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thain
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Posted: Mon Jul 3rd, 2006 10:11 am |
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ROBERT PATRICK, a pioneer in Off-Off Broadway and gay theatre, has published over 60 plays. Samuel French called Patrick "New York's most-produced playwright of the 1960's."
In 1969 he won the "Show Business" Award for "JOYCE DYNEL," "SALVATION ARMY, and "FOG," as well as Rockefeller and N.Y.S.C.A.P. grants. His directors include Marshall Mason, Lanford Wilson, Clive Donner, and Norman Rene. Marge Champion starred on PBS in his "CAMERA OBSCURA" in 1969.
In 1974, "THE HAUNTED HOST" introduced Harvey Fierstein, who also recorded Patrick's "POUF POSITIVE" and toured Europe with it. In 1974, the international success "KENNEDY'S CHILDREN" won the Glasgow Citizens World Playwrighting Award and productions with Shelley Winters, Sally Kirkland, Kelsey Grammer, Julie Kavner, Julie Hagerty, and Anne Wedgewood
Shirley Knight won a "Tony" in it on Broadway and starred in it on CBS Cable with Jane Alexander, Lindsay Crouse, and Brad Dourif. In 1976, Marlo Thomas commissioned "MY CUP RANNETH OVER" for herself and Lily Tomlin. It became Patrick's most-produced play and was included in "The Best Short Plays of 1979."
edd: NOW, IT IS AN HONOR AND A PLEASURE TO INTRODUCE TO YOU MR. ROBERT PATRICK WHO MAY HAVE A FEW WORDS TO OPEN THE FIRST OF OUR MONTHLY GREEN ROOM SALONS. WELCOME TO OUR FORUM AND TO THE GREEN ROOM, ROBERT.
RobertPatrick: Hello, all. I'm flattered that you should attend. Please forgive any typos--I have never learned to touch-type.
edd: Robert, are you ready to take questions?
RobertPatrick: Yes, of course
edd: Rumor has it that you've been produced on every continent of the globe. Is this an urban myth?
RobertPatrick: Well, not on Antarctica so far as I know. But yes I have on the others. My first foreign production was in Ceylon in 1969---and they never paid me.
edd: what play was that?
RobertPatrick: "Camera Obscura." I did not attend. I was lucky enough to get published, which is the secret. Once a play is published, it will EVENTUALLY get produced somewhere.
Papadooloo: Robert, when do you think is the best time to try to get published. I have had mixed experiences so far with publication. And what publishers have you found best?
RobertPatrick: Anytime is the best time to get published. And of course if you can get Random House or Samuel French to publish you, that would be great.
But publish ANYWHERE that you can. The important thing is to get your play out there where people can discover it it saves you so much postage, too!
tobias: What about moving backwards in time- not flashbacks but main character for whole play- in effect revealing ending at the front and showing why throughout?
RobertPatrick: What about it? It's often been done. Priestley and Pinter and I have all done it and undoubtedly other writers as well.
tobias: Any advice on how to hold attention with a single character
RobertPatrick: Well, sure--make the character terribly interesting.
tobias: Ah.
RobertPatrick: Funny, scary, threatening, amusing, important, relevant, famous and in an interesting situation . . .
tobias: Well, I'll tear up that draft.
RobertPatrick: . . . with, perhaps, an interesting relationship to the audience. The important thing in any playwrighting is to be honest and write what grips you entertains or moves or amuses YOU.
tobias: Thanks, that is thought provoking
thain: Hi, Robert - I was 10 years old when I wrote my first play, performed in a toy-theatre cut from a cardboard box. How about you?
RobertPatrick: Oh I was writing plays my whole life and didn't know it---I drew comic strips from childhood, which i now see were really just illustrated plays. And when my sisters and I would "play like" we were movie or comic-book characters, I always insisted on directing the story.
thain: But when you first put dramatic pen to paper?
RobertPatrick: I wrote a couple of skits to be done in classes in college, but I was 27 before I ever actually wrote a play. It was called THE HAUNTED HOST. Here are pictures from forty years worth of productions of it http://hometown.aol.com/imdorothyparker/THEHAUNTEDHOSTindex.html There was no theatre where I cam from, you see, so it just didn't occur to me to write plays.
thain: were you writing before - Novels ? Poetry ?
RobertPatrick: I wrote everything, but principally songs and poetry.
thain: Beatnik ? Hippy ?
