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The Myth of the “Relationship” Play

This is a post for the School Days series, which solicits submissions from undergraduate theatermakers from around the country and beyond. This series is curated by Thea Rodgers.

Through my undergraduate program, I have had the opportunity to work with an incredibly diverse number of theaters, all with their own particular tastes and audiences, each navigating the expected and unexpected limitations and freedoms of being a theater of their size.

One of the theaters that I worked for has a reputation for bringing diverse theater to its patrons. My impression is that for them, diverse theater often goes hand in hand with the idea of “political theater,” as evidenced by the language they as administrators, artists, and audience members used in relationship to their own work. During my time there, I had the pleasure to hear from many of their affiliated artists and administrators. In one conversation, a member of the managing team said something to me that really floored me and has stuck with me to this day.

“No one wants to see a relationship play,” he said.

At the time, I just blinked at him, unsure of how to react. The conversation continued and I didn’t have a chance to process this statement until later that day when I found myself blanching incredulously at the notion.

I will venture a guess as to what he meant. I think what he was trying to express to me was that the old white theater, with all that it entailed, was the zeitgeist of a bygone era. I hope that he was trying to tell me that we shouldn’t do so much Miller anymore, if that means that we are going to limit ourselves to a homogenous audience, and that it would be a supreme waste of our time as theater makers not to look into marginalized or minority communities for exciting new stories to tell and to curate. In his eyes, Miller is the antiquated “kitchen-table-play” past. In order to invigorate a new era of theater that is relevant and political, a kind of theater in which his institution so fiercely believed in, we have to leave our Millers and our O’Neills and our Williams behind.

My first thought was not to point out that this theater has done kitchen table dramas before, or that it was gearing up for another one in its next season. I did not point out that plays by Miller or O'Neill or Williams are not necessarily pointless and artificial in their thematic design, and that at the time of their production, they served a clear purpose of commenting and shedding light on American life in a way that was inherently political.

My first thought was not to say that there is nothing wrong with the plays of Miller and his ilk, but that it is the continued preference of these plays over fresh, new work that is keeping theater audiences from widening out to communities that, at least in the Occidental view, are not “typical” theater goers.

My first thought was not to humbly acknowledge that there is certainly room for minority theater-makers to feel resentful against an industry that did much to exclude them on an institutional level in the mid-century, on the flimsy grounds that their theater was “aesthetically different” than what was being produced.

No, actually, my first thought was to deconstruct the inappropriately vague term “relationship play.”

Every play is a relationship play, because every piece of theater is a means to explore human behavior and thought, and that always involves examining a relationship—whether that is a relationship with the self, or a relationship with another person. It is absurd to me to try and categorize theater into labels like “relationship plays” (which are supposedly sentimental and contain no apparent political value), and “political plays.”

Theater is an art form that lends itself naturally to collaboration, and indeed it would be almost impossible to produce something without some form of collaborative work (I say “almost impossible” because in theater, there are always exceptions to the rule). From that perspective, then, it is still impossible to look at any theater piece without seeing interactive relationships and communication.

The theater in question, I discovered, seemed to at least market its plays in a way that suggested work that engaged with non-white subjects or communities was automatically political. Not only does this kind of thinking create a false dichotomy in the world of drama, but it also serves to severely restrict the aesthetic and thematic content of plays by minority playwrights and diversity-oriented theaters.

The idea that there are profound plays of political content, and then there are “relationship plays” is an attitude I have encountered many times in many places. It seems to me that there is this idea that theater must be political theater, because we, in our cushioned Occidental culture, have determined that diversity is a political issue, not a tool through which to be inclusive and explore humanity…right?

So maybe this is just an issue of marketing. I understand that even that issue is nuanced and difficult to pigeonhole entirely; how do you market new work from diverse sources to audiences that are mostly white? By politicizing them? However, to cast this issue off as the result and problem of a theater’s marketing department isn’t being totally honest. I have really in my life encountered theater-makers who say things like, “That’s not a real play,” (as if the lack of narrative keeps it from being a piece of theater), and many more people who disparage the naturalistic classics, not due to personal preference, but because of their assumption that they hold no relevance to modern audiences anymore.

I should make it clear that I would absolutely, given the choice, prefer to see a play about women in Togo than Death of a Salesman. That is not because Salesman is somehow irrelevant to me as a theater-goer. Death of a Salesman has historical value and should be respected even just for the mere fact that it is a window into what kind of values and art were important to people at the time of its production. No, I wouldn’t see it simply because our culture puts a lot of money into Salesman, and so I can be sure that I will see it many times in my lifetime. I find that it is my job as a theater maker to seize the opportunities to see new and different theater as often as I can. The unfortunate reality is that a play or piece about Togo is going to be new and different to me only because the culture I live in has seen less of it. 

I’m not here to assume that any play that offers a different perspective is automatically political. With that logic, all plays are political. I applaud theaters like the one previously mentioned for making sure that someone out there is producing pieces that are fresh and diverse. The very nature of theater is that it will say something about the world of the play, or at least ask the audience to do so. What could be more political than to open your eyes and look around you? In that way, you could produce any play—whether it be from Togo or it be Arthur Miller—as a political piece. 

My reservation is with the flippancy with which some theater-makers and even some larger institutions categorize something as politically relevant and thereby superior to all other work, solely based on the background of the author. This is especially a little jarring considering that the people who will most likely be making that call are white men. I also want to make it clear that I haven’t deluded myself into thinking that the process in which these theaters choose their seasons isn’t careful, complicated, and thoughtful. However, it seems to me that in the process of premiering diverse theater to new audiences, we do ourselves, our audiences and our artists a disservice by trying to package and market the work as “political,” tantamount to declaring it as the only genre of superior value. If something is political, that does not define its dramatic value, just the same as if its thematic content focused on a relationship. Furthermore, a play is not political despite its exploration of human relationships. A play is political because of its exploration of human relationships.

 

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School Days

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Did you actually ask the artistic director in question what they meant by "relationship play"? It seems like the author's riff on what it could possibly mean, but doesn't really come out of a real conversation.

Here's what I think: for the most part, men seem perfectly able to write and have relationship plays accepted. Look at Donald Margulies, for crying out loud. And this past week on Broadway, I saw Mothers and Sons and Outside Mullingar, which were TOTALLY relationship plays. But if women put forth these exact same efforts, they would be labeled "chick plays" or "relationship plays," and, as such, undesirable. For women, it helps if the plays are political, or quirky. Take a look at what women's plays that have risen and it bears this out. What female playwright has had a play like Dinner With Friends ANYwhere in the mainstream?