October: 2023

I will concede that fifty years ago Gays, Blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans and other minority groups needed to have a public voice.  The theater provided it for them.  Those voices were often strident and undisciplined but contained powerful messages.  Anyone who lived through the social revolution knows that it changed society.    

You would think that such success would have found its way to the stage...  Unfortunately, that has not happened. The traditional incubators of drama -- New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles and the Ivy League universities -- continue to encourage playwrights to bring their stories of injustice to the stage.  That worked sixty years ago but not today. In an age of instant communication, before a playwright can bring his or her story to the stage, you can bet  a dozen variations will be found in media outlets. Drama, as a result, has become derivative, repetitive, and inconsequential.     

More important, the wider audience has come to reject plays whose vitriolic messages attack the wider culture.  They have heard it all before. The playwright’s message, then, becomes boutique.  Those who believe the same thing as the characters or the playwright embrace the play. The wider audience dismisses it, and drama loses its universal appeal. Hence, we have gay dramas, black dramas, white guilt dramas, feminist dramas, hip-hop dramas, suffering Native Americans dramas, immigrant dramas, etc. Instead of opening dialogue between diverse groups, theatre has contributed to the tribal, segmented society we have become. 

To move forward, drama must rediscover its roots---embracing the values that made cultural change possible and providing new stories that delight as well as instruct the audience about things they do not know! Playwrights must discover or invent situations not found streaming on Netflix or YouTube. Such plays do not have to exclude the commonplace, but they should present it in a way that will surprise and entertain the audience with its originality.  Retelling a tale is fine if presented to the audience in a way that the familiar comes back to them with an unexpected new look.  Dramatizing significant unknown history if made relevant to a wider audience can entertain as well as inform. An original tragedy with a subtext that links the audience to the characters can provide the highest dramatic experience.  All this pre-supposes a knowledge of craft, a return to traditional structure.   Playwrights who decide to deconstruct the plot or write non-linear plays should have the courtesy of having contained within the play the key to understanding its structure. 

Such principles, I believe, will move NJ drama to the forefront of American drama.  The success of these principles, if implemented, will be determined by the number of critics who cross the Hudson River to see what is happening in NJ.  To facilitate that happening, NJ playwrights and artistic directors should agree to move a successful play from one venue in NJ to an alternate venue in NJ before releasing it to the wider world.

August: 2024

In letters written in October and November 2023 that I sent to artistic directors in New Jersey,  I pointed out the need for playwrights to discover or invent stories that cannot be found streaming on Netflix or YouTube.   Drama, I noted, must rediscover its roots by providing stories that delight as  well as instruct the audience about things they do not know.

I mention this because while on vacation at the Outer Banks of NC,  I happened to buy a copy of the Washington Post. I read an Opinion article called  “I spent a week at a chat bench. Here’s what I learned.” (7/24/24).  I smiled when I read the article because nine years ago, prior to any chat bench, I wrote a play called The Park Bench, a simple play about an older man offering a young woman advice on a relationship!  That play, today, could be considered an original chat bench play!  The play and Review are available on YouTube!

April: 2025

In the mid- 1960’s, Black playwrights challenged the mostly white mass media’s Pollyannaish view of America. The stage opened to new voices, especially Black male and female voices, who correctly read the social times and held a mirror to the policies of racism and gender bias.  Their voices, rooted in the American dream, spoke to all Americans and played a pivotal role in gaining support for Federal programs that advanced the Civil Rights Movement and the Women’s Rights movement.    

By the mid 1980’s, Black Power leaders, more militant than those in the Civil Rights Movement, saw a decline in their influence and decided to increase their power by broadening their political base under the banner People of Color.  At same time, leaders in the Women’s Movement sought to increase their power by joining forces with the Gay Rights Movement.   The Spanish speaking people, feeling isolated and seeing their power diminish, consolidated their power under the banner of Hispanics.  By the turn of the century, all of these groups segmented into smaller groups, and each group had a cause and demanded a voice on the stage.  They came with their own methods of storytelling, many non-Western, and produced a cacophony, a Babel, that lead to what I call “boutique drama,” drama of interest only to a specific group.    

Today, as a result, the stage has become a mirror of society --- diverse, segmented, and intolerant.   It is time for American theatre to take a deep breath, to relax, and to rediscover the concept of ensemble. It needs well-crafted, intelligent plays, that enlighten and entertain.  I would like that process to begin in New Jersey.  We have the venues, the actors and directors and the population centers to change the direction of American drama. Isn’t it about time we did so? 

August: 2025

With modern drama, I hear very little comment on plot.  I read reviews and see marvelous comments on the actors and directors and scene design but find the comments on drama less thought provoking.  It seems craft is a lost art, so critics focus on the brilliance of actors whose art makes seeing a mediocre play worth the cost.  For this reason, the rule for bringing a play to the stage in NYC is finding a well-known actor to star in it.  The star makes the play. I recall the days of theatre when plays made the stars.   

The plays I write are solidly constructed.  I am looking for talented directors who know talented young actors who can bring well-constructed characters to life.  As a NJ playwright, I wish to find playhouses in our state to showcase a play.  I will continue to do so until I have exhausted every means at my disposal. 

October: 2025

For the last sixty years, modern theatre has been involved in a critique of American society. Wars, poverty, social injustices, psychological trauma, political corruption, and religious scandals have provided more than sufficient fodder for modern playwrights. However, the constant repetition of these societal ills has separated the stage from the ordinary life of Americans who no longer can identify with the people they see on stage.

