Woman; Write on Women Playwrights

And good evening and welcome to woman my guest this evening is playwright Myrna lamb. When I began writing at age seven she completed her first play when she was eight. At age 12 she finally had a play produced where it is one of the few women playwrights to have received a Rockefeller grant a Guggenheim fellowship and a current national endowment Grant. She is probably best known for her place but what have you done for me lately. And the MA Donna Marina is currently working on a book for a Broadway musical with lyrics by Hal David and music by Michel Legrand. She is one of the best known and most produced female playwrights in America. Welcome to the show and thank you I'm glad to be here. I mean is there a new women's theater happening. Yes it's a new women's theater because women are not writing in the old male academic voice. They're not imitating or coming up with new voices and they're writing what is essentially a new

mythology. That is I call it the view from the other side of the moon. Where are they writing about exactly. Well we're writing about the same subjects the same human subjects but we're writing about it from the point of view of an oppressed majority. And that means that we're writing about the position of woman as subject rather than object partly just that small change makes it very difficult for the established theater situation to accept it easily. What do you think the conditions on it but this event. Well obviously the women's movement of course will have to predate that and go back and say that or the liberation and self-determination movements made the women's liberation movement and habitable and that made the world look at Black Theatre now something actually kind of vital and really exciting theatre you're getting from

black theatre people is a reflection I think of the same kind of thing of long suppressed. Feeling long suppressed newborns are finally emerging into the open. Is there an organization a formal organization of women playwrights. Actually there was once. No not yet I don't think there has to be. I wouldn't like to do anything coercive to an artist as to make him or her join a formal organization with someone obviously thought it was a good idea because there was at one time wasn't there there was a beginning of one. I kind of remember what it was called anymore and it was just a few women. They eventually joined with a larger group that included both men and women and even that excluded some people. I mean I don't think it's necessary to have organizations of artists who either women playwrights writing today although there are so many it doesn't seem like they're not only us yes they're J.

Williams. Meghan Terry Roslyn Drexler Rochelle Owens. Julie vos Doris Walker Susan Yankel words. I mean that's I'm just skimming the surface here. There are really so many. Are there experiences like Lillian Hellman experience. I'm sure it's very different. How do you think. Well there's the difference of being not unique women anything lately or simply not in the position of the exceptional woman anymore. We're just one of the crowd so that's difficult because as you know women are socialized to believe that it's important to be exceptional and set apart from her fellow women if that is not a contradiction in terms. And of course where we're bonding today that's different. We're doing things not in competition with one another but in support of one another. Now I don't say we're doing that successfully and universally but at least we're hoping in aiming in that direction. Do you think women in your

field are discriminated against. Oh of course. Well they're discriminated against because the theater establishment is the theater establishment that is dedicated to the old established mythology which is to say that men are the movers and doers and women are the objects and prizes and so forth. It's easy to understand why the kind of proposition that women are extending in place today would be almost offensive and certainly exotic to the theatre establishment. I'd like you to go into a little more detail though how a woman playwright is likely to be discriminated against. Well for some reason although it will be that they will say yes for instance what was said to me by the place service people. Yes we agree we have talent. But your plays are to what they said to me was too political and too narrow in scope and by political they meant because I was writing about the women's movement at that time from a particular point of view. And finally they'll say yes but there's

too small an audience. Yes but somehow I don't relate to this material things like that. Do you have a fantasy about how you would like to be treated as a female playwright. No I have always had a fantasy about it forget it. What happens me actually is when I had my Donna produced which was this giant coup by Joe Papp who also directed it. I found myself sent to Coventry which is to say when I would enter a dressing room 11 women whom I'd given good jobs you know in the production would not talk to me. I asked one of the women about it and she said she had to deal with me every day in my GED play and she didn't like what I was saying. It was 1970 and the women's movement was difficult. What kind of reaction did you get from La Donna. I got a very part what they call polarized reviews. Some of them really wanted me to die. They wanted the public theater to be closed so help me. And I want to say the channel a public service channel had a reviewer who said that the Public Theatre

should be closed for having produced it. Other people said women should not have the vote anymore. And then some people said Barnes liked it a lot. Time magazine Newsweek etc. so I did all right by the women in law DONOHUE. I suppose with the women the Madama. Yeah. Fragments of it. Tell me a little bit about London. Well according to one of the reviewers who really hated hated it it was against marriage and motherhood and all sorts of good things. And. He said I've never used one cliche where two would do that rankled. I didn't see how a play could be all those things but it it was it was a soap opera macabre and very decadent soap opera and the storyline would continue interrupted by feminist commercials and it was fairly exciting and of course it was musical.

