The Human Nature of Playwriting

FOREW0RD

In 1948, when my father, the playwright and screenwriter Samson Raphaelson (SR), taught the undergraduate course he draws on for The Human Nature of Playwriting, I was in college, more or less the age of his students. When I looked through the book recently, more than sixty years later, several things surprised me.

Above all was a sense that little of The Human Nature of Playwriting feels dated. The plays and movies SR wrote in those days show their age one way or another. But much of the book, even many of the students’ fragmentary scenes, could have been written anytime between then and now. Why that’s so, I’m pretty sure, goes to the essence of what SR was trying to get across.

The differences between a good play and a bad play seldom have much to do with the author’s views on the issues of the day, or how in or out of fashion the play’s setting, plot, or language happen to be. The differences between good and bad arise from the author’s grasp—or lack of it—of human nature, of what makes people behave the way they do. And human nature changes somewhat less frequently than political issues or social norms or slang.

This may also explain the surprising variety of readers who got nourishment from the book. Among those quoted on the dust jacket of the original print edition, more than half were neither professional writers nor connected with the theater.

A housewife said, I am a woman of thirty-five, married. I have three children, my husband earns a comfortable living, and I feel I have things to write … but hadn’t been able to get started. Then I read this book, which got at me through my own living, and I am writing at last.

A businessman said, It gets the reader thinking about the artistic nature of his daily experiences.

A teacher said, This gets at me first and writing second.

Frankly, I’m a little suspicious of those quotations. They’re signed only by initials, not full names, which raises the possibility they were invented by the publisher. If so, no matter. They accurately reflect reactions made known to the publisher from a variety of readers at the time. And they confirm that The Human Nature of Playwriting lives up to its title.

I’m also surprised by how articulate, even brilliant some of SR’s supposedly extemporaneous commentary, as recorded by a stenographer, strikes me at an age when I’ve long since outgrown excessive filial admiration. Not that he was inarticulate or clumsy in daily conversation. Far from it. But I don’t recall anything off the cuff as perfectly put together as, to take just one example, his hilarious imaginary riff on Benjamin Franklin’s loathsome defect. The explanation may lie in a sentence in the book’s introduction. Referring to the stenographic account, SR writes, Naturally I made huge cuts and a multitude of changes.

One thing that didn’t surprise me, but may well have been an agreeable surprise to his students, is SR’s candor. He was a man of considerable ego and confidence in his opinions. But he was quick to admit error or to modify careless pronouncements. Example: The other evening I flippantly said that technique is something you discover you’ve put into a piece after you have written it…. That was a misleading remark. He was remarkably objective about the defects of his own work. He was open to criticism. He gave imaginative consideration to views contrary to his own.

A different sort of surprise was the phone call from Susan Mclean of Tessellate Media suggesting the publication of this digital version of the book. Jeepers, the thing is sixty-six years old! But now that I’ve taken a fresh look at the book I won’t be surprised if twenty-first century readers of any age interested in any sort of writing get some use out of it, and some pleasure, too.

In closing, a word of caution to frequent dwellers on Facebook. You may have come across a post from one of SR’s students disclosing that among her classmates were a pre-mustache Gene Shalit and a pre-pajama Hugh Hefner. SR disguised all names and certain identifying idiosyncrasies. I suggest that you don’t bother trying to figure out who’s Hefner and who’s Shalit. At any rate I couldn’t spot Shalit despite becoming good friends with him in later years.

Joel Raphaelson

Chicago, Illinois

June 2015

Letter 1: First page of course outline

Letter 1a: Second page of course outline

INTRODUCTION

This book is the verbatim account of how thirty young people and I worked together, delving into their lives in the effort to find dramatic material, and digging into my experience in the effort to give that material writing form and vitality. Much of their living and of mine is recorded here, over and beyond the call of technique. The reader may follow the progress of these young people, step by step, in the interplay of actual event, idea, and creative form.

