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The Rice Thresher
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by JETT MCALISTER THRESHER EDITORIAL STAFF
Albee is perhaps best known for his groundbreaking Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, and has also won three Pulitzer Prizes for his plays A Delicate Balance, Seascape and Three Tall Women. His newest work, The Play About the Baby, is currently making its American premiere at the Alley Theatre. Mitchell began the discussion by asking Albee about a statement the playwright made in the 1980s that "all art is corrective." "Any art that leaves you the same as you were before you experienced it is merely decorative," Albee said. "Art should put us more in contact with the possibilities of life." For Albee, art should make people confront parts of themselves they would otherwise ignore. "I don't think that art should take us away from ourselves," he said. "Art is corrective in that it brings us in contact with those things we ignore." Albee also discussed his belief that all fields of art are related to one another. "All the arts help each other, they all feed on each other," he said. "The danger is parochialism and isolationism." To encourage interaction among artists of various disciplines, Albee said he founded an artists' retreat in New York for creative artists of all types. Albee thinks of plays and playwriting in terms of music. "When I write my plays now, I have the distinct feeling that I'm composing music," he said. Without giving away any details, he said that his next play "will be for four actors and a conductor. All the action will be conducted." In discussing his literary activities outside of the theater, Albee mentioned his failures as a novelist and as a poet. "I never felt like a poet, I just felt like someone who was writing poetry," he said. "And I'm responsible for what must be the two worst novels ever written by an American teenager." Albee teaches a playwriting workshop at the University of Houston each year. "I learn by teaching," he said. "I wouldn't teach if I didn't learn from it. I think that it's a responsibility - if you know something about a craft, you have a responsibility to share your knowledge with others." When asked about his affinity for bare, minimalist settings in his plays, Albee quipped, "I've always thought that any play that can't be done with two chairs and a light bulb has problems." Albee then discussed the differences between theater and film. "A play shouldn't be a movie," he said. "A play is a visual and a heard experience, but more importantly a heard experience. I don't like things that get in the way of hearing." Mitchell also asked Albee about his writing process, one that Albee earlier described to Mitchell as "being with play" - metaphorically pregnant with the work. "I discover that I have been thinking about a play," he said. "Not that I am thinking about it, but that I have been thinking about it. In a way, it's like I discover that I've been intellectually knocked up." Albee said he lets the work develop in his mind until he feels he truly knows the characters and knows what he wants from the play. At that point, the point when the play "wants to be written down," he said he writes it by hand. "You don't have to write every day, you just have to be a writer everyday. I wait until things are ready to be written down," Albee said. The result of Albee's intensive conceptualizing about a play is that once it is written he revises very little. "I think there's nothing wrong with doing drafts, if you don't mind losing spontaneity," he said. One audience member asked Albee about his new production, The Play About the Baby. In response, Albee told her to clear her mind of her expectations for the play. "Every time you're going to the theater, you're going to see the first play you've ever seen," he said. Albee said that if audiences don't have expectations, their reception of any play is more natural. Albee also discussed his concerns about contemporary theater, much of which he likened to popular cinema. "A lot of our audiences are getting a little too passive," he said. "A lot of our audiences don't want the boat rocked. A lot of our audiences want the theater to be empty, like TV and movies seem to be." English Professor Dennis Huston said Albee's talk was wonderful. "He talked with great knowledge, of course, but also with a wonderful wit," he said. "It was fully possible to understand how a man like him could write funny plays as well as moving ones." "He was a man who loves talking about theater and art and the process of converting somehow life to art, or making art live," Huston said. Sid Richardson College freshman L Almagor said Albee was a good speaker whose discussion revealed his intelligence. "I think he's a brilliant playwright. ... I thought he was a fabulous speaker," she said. - back - |
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