Artistic Statement
First of all, I really hate writing artistic statements, because I feel pretentious. In addition, I don’t think in terms of “my vision” – but only in terms of the current play I am struggling with, its structure, arc, theme, and, most of all, characters. That said, I will take a stab at an artistic statement.
Years ago, as a beginning writer with the Philadelphia Company, I chose a subject from history because I could take advantage of the economy of allusion, and because I doubted the worth of my own experience, whether direct or vicarious, imagined or lived. My first ”real” play, an Equity Showcase at Playwrights Horizons, had been the usual family one, and I couldn’t make it work. I lacked the craft; I shied from the truth. (O’Neill wrote his late in his career, a wise move.) Thus I resorted to existing stories, although I required these to be rooted in some unknown, to allow room for my own invention.
So I created a play about Meriwether Lewis when I learned he had killed himself; and a play about Cassatt and Degas when I learned they had destroyed their letters to one another. My inventions? That Lewis was torn between Jeffersonian ideals and his experience of indigenous cultures; that Cassatt had to choose work over love. When, in 1990, I wrote my version of the Electra, Attic Electra, I combined a Greek archetype with my own female, Irish-American, Roman Catholic psyche, and in doing that, I turned a corner.
Since then, I have been absorbed with my own and others’ personal histories, less interested in excavating past truths than in weaving present imaginings. These mysteries allow for my own invention. I write more about my particular experience and point of view, fascinated and stymied by the conflicts between men and women, struck by the simple universals that drive and elude us, bewildered by the threat of difference, of the “other,” compelled by the violence that threat elicits. Tragedy is for those who feel, comedy for those who think – Walpole’s famous dictum, and true to some extent. But we all both feel and think, and so I look at my work as a blend of both.
Albee advised writers to “follow the characters,” i.e., let them lead you to the truth of your play. His is counsel I try hard to follow.
Years ago, as a beginning writer with the Philadelphia Company, I chose a subject from history because I could take advantage of the economy of allusion, and because I doubted the worth of my own experience, whether direct or vicarious, imagined or lived. My first ”real” play, an Equity Showcase at Playwrights Horizons, had been the usual family one, and I couldn’t make it work. I lacked the craft; I shied from the truth. (O’Neill wrote his late in his career, a wise move.) Thus I resorted to existing stories, although I required these to be rooted in some unknown, to allow room for my own invention.
So I created a play about Meriwether Lewis when I learned he had killed himself; and a play about Cassatt and Degas when I learned they had destroyed their letters to one another. My inventions? That Lewis was torn between Jeffersonian ideals and his experience of indigenous cultures; that Cassatt had to choose work over love. When, in 1990, I wrote my version of the Electra, Attic Electra, I combined a Greek archetype with my own female, Irish-American, Roman Catholic psyche, and in doing that, I turned a corner.
Since then, I have been absorbed with my own and others’ personal histories, less interested in excavating past truths than in weaving present imaginings. These mysteries allow for my own invention. I write more about my particular experience and point of view, fascinated and stymied by the conflicts between men and women, struck by the simple universals that drive and elude us, bewildered by the threat of difference, of the “other,” compelled by the violence that threat elicits. Tragedy is for those who feel, comedy for those who think – Walpole’s famous dictum, and true to some extent. But we all both feel and think, and so I look at my work as a blend of both.
Albee advised writers to “follow the characters,” i.e., let them lead you to the truth of your play. His is counsel I try hard to follow.
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Dorothy Louise
Artistic Statement
First of all, I really hate writing artistic statements, because I feel pretentious. In addition, I don’t think in terms of “my vision” – but only in terms of the current play I am struggling with, its structure, arc, theme, and, most of all, characters. That said, I will take a stab at an artistic statement.
Years ago, as a beginning writer with the Philadelphia Company, I chose a subject from history because I could take advantage of the economy of allusion, and because I doubted the worth of my own experience, whether direct or vicarious, imagined or lived. My first ”real” play, an Equity Showcase at Playwrights Horizons, had been the usual family one, and I couldn’t make it work. I lacked the craft; I shied from the truth. (O’Neill wrote his late in his career, a wise move.) Thus I resorted to existing stories, although I required these to be rooted in some unknown, to allow room for my own invention.
So I created a play about Meriwether Lewis when I learned he had killed himself; and a play about Cassatt and Degas when I learned they had destroyed their letters to one another. My inventions? That Lewis was torn between Jeffersonian ideals and his experience of indigenous cultures; that Cassatt had to choose work over love. When, in 1990, I wrote my version of the Electra, Attic Electra, I combined a Greek archetype with my own female, Irish-American, Roman Catholic psyche, and in doing that, I turned a corner.
Since then, I have been absorbed with my own and others’ personal histories, less interested in excavating past truths than in weaving present imaginings. These mysteries allow for my own invention. I write more about my particular experience and point of view, fascinated and stymied by the conflicts between men and women, struck by the simple universals that drive and elude us, bewildered by the threat of difference, of the “other,” compelled by the violence that threat elicits. Tragedy is for those who feel, comedy for those who think – Walpole’s famous dictum, and true to some extent. But we all both feel and think, and so I look at my work as a blend of both.
Albee advised writers to “follow the characters,” i.e., let them lead you to the truth of your play. His is counsel I try hard to follow.
Years ago, as a beginning writer with the Philadelphia Company, I chose a subject from history because I could take advantage of the economy of allusion, and because I doubted the worth of my own experience, whether direct or vicarious, imagined or lived. My first ”real” play, an Equity Showcase at Playwrights Horizons, had been the usual family one, and I couldn’t make it work. I lacked the craft; I shied from the truth. (O’Neill wrote his late in his career, a wise move.) Thus I resorted to existing stories, although I required these to be rooted in some unknown, to allow room for my own invention.
So I created a play about Meriwether Lewis when I learned he had killed himself; and a play about Cassatt and Degas when I learned they had destroyed their letters to one another. My inventions? That Lewis was torn between Jeffersonian ideals and his experience of indigenous cultures; that Cassatt had to choose work over love. When, in 1990, I wrote my version of the Electra, Attic Electra, I combined a Greek archetype with my own female, Irish-American, Roman Catholic psyche, and in doing that, I turned a corner.
Since then, I have been absorbed with my own and others’ personal histories, less interested in excavating past truths than in weaving present imaginings. These mysteries allow for my own invention. I write more about my particular experience and point of view, fascinated and stymied by the conflicts between men and women, struck by the simple universals that drive and elude us, bewildered by the threat of difference, of the “other,” compelled by the violence that threat elicits. Tragedy is for those who feel, comedy for those who think – Walpole’s famous dictum, and true to some extent. But we all both feel and think, and so I look at my work as a blend of both.
Albee advised writers to “follow the characters,” i.e., let them lead you to the truth of your play. His is counsel I try hard to follow.