For me the book is a record of a rewarding time, the winter and spring of 1948 at the University of Illinois. I had been asked by Fred S. Siebert, director of the School of Journalism, to come for that semester as a visiting professor and teach a course in creative writing with emphasis on the drama. He said he wanted to experiment with a professional writer who knew nothing about accepted teaching methods. On such grounds I certainly qualified. The idea attracted me enormously. Urbana, where I had been an undergraduate, still meant the heart of America to me, and, after more than twenty years in the atmosphere of theatrical and journalistic New York and motion-picture Hollywood, it promised an exciting change. I accepted Professor Siebert’s offer with pleasure.

My class of thirty consisted almost equally of men and women, all seniors or graduates. Most of the men were war veterans. Some half-dozen of the women were married, two of them having children; and as many of the men were married. In ages they ranged from nineteen to twenty-nine. I selected them hit or miss from about two hundred applicants. I did not exclude those without writing ability, so long as they were intelligent and were interested in writing. After all, a student without writing gifts might become a gifted editor, producer, teacher, publisher, literary agent, book salesman, director, actor; he might function in radio, television, films; he might be a lawyer, physician or certified public accountant who advises writers. Since I realized that one cannot actually teach creative writing and was aiming rather to give an understanding of the nature of creative writing, I felt that such people belonged in the course as well as talented students.

The class was scheduled to meet Tuesday and Thursday afternoons from three to five. At the very start I got the notion of having a stenographer take down verbatim everything said in classroom sessions. It seemed a good idea to record, for reference by students, the development of an experience, an emotion, a situation into its final art form. When the course was over, I felt that these classroom notes contained the materials for a book, and this is it. Naturally, I made huge cuts and a multitude of changes. The names throughout are fictitious, and details have been revised so that there is no embarrassing resemblance to any living person.

I wish to express my gratitude to Cecil Scott for his invaluable editorial help.

Pleasant Valley,

Pennsylvania

December, 1948

THE HUMAN NATURE OF PLAYWRITING

FEBRUARY 1948

February 19, 1948

Raphaelson: I’d like to get a picture of your general equipment for this course. How many here have seen a professional play, performed by actors on the stage? All thirty. How many have seen plays in New York? Fifteen. How many have seen plays in Chicago? Twenty-four. In Europe? Eight. Of those who have seen plays in New York, how many have seen more than three or four? Seven. How many have seen professionally produced plays in New York or Chicago within the last three years? Everybody. How many have acted in amateur or other productions? Seven. How many have directed? Five. How many have acted professionally? One. How many have written radio plays? Sixteen. How many have any experience whatsoever in the movies? One. How many have acted in radio? Eleven. How many have done real work with the short story? Twenty-one. How many have sold anything they have written, anything of any kind? Eight. How many have got encouragement from editors or professional theater or radio people in one way or another? Nine.

I’d also like a picture of what is in the collective mind of the class—what you expect to get out of this course. How many intend to pursue writing professionally when they get out of college? Fourteen. How many intend to pursue newspaper work? Eight. How many intend to pursue radio work? Six. How many intend to write fiction? Ten. How many intend to write for the theater? Ten. How many are interested in writing for the movies? One. How many are interested in writing for the movies as against the theater? None. How many for the theater as against the movies? Ten.

I have a theory. Let’s say the object of this course is to put every student through an experience which will make him realize what it is like to write creatively—to look at life, at your own lives probably, to see something, to feel, to study that vision and emotion, to find a meaning in the material, a form, to put it down in words, to study it again, re-seek the meaning, revise your approach, write it again and again, until it is crystallized. If you can go through such an experience, my theory is that those who can write will have learned more about writing, and those who cannot write will have caught a glimpse of what is behind a play, a story, a novel—and, incidentally, will have caught a new glimpse of their own lives.

In other words, this course does not aim directly to teach writing. Whether you write or not after you finish school means nothing to me as a teacher. In fact, I don’t think it is important from any viewpoint. But whether you live or not is important, and how you live. You may become businessmen or women, office workers, farmers, or wives, and as such you will be, whether you know it or not, deeply related to the culture of your age. That culture is largely expressed by creative writers through the written word. And if from this course you get a notion of how that written word comes into being, of the connection between a writer and his own life and between his life and all lives, then this course will be successful indeed.

