The Art of the New-Play Reading: Legitimacy and the New-Play Showcase

Usually, when a new play is read to the public, actors are handed scripts on the spot; they sit down and read from them. Afterwards, members of the audience express their opinions, and everyone goes home. What is the point? Where is the artistry? Although public readings of new plays are perhaps the most significant means of disseminating and supporting new work, they are seldom seen as what they are: public performances of aesthetic texts and as important opportunities for generating a diversity of playwright voices. By under-valuing the moment of reading itself, we also under-value the plays that are read.

There are numerous venues across the country for reading new plays—series associated with universities, professional theatres, and free-standing play-development groups—but most of these institutions see the public reading primarily as a step in a process. While it is true that some plays will go on to further production, many will not; in fact, in the case of academic theatre, it is safe to say that most new plays given readings will never see production. It seems odd, then, to treat the reading as if it is not "real," but a scrimmage in preparation of things to come. Audiences are shown a "rough draft" performance and not the actual event. This lack of "realness" in new-play readings obscures their potential power.

The discipline of theatre should take the reading as seriously as it does production. A revision of what new-play development does (or is) could be instrumental in leading the way. Rather than striving for the illusive product of an improved play, new play–development programs could concern themselves with the concrete product of a quality public reading; instead of development, I urge a focus on the new-play showcase. By "showcase," I mean a performance that displays a play to its best advantage, lending legitimacy to both work and writer through the means of a simple and cost-effective kind of performance—the aesthetically pleasing reading. This type of reading provides the means to bring more work to more audiences. To be meaningful, this switch in focus from development to showcasing must represent a new paradigm of theatrical expression. The showcase paradigm of artful reading must exist as a respected alternative to production, rather than merely as a step leading to it. The showcase and production forms can co-exist and cross-pollinate, but must be independent. And while the showcase and the production use resources differently, it is not fruitful to think of one as better than the other; like film and theatre, both the showcase and the production should be seen as legitimate art.

The increased valuation of showcase is necessary on both activist and aesthetic grounds. Geography accounts, in part, for the importance of the showcase. If seen as legitimate, the showcase can help to jar the discipline from its telos¹ of production and corresponding telos of the big city. In theatre today—in and outside the universities—most things tend toward the grand production: readings that lead to workshop productions lead to full productions that lead to even bigger productions. This pattern is repeated throughout the art: for example, a small role in an acting scene leads to a small role in a workshop production, which leads to a lead role in a full production, which leads to bigger things. Each step is more and more grandiose, more expensive. And, while it seems innocent, the telos of production reproduces a hierarchy that has insidious geographical ramifications: as all things in theatre tend toward production, all things tend toward the big city. Artists move from community theatre to local theatre to regional theatre to Off-Broadway to Broadway. Where does that leave other communities? We should see the nationwide rejection of the various theatres outside large urban areas as a significant waste of opportunity.

By legitimizing an additional form of theatrical expression, the showcase paradigm would allow communities with fewer resources to view their own writers and their own reading performances as theatre that is just as...