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Playwright at Work
A book about playwriting by the writer of "Old Acquaintance" (made into a Bette Davis movie), the stage version of "I Remember Mama" and "Bell, Book and Candle."
210 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1953
About the author
John van Druten
70 books14 followersJohn William Van Druten was an English playwright and theatre director. He began his career in London, and later moved to America, becoming a U.S. citizen. He was known for his plays of witty and urbane observations of contemporary life and society.
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March 4, 2015
I first read this book in the sixties, I'd think, when it was relatively new.
Published in 1953, this book naturally looks at playwriting from the point of view of someone whose work was written and performed in the first half of the 20th century. You might expect the ideas and approaches van Druten takes to be well out of date. Certainly many of the plays he discusses have mostly been forgotten - including his own - and some of the approaches to playwriting have been superseded by innovations he could only look forward to without actually knowing what they'd be. Furthermore while we mostly avoid the three-act formula in the theatre (the movies cling to it, it seems, when you read any book on screenplay writing), he still presents many good points about technique, about motivation for writing, and about the sheer hard work that is required in constructing a play. The chapters on characters and dialogue are barely dated, and remain more than helpful. Even the discussion of the unities, something that might seem to have been left behind by modern playwrights, is still of value.
His discussions of plays and writers he knew well are also valuable, although it's unlikely many modern readers will be familiar with Pinero, Granville Barker, Emlyn Williams, Thornton Wilder and the like. Nevertheless, these playwrights have plenty to teach (or offer us things to avoid). And the great playwrights - such as Ibsen, Chekhov, George Bernard Shaw - still provide plenty of examples of how to do things well.
He has good things to say about how ephemeral plays can be, but then reminds us that performances are even more ephemeral: the song a great singer or orchestra performed yesterday, or the wonderful performance an actor gave last year. In spite of our ability to record practically everything in life, enormous quantities of art vanish as soon as they're done. (Most plays I've been in have no record beyond a few photos of the actors, and one or two don't even have those.) His point is that worrying about whether you'll be remembered long even in your own lifetime isn't why we write or perform. We do it because it's of value at the time. (I'd give a page reference for the excellent discussion he has on this, but the index seems to have been done by someone who focused more on the first part of the book than the second!)
No doubt there are more modern books that are similar to van Druten's, but surprisingly, it isn't as dated as you'd think. And I think even actors would find some good things in it.
Published in 1953, this book naturally looks at playwriting from the point of view of someone whose work was written and performed in the first half of the 20th century. You might expect the ideas and approaches van Druten takes to be well out of date. Certainly many of the plays he discusses have mostly been forgotten - including his own - and some of the approaches to playwriting have been superseded by innovations he could only look forward to without actually knowing what they'd be. Furthermore while we mostly avoid the three-act formula in the theatre (the movies cling to it, it seems, when you read any book on screenplay writing), he still presents many good points about technique, about motivation for writing, and about the sheer hard work that is required in constructing a play. The chapters on characters and dialogue are barely dated, and remain more than helpful. Even the discussion of the unities, something that might seem to have been left behind by modern playwrights, is still of value.
His discussions of plays and writers he knew well are also valuable, although it's unlikely many modern readers will be familiar with Pinero, Granville Barker, Emlyn Williams, Thornton Wilder and the like. Nevertheless, these playwrights have plenty to teach (or offer us things to avoid). And the great playwrights - such as Ibsen, Chekhov, George Bernard Shaw - still provide plenty of examples of how to do things well.
He has good things to say about how ephemeral plays can be, but then reminds us that performances are even more ephemeral: the song a great singer or orchestra performed yesterday, or the wonderful performance an actor gave last year. In spite of our ability to record practically everything in life, enormous quantities of art vanish as soon as they're done. (Most plays I've been in have no record beyond a few photos of the actors, and one or two don't even have those.) His point is that worrying about whether you'll be remembered long even in your own lifetime isn't why we write or perform. We do it because it's of value at the time. (I'd give a page reference for the excellent discussion he has on this, but the index seems to have been done by someone who focused more on the first part of the book than the second!)
No doubt there are more modern books that are similar to van Druten's, but surprisingly, it isn't as dated as you'd think. And I think even actors would find some good things in it.
Displaying 1 of 1 review