What about fidelity to text in an evolving culture?

Tony Kushner with Tom Kuhn

Tony was asked by one someone in the class (who had previously admitted a preference for complete adherence to the performance text) about how he, as an author, playwright and screenwrighter, felt about that issue.

I was curious how he would respond. I had had a conversation while rehearsing Madame Arcati in Blithe Spirit a year ago about that very subject when I had raised the issue that a couple of the references, written when they were, would now be considered racist. The text in question didn’t serve any critical purpose in propelling the storyline forward nor would it’s removal in any way damage the fidelity of the story. It was simply something which was written by Noel Coward so that Madame Arcati could get another laugh and it was at the expense of people of color. Given my history working in the anti-oppression arena for so many years I stated that I would not be speaking the lines as written.

There were also a couple of lines by other characters which served the same purpose: eliciting laughter from people of means while marginalizing the Other. I thought we should edit those, too. Had the lines carried social and/or intellectual weight with an outcome of stimulating thought, I would not have argued to remove them because they would then have served a different purpose. But that was not the case. They were a couple of 40’s racist and sexist attitudes glibly tossed off by supposedly witty intellectuals (whose characters were fully well established through other means). They existed for cheap laughs.

My feeling was, and remains, that we become complicit in furthering such attitudes when we do not take pro-active measures. Cutting a couple of non-critical lines seems a fair way to up-cycle a show and make it relevant to today’s audiences. Certainly people do it all the time through costuming, set design and/or the setting of historical plays in different situations than they were written for. Sometimes to brilliant effect.

The argument I faced on behalf of keeping these particular lines in was based upon the belief, like my Oxford classroom fellow’s, that an author’s text is sacred and that it is our duty to perform a script exactly as it is written, with complete fidelity to the text. Additionally, the theatre in question feared possible legal actions due to some self appointed “Guardian of the Realm” who allegedly had a history of reporting edits of scripts back to the licensing houses and demanding action.

So I was definitely interested in how Tony, the author of the much produced Angels in America, would respond to this.

First, he laughed good naturally.

“My show has been performed hundreds of times all over the world by now, and by the way, I am truly grateful for that. However, if I worried about every edit or adaptation someone made to my text, I would never get anything else done.

You need to let go of your concern for fidelity to the text in your own work. Particularly as it becomes more popularized. And as producers, directors, performers, it is healthier to develop that same attitude.

If a change works, then it’s thrilling and exciting. I mean, look at how many variant versions there are of Hamlet, Galileo, the Greek tragedies, and on and on.

I was once invited to attend a production of Angels by a colleague. He had literally edited out nearly two hours of the text! But the thing is, it worked. For his audience and in his region of the world, it worked. It didn’t hurt the overall point of my piece, it simply re-arranged and drove to the conclusion in a different fashion.

I could see why he made the changes where and when he did. It wasn’t how I envisioned the piece when I wrote it, it was a little bit uncomfortable for me at first, but it worked. And let’s face it, Angels is a big piece. (laughing) But it worked. It was powerful and it worked and that should be our concern.”

He concluded, “A narrative should be more than a series of plot points but also about character, intention, emotion, purpose. All of it. I hope this answers the question.”

Tom Kuhn then followed up with the point that many great authors simply lifted ideas and even lines from other great authors, and certainly many great directors sometimes took some out.

I appreciated this approach to the subject. I have been involved in a few productions over the years in which text has been edited by the director merely to cut the running time, sometimes badly, sometimes with more success. The suggestion that we should feel free to edit thoughtfully for relevance of content or clarity or, and especially for, anticipated cause and effect, makes perfect sense to me.

I don’t think my classroom peer was entirely convinced but he did seem to be re-considering. And isn’t that why we do the work?