Now, as for details—I thought a one-act sketch in dialogue, about twenty to forty pages in length, should be written before the end of the semester by everybody in the class. If you get what is behind that simple form, you will know a little about all forms. I will not attempt to teach anything of the so-called technical or mechanical side. In the first place, despite more than twenty years of experience in dramatic writing, during which I directed six or seven of my own plays, I know very little of the mechanical side. In the second place, I am convinced that humanity, character, feeling, and form are the essence of the matter. Besides, there are people who are amazingly skillful about the mechanics of stage and film, and if you know the effect you want, they can get it for you.

In the four months of this course, I am interested in (1) you yourself, what you are like. There are thirty people here, and an important part of our experience will be to get acquainted—with each other and with ourselves. If this course does not deal with thirty-one lives—yours and mine—it deals with nothing and is meaningless. (2) What you ought to be writing about, your true material. (3) How to give it expression.

As I understand it, none of you has had formal instruction in dramatic writing; I am not qualified to give such instruction. I suggest that you all go to the library and find a book or two on dramatic technique. I don’t think it matters too much which book. Each book has its friends and its enemies among teachers, and I propose that you explore for yourselves. Later on, I will discuss the technique of writing in terms of my own experience. Incidentally, do not confuse the word technique with the technicalities and mechanics I mentioned a moment ago. Technique is endlessly fascinating. It is the craft of writing. Without it, the most colorful of men is handicapped. With it, dull men frequently can command attention.

One thing more. I thought that if somebody took down in shorthand what everybody says, and we had access to that material, say a month later, so that we could read what we have said and see how we have changed, we might find it enlightening. So I have arranged for a young lady to take notes.

Has anyone an idea for a one-act sketch? Has anyone ever written a one-act sketch?

Student: Just what do you mean by sketch—a portion of conversation?

R.: An episode that is told by dialogue.

Student: Suppose some of us are esoteric. Wouldn’t our sketch have a limited sales appeal?

R.: I don’t care whether you are esoteric or not. I’m not interested in sales.

Girl: I once wrote a fantasy for children—a little girl’s dream.

R.: Was this written in your childhood days?

Girl: No, it was written while in college, but it is for children.

R.: Let’s lay that aside for the moment. Fantasy has a great place in writing, but we have only four months together, and I’ll have to draw the line somewhere. Let’s put the object of the course this way: I want to give you what I wish someone had given me when I was your age. I have talked about this sort of thing frequently with other professional writers, and almost always they have felt they wasted many years going in wrong directions. I know I have. And we always agreed that the best writing, particularly in our formative years, is writing based on our own lives. I don’t mean factual autobiography. I mean characters, experiences, emotions, backgrounds with which we are familiar. Writing must ring true, and, especially for the beginning writer, you can make a character you know more authentic than a character you invent.

Girl: I have something which is not a plot but a strong environment. The background is Stadium Terrace.

R.: I’d like to hear an idea about a character, something with feeling, emotion. A creative piece of writing—play, story, poem—rides on emotion. Usually on the emotion of a central character. By emotion I mean a hunger, a desire, something burning under that character, humming and beating like a motor, sending him forward.

Tom Preskil: I have a story which could be adapted. A West Point graduate has just come home from service in Sicily, where he had been wounded. He’s quite a hero—a very enterprising, energetic army man. He has learned regimentation, a set of rules, and believes in strict discipline. He comes back to the States and after a period in the hospital is sent to California, to a place where negro paratroopers are stationed. These troops have had their basic training and have become rebellious at army discipline while waiting to be shipped overseas. They have resented their discipline, and their officers have been lax. This person is put in charge. The idea would be to show how heavy discipline in regimented forms on a group like that would fail. It erupts finally—I don’t know what happens—he could end up killing someone. It brings about the complete breakup of his character, personality.

R.: Do you know anything by personal experience about this?

Tom: No, I don’t. That’s why I hesitated. The idea came from a bull-session with a kid who was a paratroop officer in charge of negro troops, and he was explaining how he handled discipline, and I disagreed violently. I want to show him his methods don’t work. He is a person with heavy race prejudice and doesn’t believe in giving negroes any responsibility of their own.

R.: Where is he from? The South?

Tom: No, southern Illinois.

R.: There are two things about your story, (1) You weren’t there and don’t know about it. Let us stay within what you have seen yourself. What you have actually experienced, if treated with imagination, can give you wonderful material. (2) Your sitting and talking to this fellow in the fraternity house is something you do know about, and you could write a sketch which would consist of that conversation. Tell us more about this fellow without naming names.