The problem became compounded as diversity brought to the stage new methods of storytelling. Non-linear and fragmented narratives began to replace the dramatic structures that shaped Western civilizations for over two millennia. Many theatergoers could not keep pace. This resulted in theatre becoming boutique, of interest only to the special group represented on stage. Instead of E Pluribus Unum, modern drama created Ex uno plures ( Out of one, many.) Theatres cannot thrive in a fragmented society.

The Culture Wars are over. All that had to be said has been said. All those who fought for inclusion have been included. The time has come for playwrights to write with an affection for our country, to help us rediscover our sense of shared identity. Even a tragedy, if well-written with an American sensibility, can provide illumination. For plays to attract a wider audience, craft must take precedence over ideology, and heavy messaging must be replaced with a focus on character and aesthetic form.

April: 2025

As a NJ playwright, I have come to the conclusion that the theatre needs to rediscover Aristotle’s Poetics. Aristotle listed six elements for drama: Plot, Character, Thought, Language, Music and Spectacle. For the past sixty years, NJ stages have emphasized the least important elements: language, music, and spectacle.

Initially, there was a rationale for the shift. At the birth of the cultural revolution (1965), various groups, under the banner of diversity and inclusion, found their way to the stage. New writers, many from different cultures, and encouraged by Creative Writing professors to express emotion, filled their plays with provocative messages conveyed through lyrical monologues and emotional dialogue. Such plays engaged audience empathy, taking theatre-goers on emotional or psychological journeys paralleling the inner trauma of characters on stage.

After sixty years, however, such plays have exhausted the audience’s capacity for empathy. The audience has heard it all before. Empathy has become predictable, and theatre is suffering from creative ennui.

The solution is to turn away from immersion and return to a detached aesthetic—a critical distance that occurs when playwrights and audiences share a common artistic viewpoint. That viewpoint can be found in the first three elements of Aristotle’s Poetics: Plot, Character, and Thought. 

 In a well-crafted play, the playwright’s skill (Thought) develops a sequence of events (Plot) that a protagonist (Character) must confront. The twists and turns of the plot take the audience on a journey outside itself: “What will happen next? How will the problem be resolved?” The viewer's experience becomes objective, an escape from his/her  own emotions -- entertainment!  The greatest satisfaction occurs when the playwright resolves a character’s dilemma within the structure of events presented on stage.

June: 2026

Sixty years ago, attacks on white privilege had a validity as business, entertainment, sports and politics were dominated by white males.  Playwrights were justified in dissecting and deconstructing the characteristics of white males and the society that gave them power. With the assistance of other media, the stage helped open a dialogue about white privilege that led to the transformation of society.  In the last sixty years, Blacks, people of color, and women have secured positions of power in almost every phase of American life. The rapidity with which our society opened opportunities to minorities and women ranks as one of the great achievements of our time. 

You would think that such a success would be celebrated on the stage and end the attacks on white privilege and our culture. This has not happened.  Playwrights schooled in confrontation and protest, continue their assault on our society, repeating ills that have long since diminished.  In presenting white characters, playwrights still focus on  defects – usually characters psychologically damaged or morally compromised.  White male characters of integrity confronting difficulties in their environment, not necessarily the problems of a flawed society but rather of an imperfect world, seem to have disappeared from the American stage.

For drama to move forward, playwrights need to discover a new realism.  This involves inventing new stories about characters who confront situations unique to their environment and who speak honestly about their difficulties in confronting them.  In such plays, dialogue becomes directed inward to plot and character, the Aristotelian ideal, which allows an audience to discover truths of human nature through inference rather than through overt explanations or lectures.  Insight replaces preaching.

Subject:  Drama in New Jersey

New Jersey arts have become subservient to the New York marketplace.  Our artists, in all forms, look to New York City for validation.  However, the gold standard for NJ artists, I believe, should be measured by how many residents from NYC cross the Hudson River to see works that can only be seen in NJ.  To do that, we need to rethink our state’s network on the arts.

Secondly, the arts in NJ suffer from an academic inbreeding.  Process and message have become more important than originality and craftsmanship.  As a result, audiences are subjected to a monotonous bludgeoning of the same tedious messages.  The arts have fragmented into boutique enterprises diverse in everything but thought.   Without diversity of thought, all art devolves into mediocrity. 

Finally, if the arts are to become a vital force in society, the arts must recapture a sense of transcendence.  Meaningful art builds on the past, creates in the present, and inspires the future.  That  explains the Beatles’ success as well as the power of any speech of Martin Luther King. Today’s art lacks a sense of largeness; it does not view ideas as living things that grow.  

February 2024

Subject: Tragedy



Here is a bitter truth: Tragedy is a lost art with playwrights.  Since the mid 1950’s, playwrights have concerned themselves with individuals destroyed by psychological, sociological or cultural forces.   That was never the intent of tragedy.  Tragedy concerns itself with unknown forces that combine to destroy an individual.  

In ancient times, the unknown forces were defined as the will of the gods.  Today, the unknown forces still exist but belong to science.  Despite our emphasis on science – on psychology or sociology, the universe still contains unknown forces, which we cannot know until they combine in the destruction of an individual.  They are real. 

We have a vocabulary to acknowledge these forces but nothing to explain them. We use words like “impossible”, “absurd”, “irrational”,  “senseless” and “surreal”.  Such words remind us that something outside the normal workings of our world happened that cannot be explained.  While we cannot identify them, there is a branch of literature devoted to them: tragedy. 

January 2025.