Situation Hopeless, Not Terminal: the Playwright in the Twenty-First Century

Abstract

Playwrights in the West remain under threat not only from the ever-increasing dominance of the director and the loss of autonomy carried over from film and television, but from sheer economic deprivation – which makes playwriting impossible as a full-time profession for most of its members. Is the best way to remedy this the assertion of collective responsibility and power advocated in this country by the Theatre Writers Union, or by a frank acceptance that artistic strength is seldom likely to be matched by economic or ‘political’ power – as James L. Rosenberg now argues? NTQ does not necessarily endorse the viewpoint here expressed, but feels that it is a forceful statement of a ‘new realism’ about the role of the playwright in the likely western future – in this respect also making an illuminating contrast to the foregoing article by Zygmunt Hübner. The author, James L. Rosenberg, is a widely-performed American dramatist, who has also translated numerous plays from the German, and is presently Visiting Professor of Theatre at Williams College. Williamstown, Massachusetts.