In Their Own Words: Contemporary American Playwrights by David Savran (review)

Book Reviews banishment of actor/audience barriers, the Handke-like assaults on the audience and Beckettian reflexivity of language. Throughout the book Roudan6 successfully argues for Albee's optimism. He quotes the playwright on his "plays unpleasant": If I were a pessimist I wouldn't bother to write. Writing itself, taking the trouble, communicating with your fellow human beings is valuable, that's an act of optimism. There's a positive force within the struggle. Serious plays are unpleasant in one way . - -. tiranother. Roudane moves freely and gracefully in and around his thorough research with a confident familiarity with the mass of secondary criticism on Albee and a rewarding intimacy with the plays. He also offers-thorough primary and secondary bibliographies and useful biographical material. Understanding Edward Albee will prove a valuable addition to academic libraries. LYNDA HART, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA DAVIDSAVRAN. In TheirOwII Words: COnlemporaryAmericanPlaywrighls. New York: Theatre Communications Group 1988. Pp. 320, illustrated. $24.95; $12.95 (PB). David Savran offers 20 original interviews with playwrights who met with him between fall 1986 and early spring 1987 in such places as the Ibiza Restaurant, the Royal Pacific Motor Inn, and studios, lofts, and townhouses in the Big Apple. Interviewing playwrights who "have written a significant body of work (as opposed to one widely perfonned play) and [who] remain at the peak oftheir creative activity," Savran includes five women (Maria Irene Fornes, Joan Holden, Emily Mann, Marsha Norman, and Megan Terry), two blacks (Charles Fuller and August Wilson), one Asian American (David Hwang), two Hispanics, (Luis Valdez and Fornes - 1 give her double billing), and eleven white males (Lee Breuer, Christopher Durang, Richard Foreman, John Guare, David Marnel, Richard Nelson, David Rabe, Wallace Shawn, Stephen Sondheim. Michael Weller, and Lanford Wilson). Sam Shepard, alas, refused Savran's invitation. Some may quarrel with Savran for n'ot choosing more women, especially black women (Beth Henley, Karen Malpede, Adrienne Kennedy, Ntozake Shange) or survivors from the 1960s (Ronald Ribman, Terrence McNally), but on balance Savran satisfyingly fulfills his goal of presenting playwrights who "personify the diversity of American theatre." Each interview. Savran tells us, lasted approximately 90 minutes, and "all were edited and cut, some quite heavily." Obviously Savran did not regard the transcript as an inviolate text but, like a director. reshaped the playwright's initial, no doubt rough, scripts, To each playwright Savran posed a series of "general" questions on early Book Reviews experiences in the theatre, training. influences, working practices, "attitudes toward the critics," views of the American theatre, and "goals for the future." The playwrights' answers about the critics grow stale, but the other questions frequently elicit entenaining and illuminating responses. Savran, though, is at his best when he breaks away from these predetennined queries to ask follow~up questions or leads the playwrights into interpretations of their own works. Memorable examples are Rabe on his affection for Eddie in Hurlyburly, Nonnan on foreign productions of 'night Mother (in Scandinavia "the daughters are Valkyries towering over those little Mamas"), or Durang on Sister Mary Ignatius ("Mother Teresa doesn't belong in this play"), Savran gets each playwright to define his/her art, sometimes in one or two sentences. Whether this laconic self~analysis is the result of Savran's editing or his talent as an interviewer I do not know, but he does achieve quotable results. America's leading documentary playwright, Mann observes "1 love courtrooms." Terry's pronouncement "I am all feeling" contrasts with Fornes's "I don't romanticize pain." August Wilson holds that "All my plays are political" without being didactic. Weller's sense of theatre ("When. go to the theatre now. I get antsy at small plays. IfI see there are three people in the cast, [go 'Oh Lord.' What if[ don't like them?") rebuts Nonnan's ("[ really believe that plays can be about one person. I've tried ... to break this rule and make plays about two people or about groups. The audience will subvert this every time.") There is much valuable information here about the playwrights' lives, most notably the.if lives in the theatre. Durang reveals that he would not let Belle arid Boo be perfonned until his father...