RobertPatrick: A hippy? Me? Well, I grew long hair and wore bell-bottom pants. My poetry was quiet tame--you can read a lot of it here http://hometown.aol.com/dottyprkr/myhomepage/profile.html
thain: That'll do - did you see a play that particularly inspired you ?
RobertPatrick: No, there was no one play that inspired me. I worked for three years at an underground theatre in new York and saw dozens of dozens of plays and got turned-on to theatre.
thain: Not williams ? Miller Eliot ? Fry ? Osborne?
RobertPatrick: I loved all of the above, but it was just seeing plays all the time that aroused me like watching other people have sex.
thain: artist as voyeur?
RobertPatrick: The theatre i worked at was called the Caffe Cino. It was the first underground theatre and the first gay theatre. Here is a link to the first of thirty Caffe Cino Photo Pages: http://hometown.aol.com/rbrtptrck/Dailypage1.html Each page has a link to the next.
thain: thank you I'll be quiet now.
RobertPatrick: No need to.
Paddy: About publishing...Is there a trick to losing that....maybe it's not done, maybe I should rewrite, it's written in stone if it's published....fear?
RobertPatrick: I don't know---it is not something from which I have ever suffered.
Paddy: Thanks.
RobertPatrick: I am very aggressive and very vain and always try to get my work "out there" as soon as I can. Playwrighting is not really as hard as people make it. You only need to tap into the fantasies that are always running through your brain and write them down.
Paddy: Oh, the tapping is no problem.
RobertPatrick: Once they're written down, you can neaten them up as much as you like. First you worry about getting the fantasy written down---then you worry about making it make sense--
Paddy: Well, that's the thing...I don't think about publishing at all. The writing, is very easy.
RobertPatrick: --then about whether it serves the actors, that is, gives them what they need to portray the characters believably and effectively--and then whether it's practical to produce on a stage. Well, if you're happy with your plays and don't think about publishing or producing them, then there's no problem, is there?
edd: Robert, I've sat in on one or two of your lectures. You have always emphasized the word "fantasy." That playwrighting was a matter of having a fantasy. Would you care to elaborate?
RobertPatrick: I don't know how to say it more clearly--a play is a fantasy the author imagines. We all have fantasies going on all the time. The thing is to relax and let the fantasy flow and write it down. If you worry about other things "Is it good?" "will it sell?" you'll never finish it.
edd: Tell us about the atmosphere that helped create your desire to write at the ripe old age of 27.
RobertPatrick: Well, as I said, I was working in the Caffe Cino in New York's Greenwich Village. They did a play a week after working there in many capacities for three years, I suddenly got an idea for a play so I wrote it and took it in and they did it and I got laughter and approval and attention, and liked them a lot, so I did more plays. It was, of course, a lot easier there than nowadays, when you have to submit to committees and sit through readings and workshops and critiques. I would never have started playwrighting in today's atmosphere. It seems so stifling. Lanford Wilson and Sam Shepard and John Guare and I just wrote plays, brought them in, got a date, and did them. If the audiences liked them, we got to do another.
Will: When writing a play, I can not seem to start without a clear ending in mind.
RobertPatrick: Yes, some people are like that.
Will: Most of my playwriting friends seem to be able to write without a clear direction of where they are going.
RobertPatrick: Have to have the whole form in their mind?
Will: My question is do you have a clear ending in mind when you begin a story?
RobertPatrick: Is this a problem? I mean, does it keep you from writing? I write many different ways.
Will: It can... cause I may have a good premise . . . then begin, then just seem to get stuck.
RobertPatrick: Does needing an ending in mind keep you from writing? Hmmm--okay--that's usually the result of dishonesty. You're into letting your fantasy flow. You KNOW deep inside how it ends--but you're afraid of it. Maybe you don't want people to think you're the kind of person who would have THESE thoughts. Here's a solution. Write a few historical plays. Plays where you KNOW the ending because it's what really happened. See, maybe you want to burn people at the stake, but you're afraid to admit it, so you can write about Joan of Arc and burn HER and no one will know you have such thoughts.
Will: Admittedly, my most successful play so far has an ending that was re-written. Those are some good thoughts.
RobertPatrick: The trick always is to get the fantasy flowing freely.
Will: Thank you.
RobertPatrick: Often people who are blocked are trying to wrote politically-correctly---and they don't really deep down believe or care about the subject they're writing about. So they feel no real energy or excitement about it.