What year 2007 there rode in 69. That was after you wrote. What have you done for me lately. Yes as a matter of fact after what have you done for me lately about what have you done for me lately but letting it all right no one remembers the but it's about a woman who has a motive for wishing to take revenge upon a man who has made her pregnant in the old fashioned way and when she is young and so she her revenge is that she becomes a super surgeon and she impregnated him surgically at a rather important time of his career. He is a legislator some people have thought he bore a slight resemblance to a now not current president but. It was after all any grandiose American lawmaker would have done you a rich playwright. I'm a poor playwright but I'm rich and hope do most playwrights now both male and female have to exist pretty much on grants. Yes most playwrights do. It's very

difficult for playwrights to exist at all. I don't see why they do except that they can't do anything else. They're incompetent in all other fields. Do women playwrights have more trouble getting grants than than male playwrights it is inclusive. Of course it's a ten to one shot you're talking about when you're going home as well. When I had my Guggenheim which I was very grateful to have I must get me in New York. There were nine or ten male playwrights and one woman playwright and that's the case this year too. And that goes for composers and for creative writers of all sorts. You said that Madonna grew out of something you've felt all your life. What might that have been. Well the way people really when people use marriage the whole institution of marriage the fact that people like institutions the whole power game the fact that people in power need a place to divest themselves of the power and the way people use children and marriage particularly a young woman comes into an established and decadent marriage when she comes in she comes in as

a child. Of course once her charm has worn off is the charm of many children. She has to be replaced by her child. You were married when you were 17 a child and you once said that about your own marriage that you got married to see if you could cure your own restlessness or something like that. I don't know if you know something like that but I also got married because this person really liked me and accepted me and also took me to restaurants and I was very hungry. I think well it was true I was hungry for love security and food. Do you think marriage is no longer viable. You have very strong feelings that you express in my dream and there is a feeling that not only negative is not viable for you or for anyone. I feel that I feel that in incredible circumstances it may be viable but really I think those incredible circumstances and certainly people ought to be allowed to be married. However the marriage turns out I just think it's silly that's all silly to bottle two people up and say what they must do or

must not do with each other. You also once said that you feel you never should have succeeded. Well no woman should succeed. She's not supposed to not supposed to succeed and she's not supposed to be sexual and she's not supposed to want money. On her own. But. Some women do you think women have trouble with success. I think women have trouble with daddy. Having trouble with Daddy they have trouble with success. You see there are prohibitions instilled in women from the beginning I think in men too but in women definitely. They are not supposed to succeed because it is not fitting. The only way they're supposed to succeed is through a man. Whom they have helped succeed. And a woman is afraid to divest herself of the only security she has which is to say the security of being feminine or female. Well you were very successful and I'm really not very successful. But I'm successful I did you have trouble. Saying to yourself or I've had

done and. Produced. AND I ALMOST HAD A HEART ATTACK. Knowing that I was going to be produced finally. I was very you know I thought I was going to dog. It. It came so late in my life really. The second life. And every time I'm going to succeed at anything thing every time I become ambitious I think by the way I'm not crying my eyes and I just make up another something. I what happens to me is I think well this time I'm going to die. I can't even take a plane and a place because I think they're out to get me and I try to make myself unavailable. If you know what I mean. Yeah I know. Do you think anyone can write. I think everyone can write. But we won't tell anyone that. Why won't we tell anyone. Well there are enough writers and competition is pretty fierce and as much as I extol bonding I'm still quite competitive. And I kind of want to be if not the only one one of the few. That's one of my problems I try to get over that. But you do I know that you have in fact helped other women.

I have in fact helped other women because I transcend my own competitiveness. Isn't that saintly of me. It's marvelous. What did you think of Madonna. You told me you like I liked Madonna very much I thought it was a terrific thing. That made me happy when you said I'm glad I thought it was a terrific play myself. Probably will never be done again. Oh I'm sure it will that reminds me of a thing that you told me that you were very upset about and that is royalties. Oh yes very upset over royalties because what happens is since I'm a woman playwright and a women's liberation as I'm considered a people's playwright That's very nice but what happens is I meet people constantly say I saw production in Saskatchewan in Nova Scotia in Ottawa and I don't know where Washington and the state of Washington Oregon San Francisco Italy or whatever. And very few of those times do I ever even know about it. Very few of those times do I ever get paid even a token payment which is cruel because it took me three years to establish my credibility with the place service people and they were right. They were

right. Nobody pays to do my plays they do them but they don't pay for it. You know that's something that all playwriting have problems with this. Do you think women have more. I think women are not very credible as playwrights. Yet. They're not credible yet. One of the I'm one of those pioneers. I'm going to make it credible. Well you always write about women do you think I will write about women and men. That's about it. I'm not much for animals. But primarily the really feminist playwright. I think so. I'm of. I'm a female with a certain kind of experience which has made me a feminist. But I'm a humanist. And I think that would include feminism. Don't you. Yes I do. There's a thing that's happening in the theater now. It's called theater the ridiculous. Yeah. And it's a kind of camp theater right. And lots of women are made angry by this. Yes and you know why. I was going to ask you and then ask you what you thought.