Tom: He’s a fine guy, actually. Intelligent person, in law school. A very good man in an argument. He’s an extrovert, has an enormous amount of drive and ability to apply himself to one line of endeavor and can’t quite understand others who don’t. Socially, he gets along with anyone.

R.: Has he humor?

Tom: Yes, a little crude, but humor.

R.: Cruel? In the sense of practical jokes?

Tom: No, crude in the sense of dirty. Not in a loud-mouthed way, but he likes humor which has an earthy side.

R.: I like him sitting in the fraternity house. One possible approach is this—a fellow with that viewpoint gets into a situation where, if he applies it, it wallops him. What does he do? That is a first, obvious story attack. What happens when he is in danger of being his own victim? You don’t have to make it drastic. It might be a matter of a dime. The stakes can be small, and it can be in terms of the life you know—with the fraternity house as background.

Tom: Suppose I make myself a character in the story?

R.: You can do that, but you’re presenting a difficult writing problem. You have to be mature before you can see yourself with anything resembling objectivity. I have faced that problem many times, and I have an approach which works for me. Maybe it will for you. I think of myself unfavorably. Let me illustrate. I once tried to do a fiction story about myself as a boy. I thought of myself as a sensitive, tortured, poetic, superior fellow. When I tried to write that, the character came out like all the other tortured and sensitive young men that have been written, and he was boring—and also, I flatter myself, he was not me. I circled around the character and, by accident, hit on the notion of presenting him as a heel. I selected a small sampling from my faults. I wrote about a boy who likes to sleep late in the morning, who hates work, who wants wealth, luxury, fame to come and sit in his lap. Instantly I had a character—and much more like myself than I was willing to admit. If you want to get yourself into a piece of creative writing, try making yourself a bit of a heel—it may ring true.

Why don’t you take your fraternity background, that fellow, and, if you wish, yourself—think it over and see if you can’t get a sketch out of it?

Tom: I think I will.

R.: We may find, as we go along, that you’ll arrive at entirely different material. In a way I’m handicapped, because this is our first meeting. Perhaps I should spend these two hours in a general introductory talk, but I prefer going at it haphazard for a while. Incidentally, here is the first assignment for the class: Will everybody write an autobiography as soon as possible and hand it in? I want to know about your family, your adventures, your ambitions, your friendships. Make it intimate, if you care to. I’ll keep the autobiographies confidential unless you instruct me otherwise. I am not after any so-called Freudian revelations, but I certainly do not ban them. After I have the autobiographies—perhaps even before—I want you to come to my house in small groups. This class is too large for the informal, personal work we must do. Writing is personal, or it’s nothing. If any of you feel you can go through this course and keep your feelings and your living out of it as you might, let’s say, in a science course, I’m afraid you’ve made a mistake.

In the meantime, is there anyone else who has an idea for a story? I use the word story in the sense of plot, character, foundation for a piece of dramatic writing.

Roberta Grentz: I can see two people, for instance, at breakfast in the morning. A man and wife, quarreling. They were out the night before to a party. This bickering has been going on for some months or years. That day the man is to get a physical for a life-insurance company. He goes off, apparently to his office and to get this physical. He comes home about noon. He didn’t pass the test and doesn’t know what is the matter. While they are waiting to get the report on his physical, their own relationship could change—all the things they bickered about are suddenly unimportant in the face of something really big.

R.: Are you married?

Roberta: Yes.

R.: How long?

Roberta: Four years.

R.: Then you should know something about this. Can you overcome the awkwardness of breaking it into two scenes? You start now at breakfast in the morning. Then the man leaves and time passes. Can you overcome the time lapse?

Roberta: Rather than pull down the curtain, perhaps the wife could talk on the telephone to a friend.

R.: That I am afraid, would last forever. It would take a century in audience-time to cover the man’s going even around the corner and coming back. You’re making it tough for yourself?

Roberta: Perhaps he could receive a notice in the mail just as he is about to leave. He opens it. It informs him that he didn’t pass the examination.

