Kate Mulley

I spent a couple days earlier this week reading a new young adult biography of Edith Wharton. I’m not quite ready for the Hermione Lee tome, so this was perfect. A nice, 150-page introduction to one of my new favorite writers. And now, my review is online! Take a look.

Continuing with the theme of YA books, I’m currently reading Rushdie’s new book, Luka and the Fire of Life, written for his youngest son. So far, so good. Like Midnight’s Children and Harry Potter and a video game had a baby.

There’s been a lot circulating about the Wasserstein Prize since Friday afternoon when I happened to see a link to Michael Lew’s post on facebook. I was working at the bookshop at the time with a colleague who is also a female playwright. I read his post out loud and we spent much of the afternoon discussing what it meant and how odd the decision was. For those of you who aren’t up to speed, the jist is this. The Wendy Wasserstein Prize is $25,000 awarded to an emerging playwright under 32. The committee receives nominations from artistic directors, literary managers, etc and then narrows them down. Most startling to me was that there were only 19 nominees. 19! The definition of emerging for the purpose of the award is not having received a major regional theatre production or New York production in a theatre larger than 199 seats and not having worked for television. I personally have no problem with these constraints, but they mean that the committee probably should work harder to find nominees than going through established artistic directors and literary managers. Monday afternoon, the committee announced they would reevaluate the 19 nominees after online petitions and a host of bad PR.

A lot of people have thrown Annie Baker’s name around and while I’m a big fan of her work, I think that it would be silly to refer to her as emerging at this stage in her career. She’s had three productions in New York alone, productions across the country and in London and her play Circle Mirror Transformation has received tons of accolades. She’s also appeared on the cover of American Theater magazine. I imagine that takes you beyond the auspices of “emerging” or at least I would hope. As someone firmly in the “emerging” stage of my career, I don’t think that Baker and I should be considered in the same pool.

My senior year of college, Wasserstein was a visiting fellow for the semester. She provided me with valuable feedback on a reading of my first full-length play and spurred me to follow my dream of writing for the stage. Before her illness kept her from teaching a summer playwriting class, I was set to be her teaching assistant. I moved to New York, doggedly pursued internships at off-Broadway theaters and assumed I would apply to MFA programs in the next couple years. My dream, of course, being Yale. That was the track that I thought everyone, especially writers like me, would take. I soon realized that I was far too young and inexperienced to seriously consider applying. There are exceptions to that (a classmate at Dartmouth, Carly Mensch, is one of them), but for me, I needed more time. I found that time in my MA at Goldsmiths in London. Surrounded by 9 other writers at various stages of their lives as playwrights I got to spend a year playing around with form and style. After my masters, I took part in writers groups at the Soho Theatre and the Royal Court (where, notably, I was one of few writers with an MA, which is NOT true of emerging writers groups in New York). In London, most of the playwrights being produced have not received a masters. They have developed their work through workshops, starting theatre companies with friends from school or other means. In the US, you’re hard-pressed to find someone being produced on or off-Broadway who doesn’t have an MFA in Playwriting. It’s another hoop that playwrights are expected to leap through, and one that doesn’t necessarily further your career any more than spending three years working and writing and producing your own plays might.

Now that I’m back in New York, I facilitate a writers group that is currently collaborating on a new piece and have helped develop an upcoming season for NyLon Fusion Collective, the company for which I am the Literary Manager.* And I have about 4 projects in various stages of development, partly out of diverse interests, partly out of my inability to say no to a project I’m excited about. But because there are so many of them, it’s probably valid to suggest that none of them are, at present, “sufficiently realized” to use the words of the Wasserstein prize rejection letter. To be sufficiently realized, it usually helps to have actors, a director and a dramaturg to help you hone your play (unless you are Martin McDonagh, it seems). All that is to say that the life of an emerging writer is one that is generally more piece-meal than one would prefer. And one where there are very few hard and fast rules. An MFA in Playwriting doesn’t guarantee a production or an agent in the same way that an MD guarantees that you’re a doctor. An MFA doesn’t even guarantee you a spot in an emerging writers group!

A few weeks ago I attended a seminar with Robert McKee where he dismissed writers complaining about not getting produced by telling them that maybe their plays just weren’t good enough and that rather than complaining they should just write better plays (or produce them themselves). At the time, I laughed and agreed with him. I’ve seen and read a lot of terrible plays during my 5+ years in New York and London. But it’s also a sentiment that I wouldn’t expect to hear from someone like Wendy Wasserstein who was always so generous with her feedback and her time. And I wouldn’t expect to hear it from the committee awarding a prize to emerging writers on her behalf.

*Interesting side note: When NyLon posted a notice for a writers group we had slightly more female submissions than male submissions. When we posted a notice for new American plays, we received many many more male submissions than female. Hmm…

Last Thursday morning I headed out early to get in line for rush tickets for La Bete. The box office opens at 10am so I figured I would get there at 9:30 to be safe. Turned out to be very safe, and I was the only person in line until someone else showed up at 9:55. I got tickets for the right box and headed to work. When we arrived at the theatre we were told by the usher that the seat next to mine would be used during the performance. I hoped that meant that Mark Rylance would come sit next to me, but alas it wasn’t in the cards.

The show was really excellent. Terrific performances from Rylance, David Hyde Pierce and Stephen Ouimette (from my favorite Canadian TV show Slings and Arrows). The play, to me, felt more like an indictment of contemporary politics than the difference between high art and lowbrow art.  I was actually so moved by the play, that I made my date wait for me at the stage door (she didn’t mind). But of course once I got there, I didn’t know what I wanted. I didn’t get any autographs or speak to anyone, I just wanted to see Rylance close up. So I awkwardly grinned at him from behind the barrier while he talked to other fans. And then when we walked towards 8th Avenue, we saw Vanessa Redgrave holding court in front of the theatre showing Driving Miss Daisy. And wondered if they waved to one another from across 45th Street.  How nice it must be to be a national treasure.