Many race plays or feminist plays never get finished for that reason.
edd: Do you think, Robert, that sometimes as the characters develop they move toward an ending of their own?
RobertPatrick: Sure. Lots of times you'll start writing a play because some character entrances you and they'll surprise you as your fantasy about them flows . . .
Will: That's the experience I usually have. When I have created great characters, the story comes much more naturally.
RobertPatrick: . . . or you'll start writing just because you like the sound of some dialogue--and soon it becomes characters talking to each other. Just be honest and entertain yourself and things should go well. Not everyone will like everything you write, but you CAN'T divert mental energy to worry about THAT before it's even written. Write a lot and keep the "writing muscles" of your mind exercised and in shape. Then when that surefire commercial idea comes, you're ready to tackle it!
edd: Do you think that is one of the major pit falls of playwrights excepting that not everyone will like what they write?
RobertPatrick: Yes, THE major pitfall of ALL playwrights is thinking about ANYTHING but what the characters do and say next. You might say that the major pitfall is THINKING. A play is just a daydream, a funny one or a sad one.
Edd: Barbara Kahn has a question.
RobertPatrick: Hi, Barbara. Barbara Kahn is a very active and popular New York playwright, folks.
bkahn: Hi Robert, sorry if you already answered this, I was late because I went to a reading of off-off B’way plays.
RobertPatrick: oh, the Peculiar works program? How did it go?
bkahn: I wondered if you talked about why you retired from writing plays...if there was a particular incident or combination or what (and thanks for the intro).
RobertPatrick: (Peculiar works is a New York organization that does readings of popneer underground plays). Why i left theatre?
bkahn: Yes.
RobertPatrick: In 1990 i was carrying a couch on my back to a theatre to be used as a set piece in a play and it started to rain and I thought, "Sam Shepard doesn't carry couches on his back in the rain anymore"-- "Lanford Wilson doesn't carry couches on his back in the rain anymore"-- "John Guare for SURE doesn't carry couches on his back in the rain"--"I'm doing something wrong. Time to get out." This was after twenty-six years of steady production in New York. The theatre scene had changed to where I no longer felt comfortable with it. I'd write a play tomorrow if there was a simple, uncomplicated place to put it on. Barbara Kahn knows something about what I'm talking about.
bkahn: It is our loss, of course, since we learn so much from your work, but we (I) appreciate your advice and support whenever you are asked.
edd: Surely Hollywood at Sunset and Evan on Earth came after 1990?
RobertPatrick: Yes, I wrote Hollywood at Sunset in 1994. It wasn't produced until 2004.
bkahn: I may be looking for a couch myself next spring.
RobertPatrick: You can read Hollywood at Sunset here and see if you think theatres were crazy to leave it unproduced for ten years--
http://hometown.aol.com/rbrtptrck/Dailypage1.html Sorry--that's the wrong link. Here's "Hollywood at Sunset."
http://hometown.aol.com/rbrtptrck/myhomepage/gaylesbian.html
edd: Hollywood at Sunset is a favorite of mine. Also, Untold Decades.
Barbara, have you another question for Robert?
bkahn: They usually come to me at 3am and I IM Robert. However, I would ask what advice you would give new playwrights, facing a different theatre world, especially in NYC, than when we began.
RobertPatrick: Hmmmmmm. Put up with the reading committees and staged readings and critique sessions if you have to, but remember, NO ONE but you knows when your play is right, because only YOU know what it's supposed to do to an audience. And if you DON'T know what you want it to do, you're not REALLY writing to entertain yourself.
edd: Thank you, Barbara. Robert, we seem to have a reticent audience. Would you kindly answer the question nobody asked but you would have liked them to?
RobertPatrick: Oh, they've been great! I am very satisfied.
edd: Bravo! Our hour is up. Would you care to leave us with some parting words?
RobertPatrick: Please yourself THOROUGHLY and DEEPLY and TRULY, and your work will eventually please somebody else—because you really ARE, whether you like to admit it or not, just a person like anyone else.
Paddy: Thank you so much for your time, and wisdom, Robert.
edd: Would everyone please chime in and let your kind words ring out as applause.
bkahn: Bravo! Bravo! Bravo!
thain: Thank you, Robert.
Paddy: (((((((((((( applause ))))))))))))))))))
edd: THANK YOU, ROBERT.
Will: Thank you Robert! Yay!
~
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