Etiquette and Vitriol Read Free

director tells me how to fix it and gives me suggestions and copious notes.” For me the most important thing in collaborating with a director is that we see the same basic play in our imaginations. Suggestions like, “I think you should cut the dinosaur,” indicated to me that this wasn’t the case. I usually went on an inner journey during these meetings. The second ingredient in a good collaboration is more personal. I need to feel I can yell at and cry in front of my director.Although I am more apt to do the latter than the former, I like to keep my options open. This criterion for choosing a good director is largely ignored in most graduate courses.
    I was in Washington D.C., directing Free Will when I called David Warren. Doug Aibel had faxed me his number and his bio. But I’d misplaced the second page, so I approached the phone call having no idea who he was or what he’d done. Our conversation went something like this (notice who never shuts up):
    NICKY: Listen, to be frank, I’m tired of sitting through directors telling me what my play’s about.—So why don’t I tell you what it’s about? Then you tell me if you agree.
    DAVID (Suspicious) : Fine.
    NICKY: Well, obviously, it’s about denial. Denial’s just dandy if it gets you through the day, but we’re living at a time when, because of AIDS, it carries a terrible price. We have this epidemic because we didn’t want to deal with it. Because as a culture we viewed the people who were dying as expendable. And, of course, it’s a comedy, employing theatrical genre as a shield, or defense, that these characters use to survive.
    DAVID: All right, sure.
    NICKY: Great! Now . . . what have you directed?
    DAVID: You’re not familiar with my work?
    NICKY: Well, no.
    DAVID: Well, then, do you mind if I ask how you happened to call me?
    NICKY: Doug faxed me stuff but I lost it.
    DAVID: I see. Well. . . . I directed Gus and Al , at the Public, Bill Finn’s Romance in Hard Times, Mi Vida Loca and The Stick Wife at Manhattan Theatre Club, Pal Joey —
    NICKY (Shrieking) : Oh you’re MUCH too big a deal to direct my little play! You’d NEVER take me seriously!
    . . .
    But he did. And we started a working relationship that I hope goes on until we are both very old and very crabby. David and I have worked together seven times now and it’s still a complete pleasure. I learn about everything working with David. And I like to think he learns about something working with me.
    In any event, the production turned out beautifully. What a wonderful and dedicated cast! They all believed in the project, which was surprising as no one had ever heard of me. We had neither a great deal of money (the sofa was borrowed from Manhattan Theatre Club and I’m convinced it gave Scott Cunningham lice or chiggers or something). We had no big movie star in the lead. But this, my first play to be covered by the New York Times , was taken quite seriously. We were treated as something important. Both critics, Ben Brantley in the daily review and David Richards in the Sunday edition, had their complaints. But they both had high praise as well. And, after ten years of putting on plays attended only by my friends, there were audiences! Night after night the theatre was full. And they laughed. And they cried. And we extended. We sold out and life was good. What a victory for the underdogs!
    I was speaking at a class recently when a student asked me if Pterodactyls is an AIDS play. Well, it is about AIDS. But clearly it’s also about family, death, marriage, parents, children, fear, love, class, economics, the end of our species and, of course, denial. Why is there this desire to place plays in narrow little categories? It seems to me that’s a job for press agents. But it’s not my job. And very few plays are about one thing. I was also asked if I was bitter that Pterodactyls didn’t transfer to a