. Thanks for getting us talking. I do hope that you can see the problem with your tone in this piece.

I also wonder, Mr. Smart, what this piece would have been like had you done everything right and still “failed”, as so many do.