The Drama in American Letters

e itorl The Drama in American Letters Dear Readers: We'd like to share with you a recent exchange of views, prompted by an article "The Play's Not the Thing," written by D. J. R. Bruckner in the December 26, 1982 issue of the New York Times Book Review. Bruckner focused on three essential points: 1) the lack of attention to drama in literary criticism; 2) the relationship between levels of playwriting and criticism; 3) general cultural indifference to American plays as literature. Bruckner wrote, "No serious French literary critic would fail to take into account the plays of Albert Camus or Jean Genet, and in Germany you would be thought odd if you discussed language and style without reference to Max Frisch and Peter Handke. But you can read many volumes of American literary criticism without finding a note about Tennessee Williams or Arthur Miller, or even Thornton Wilder or Eugene O'Neill." These issues are not new ones. In fact, they have contributed over many years to the isolation of drama from the cultural life of this country. Even now within the National Endowment for the Arts there is some dispute as to whether plays are literature. In other words, should the Literature Program or the Theatre Program fund their publication? In the press, drama seems to be relegated to a limbo between literature and theatre: virtually all newspapers and periodicals exclude commentary on dramatic literature (and usually essays in the field, too) from their book review sections. This is not the place to undertake an investigation of the academic and literary powerplays, the complaisance of dramatic writers, scholars, and critics, newspaper policy and competence of reviewers, and philosophical prejudice toward the form that converged to overthrow drama from its place in American literary life. It would make a fascinating study in cultural, economic, intellectual, and sociological attitudes. The first step, however, is simpler and more straightforward: airing the issue. Peter Zeisler of Theatre Communications Group sent off a quick rep4 ly to the Times which printed his letter in the January 16, 1983 issue. Our reply was sent somewhat later and didn't make it into the paper, so we are printing it here because we think it is important that the issues in our field enter into thoughtful public debate. Dear Editor: We were encouraged to see someone take up the subject of reading plays as literature ("The Play's Not the Thing," D. J. R. Bruckner, December 26, 1982). The prevailing view in this culture-that plays only exist as theatre-has kept any meaningful discussion of dramatic literature out of newspapers, periodicals, and literary journals. What is the reason for this absence? Is it the fault of editors and book reviewers, or is it our peculiar dilemma that the history of theatre in this country is tied exclusively to the history of play production? Dramatic literature exists as its own separate medium and should be treated with the same high seriousness as fiction and poetry, and essays on the drama should be examined as carefully as those in other literary arts. What is sorely lacking in the study of theatre in America is an ongoing dialogue by which an art form and its audience interrogates itself and its responses to social change, from an historical point of view. Furthermore, this is the all-important process by which a field of study matures in tandem with new ideas of its time. Though his heart is in the right place, Mr. Bruckner is misinformed when he contends that "publishers have kept most important plays in print." They have not. Not only do they not publish most American plays unless they gain notoriety through production, but almost all the American dramatic repertoire of the past is lost to us because the plays do not exist in print. Much of George Kaufman, Ben Hecht, and other giants are unpublished, and how would anyone guess that Edmund Wilson, Djuna Barnes, Theodore Dreiser, John Dos Passos (just to name a few) wrote plays, unless one stumbled upon their out-of-print books in a used bookstore? Not surprisingly , pitifully little is available in translation from other languages. One of...