Well they shouldn't be so damned angry about it. You see. Their own love of women in our society has always been a camp role. I mean we're all transvestites were all in drag. Truly. I mean all the way we the way we used to dress the way we carried ourselves the roles in our lives you know the things we could do and couldn't do that's all. That's all cap and all that's happening is that there are former roles the ones that were so precious to us. Travesty and coward that you are now. So what. That's not us up there. And why shouldn't you know one shouldn't become theatrical it always was. Where do you think the need comes from to do that kind of thing. Everybody's got problems with sex roles. And men who want to do that kind of theater. I have problems with sex roles including ours. I say let them have a go at it. I want to do. You know have a national endowment grant to do a play called Ignatz Ignatz right. That's a man. And it's.

Music theater music theater which is what. Which is where the opera in the musical will meet in America five years hence. According to a woman named Stephanie Copeland who works with Stuart Austral. Can you be a little more specific about ignorance. Ignorance is about a man who makes a tremendous lifesaving discovery. He was a real person of. Great importance to women as a matter of fact. And he is. He's hated for it. Attacked for. Virtually crucified for it. Nothing new. One of the things that you said that you wanted to talk about also with mean women. Yes there are some. There are some. Well what I believe about women and you know I write about this a lot is that women do ritually oppress other women because they are programmed to do that because they cannot bear others to escape their private misery. And because in a way sometimes even mothers program their daughters. For laws that they think will be safe.

Even though oppressive. And so this role is handed down from mother to daughter. And of course there are the women who believe since they have given up one role in life that is perhaps wife and mother that they alone deserve careers and other women who dare to come. Women like me. After lives in which they have been married and have children who dare to come and to achieve success in their field and their professional field. These women should be punished for such affront. That's coming from Stanley and where's that it's coming from somewhere yes it is. It's coming from my experience which experience I've had with women like this which was when you were first beginning to write. Oh yes indeed. When other playwrights would say well one woman that I asked about that organization you talked about I said I was supposed to be invited into that and she said when you learn to write the way we do then you will be. Things like that and in situations where I've had deals going where a woman will simply gratuitously sit there and just spoil the deal.

Out of when she sees it's going. I've seen that happen over and over again admittedly with only a few women and admittedly I would not say you know down to lunch with those women again. I don't think men do that to each other. But I'm not sure. Donna was produced by Joseph. Yes it is a man. And that was an experience for you once and I'm in love with Joe Pass. I was in love with Joe Papp. He's very charming. I think we both recovered from that experience. But I still I still respect him. He's a terrific theatre person and he's producing other things of mine. You've also written another piece called apple pie. Yeah with Nicholas Meyers. Yeah. I'd like you to tell me a little bit about that. Well that's about incorporated fascism which is to say what I call physical fascism the way we judge people not only by color sex and all the rest of it but by the shape of the nose and the height and the color of the hair.

So forth. The way the way we use this against each other I think it was an export a very well taken up export of Nazi Germany. And I get that in there a little bit too. I mean what do you think about certain critics who shall remain nameless. Who claimed that. The new women's theatre is angry strident bitter vulgar. How do you answer that. I think perhaps. It is sometimes so what men's there has been that. When the occasion demands I assume. The response will be sometimes vulgar sometimes strident sometimes bitter. It's a necessary transition but of course that's you know micro generalities that when confronted with the individual example. Well why do you think it's taken I mean even though as you say some of the subjects are exactly the same. I think women don't want. To see sometimes women do the things that they have not done. That's the terrible thing

that sometimes women look at their lives and say Oh if I'd only been a little braver. I could have done. And that's a terrible thing you know the saddest words are it might have been. Very sad. Do you have a hard time dealing with critics you read your reviews. I love critics when they say good things about me when they call me playwright. I could hug and kiss them. Why I like to be called playwright. That seems right to me. Have you ever had a really traumatic experience with it. Oh yes I almost suffocated on my first review was the one that had all the naughty words that said kill kill. So about this woman live. And I was left completely alone. No one sits up with you when you get a review like that they let you go home all by yourself. And it's formed across my chest and I thought I was suffocating. And who saved me in the morning. Clive Barnes I suppose if I'm talking the same thing. BARNES It's a bad experience to get your first review really condemning it to death. And other with other women players that aren't really around this and know there were no other women

