"Or perhaps they worry that if playwriting is teachable it dampens their originality, or the originality of their students. But I believe that humble, anti-guru teaching like Paula’s encourages originality by respecting the privacy of her students, never interfering with their unconscious processes…Love for the art form, love for fellow writers, and love for the world…"

From:

The Dramatist-September/October 2013

Is playwriting teachable?

(the example of Paula Vogel)

By Sarah Ruhl:

“But what strikes me most when I remember Paula’s teaching is her presence as much as the content of her teachings. I think in this country we have an obsession with content and curriculum, all the while devaluing presence and proximity, which are two teaching values hard to describe or quantify (or, indeed, teach). Paula has a tremendous gaze, a tremendous listening power and the most intelligent curiosity of anyone I have ever met. She took me seriously…

I remember again that time slowed down as Paula looked at me in her uncanny way and said: “I think you should write that play.” (How many plays has Paula help conjure into existence, I wonder, by saying to another playwright: I think you should write that play? Hundreds or thousands, most likely.)

And so I did write that play, under her guidance. It took me twelve years to finish, and it was called Passion Play. My senior year, I met with Paula every week at Café Zog on Wickenden Street. Over coffee and a cookie, she would read my new ten pages, and she should tell me every book I needed to read, and always, she named the exact book I needed to read at the exact time I needed to read it-a kind of psychic superhero librarian. I devoured medieval theater and German expressionism. I finished writing the first act of Passion Play…

The night of the opening, my mother flew into town from Chicago to see the play. We were driving down the hill towards Trinity Repertory Company to opening night when we were blindsided, hit by a car going very fast on Hope Street, I wasn’t wearing a seatbelt in the back seat and I hit my head and blacked out. Before I blacked out, I remember thinking: this is how death comes, quickly.

I woke up and my mom thought maybe we should go to the hospital for an MRI and I said: are you kidding let’s go to my play we’re almost late. So we went to my play and there was a standing ovation and I remember feeling such an out of body sense of rapture seeing the play in three dimensions with actors acting and lights lighting and people watching. I knew then that I would spend my life doing this and not look back. (I got an MRI the following day. It was normal. It did not register the change of vocation.)

When I reflect on all the things Paula taught me, among them, Aristotelian form, non-Aristotelian form, bravery, stick-to-it-ive-ness, how to write a play in 48 hours, how to write stage directions that are both impossible to stage and possible to stage: the greatest of these is love. Love for the art form, love for fellow writers, and love for the world…

So, back to the abstract question: is playwriting teachable? Of course it’s not teachable. And of course it is teachable. It lives in a paradox. It is as teachable as any other art form, in which we are dependent on a shared history and on our teachers for a sense of form, inspiration, example, and we are dependent on ourselves alone for our subject matter, our private discipline, our wild fancies, our dreams.

The question of whether playwriting is teachable begets other questions, like: is devotion teachable? Is listening teachable? Is a love of art and a willingness to give your life over to art teachable? I believe that these things are teachable mostly by example, and in great silences. There is the wondrous noise of the classroom, the content, the liveliness of the teachings themselves, the exchange of knowledge, and then there is the great silence of relation. Of watching how great people live. And of their silently communicating: “You too, with your Midwestern reticence, can go out into the great world and write. And when we fail, we’ll have some bourbon, and we’ll laugh.” This is all part of the teaching of playwriting over time, and it’s unbounded by the classroom. Just as love is unbounded by time…

Having young children, I think about pre-school a lot. About Maria Montessori, who revolutionized early childhood education by giving children the ability to be independent learners. I think: what would the graduate playwright version of the Montessori classroom look like? It would give playwrights freedom and implements, and would let them direct their own courses of study. In short, it would give playwrights actors. The teachers would be a listener, a first audience. It strikes me that people who are defensive about the teachability of playwriting are uncomfortable with the humble but important position of being a first audience. Or perhaps they worry that if playwriting is teachable it dampens their originality, or the originality of their students. But I believe that humble, anti-guru teaching like Paula’s encourages originality by respecting the privacy of her students, never interfering with their unconscious processes…

I’m not sure who that person would be. Less brave, I think. And so the best I can do to thank her is to try and encourage other young writers as they test their fragile bravery on the world.”