R.: Now you’re beginning to save time. In other words, he has had his physical examination and assumes it’s a routine thing. He doesn’t give it another thought. Have this in the early part of the scene so that no attention is drawn to it. He is having his usual fight with his wife, or she is having it with him. She may be to blame or he; you will find it more effective if you focus on one of these people and decide through whose insides you are going to see the play. So far as I am concerned, action is only something that follows the inside of a human being. You can have guns booming, people running in and out, punching each other in the nose, until everybody goes crazy, and your audience will yawn its head off. But have two people quietly talking, with tension growing between them, and you can hear a pin drop. Your sketch is the inner study of that woman and her change.

Roberta: Should the husband fight back?

R.: Not necessarily. That sketch would be just as good if your man was a honey-pie. But the woman has to start it by being difficult, quarrelsome. In other words, the routine of marriage has made her lose perspective on the realities of life and what this man means to her, and when she faces the idea that he may die, she changes.

Roberta: I have the uncomfortable feeling that it’s a pretty obvious plot.

R.: It is. But if you make the people real, well observed, it will become fresh. The woman is your central character. Forget every similar story or play you may have read or seen. Make it the living woman you know—if you know such a woman.

Roberta: I think I do. I’m not too sure about the man, though.

R.: Offhand, I’d say the man’s big moment is when he gets the news about his health. Decide how he will react: Is he crushed? Is he bitter? Does he yell, or is he quietly ironical? When you get that, try to find a man you know who will behave that way, and use him. He’ll work for you very nicely in the early part of the play. Your climax does not have to be full of sound and fury. One tiny little thing—a few words, a bit of action—can move your audience very much.

I’d like to hear some discussion on this idea.

[I am omitting what followed because, somewhat to my surprise, it was dull. I myself was feeling my way, being in the presence of thirty strangers. I had some benevolent and gracious notion that the function of the teacher is to stimulate classroom discussion to the point where solution and inspiration come from the students themselves, preferably from the very student whose idea was discussed. Well, I must say many hands went up and kept going up. But the thoughts were vague. The students wandered animatedly among irrelevancies. Later I learned that the class was much better than it looked at the moment and I learned, too, why they were so uninspired now. It was because they were unsure of me and what I was after. Also, I learned that if the same material had been written in dialogue and read to them, they would have been stimulating to the point of brutality.]

February 24, 1948

R.: I would like some written autobiographies not later than the next session. Then we can really get going.

I assume everyone here has read a lot of plays. If you haven’t, I strongly recommend that you begin at once. I don’t care what plays, so long as they are good. And, if you want to be drama writers, I recommend that you continue reading plays for the rest of your lives. Are there any questions?

Joe Letter: You talk about getting things out of autobiographies—

R.: Not out of autobiographies; rather, let us say, with the help of autobiographies.

Joe: I always thought dramatic representation comes by getting a—well, a theme—like the idea that prejudice is vicious—and then you develop the story from that. Is this the way you intend to work, after we’ve handed in our autobiographies?

R.: Perhaps, but I doubt it. The autobiographies will guide us. Each person’s life is different—unique on the one hand and universal on the other. Let’s wait a while and see what will come out of the autobiographies. At the moment, I’m interested in what you say about theme. Do you think all dramatic art is conceived in terms of theme?

Joe: That’s the impression I had.

R.: I don’t think most people get any two ideas the same way. I don’t think Shakespeare got the idea—I am guessing now, of course—of Lear the same way, let us say, as he got the idea of Henry IV. In Henry IV he may have had an actor—remember Shakespeare was a most commercial writer—he may have had an actor, a terrific comedian, who inspired a character part. Falstaff was written for a certain actor. On the other hand, John Galsworthy, in Loyalties, may have become very indignant about the status of the Jew in London society and written Loyalties from a theme. In my own case it is hard for me to trace the moment in the evolution of my play when theme emerges. By the way, how many people here have read anything by me? How many have not? That’s an awful lot. Well, I shall try to get acquainted with you by reading your stuff, and I hope you will do the same with mine. My plays which I would like to have you read sooner or later are Jason, which I think is my best, or which I fancy the most, Accent on Youth, Young Love, and Skylark. Since I wrote these plays and directed most of them myself, I will find it convenient to refer to them and speak with authority about