playwrights that do you know the guy who gave me a bad review. People can't be mean to me because I think I'm sort of a witch. This guy no longer is on television. He does radio. I guess for him thinking has to bother your dog about him you know you don't have to worry. I have a quote that I want to ask you about. He said when women are frustrated by side society. Yeah when they cannot fulfill their creative potential. They end up victims or killers. Yeah a little of both. Well that's just something I believe because I think you know the. Only power they have is in that family area about domestic area or some other equally circumscribed area. And that frustrated and perverted power becomes very dangerous. That's what makes our monsters. What could change to make that not happen. A little ventilation a little opportunity for women. All right. Join New York and almost everyone else

that you mentioned before you know you can tarry Rozlyn Drexler's with all of those people are in New York. I'd like to mention a terrific female producer named Adele Holzer could probably write rings around this too. It's producing on Broadway so I'm involved. But she's also in New York. You know she has all the women who aren't in New York where did they go what do they do. Well the truth is that Meghan is really in Omaha to comes to New York when she have so much as one person on that whole list. Well. New York has been a Theatre Center. What can you do about a theater center that has existed how are you going to change it. I think we're being sent out to other theaters throughout the country now under the terms of the Rockefeller grants particularly and that will change. We're being they're always looking for decentralization of theater theater Development Fund in New York is trying to encourage that. Eventually when playwrights find places where they'll be accepted some of them will be black and some of them will be women. There is a white theater but it is a white male theater. It does

exclude I think in the main female playwrights. For those not deliberately. Oh right. There are lots of women who want desperately to write. Yes. And I feel for them. So do I. And I wish you could say something. It isn't as corny as it may sound if I say that the only way a woman. Can. Write. Is to actually write that is. Don't do it after the dishes do it before the dishes do it when you feel it when you think of it have something close by that you can use to jot down those sudden thoughts that you have. You build up. You accumulate what I call the clay. From which you will model from which you will take your form later. Now I can't say what that form will be but you must record. Don't trust a memory. And you build up the habit of writing. How do you know what form. You don't have to care about what form because very often work will find its own form. Or you my friend my friends my women friends will create a new form.

That is appropriate. I think people who ride are always curious about what other people who write do how they do it. I think it is a crime. For me that's sort of a typical you know Lamb writing down writing day. First of all I'm always in a hurry. I have millions of pieces of paper surrounding me. I write on them in different color ink. And I number them and nothing helps. I can never find what I'm looking for. I go crazy because the one piece of paper with the one word that I'm looking for is under the bed or something. And I can I smear these papers all over wherever I am so don't come and visit me when I'm doing this. I'm probably not dressed. I'm certainly not made up. If there is food it may be sitting anywhere. I don't have a normal day. I don't know when it's night time or when it's daytime. And I don't like the telephone very much of those times either. But I am compulsive about answering them. So don't call me up when I'm writing. And. I think that sort of explains what a writing day is like for me.

What did it feel like when the minute you knew that Madonna was going to be produced. Just flip. I was. You don't know. It was the end for me. The end. Literally the end. Not even vernacular. I thought well now I can die. I didn't. Luckily it was not a perfect experience and I was spared for the next imperfect experience. That's how you managed to survive. You have two daughters. Yeah. Which makes you a little bit different. You know the sense that most of the women who are playwrights in New York at the moment don't have children. Yeah. Roslyn Drexel has a couple on his reception. What are your children like. They're terrific or they terrific one of them is a satirical cartoonist illustrator and one of them is in the theater. I should mention that Joey is that is the artist and Elizabeth is the actress singer dancer hard worker. You think that's going to be famous one day. Yes I know she is she works harder than any ten people I've ever seen. She is very

single minded I think is the word. Mina do you have something that you most disagree with that's happening in the theater today. Oh yes I most disagree with. And this is really true. I disagree with. That. We aren't subsidized as playwrights running all playwrights male female and whatever but we aren't given a way to live and not to worry about money for depending of course on our on our production. You know put and so forth. I think artist should be supported in this country and they are not. I think artists should be honored in this country and they are not. Have you ever heard my definition of an artist. You know it's a female position. A female artist as a double artist I mean a double female song you know on that note. Yes. I'd like to thank lightly very much for coming. Well thank you for watching. See you next week. Funding provided by public television stations and the

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