Submission 148 / Day 145

BENEATH SHELTON LAUREL to Syracuse Stage

Last night I saw a competent production of Frayn's COPENHAGEN and I was struck by the actors who played Bohr and Heisenberg. Their interpretations of the characters seemed wholly based in the script and completely without the attitudinal or behavioral peculiarities that sometimes find their way into portrayals of historical figures. As a playwright who has written two plays that feature historical characters, I was relieved.

Whether it's the work of directors, dramaturgs, or actors themselves, there has arisen an almost fetishistic obsession with authenticity that sends folks scrambling for history books, letters, photographs, and film in an effort to "ground" characters . . . sometimes more rigorously than the playwright intended or the script can support. I can't speak for others, but when I create a character -- even one based on an actual person -- that character is none the less a creature of the play whose identity and characterization are built in the same way as those of purely fictitious characters. In other words, his or her entire being is to be found within the pages of the script. And, while supplementary claptrap can sometimes enhance the character, it is more likely to be a distraction or worse.

I don't think it's entirely coincidental that a disastrous production of one of my plays was the one most deeply immersed in historically accurate detail I think to the point that the play and the main character, the poet Ezra Pound, became something of a "clothes horse" for a series of affectations that didn't obscure, but at least muddied the script.