Person

Person one:

According to Barranger, ‘a playwright is a creative act that enlarges our understanding of human experience and enriches our appreciation of life’, allowing viewers to see the play from a perspective that would help understand the environment and feelings of the characters. The use of lighting sounds and music, attitudes, decor and backgrounds all play a huge part in allowing the audience to feel the emotions and better understand what is going on during each scene. Typically, viewers look at plays to explain issues occurring in their present world, these issues are explained through specific examples that might occur, allowing the viewers to have a certain view on the topic. I believe that focusing on narrower issues in a playwright allows the author to focus on a single issue creating more in depth detail, rather than if they focused on a larger issue with the potential to create too many story lines for the viewers to follow. While a larger issue may be the topic of choice for some, with agents searching for new authors and new scripts that will make it in today’s world; having narrow topics will more likely be seen as interesting rather than focusing on larger issues. With a larger issue, many playwrights might stem off of many different topics, making the play seem to drag on, whereas if a play focuses on a more narrow topic, a story may be written with the main focus but easier for the viewer to follow along. Issues such as ‘oppression, racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, gender, ethnicity, and sexual orientation have come the defining subjects of new writing.’ (Barranger) With writers that were gay or of a different ethnicity, were facing these social issues; it became a popular writing topic that also interested viewers, as it has become more socially acceptable to be gay, etc. Although many people are of a different ethnicity, often times society may be unaware of the issues these specific individuals may be having to deal with on a day to day basis; and are given the opportunity to understand and see these issues through a playwright. I find these types of issues to be very important, rather than the larger topics that are already shown in extensive amounts through media. Though larger topics might still be important as well, I feel that through playwrights, it is important and very interesting to show the ‘smaller’ issues to help society see and understand issues that they might not be aware of.

Person two:

I don’t think plays need to or should focus on certain social or ethnic groups etc. Those issues can definitely be good areas of inspiration for a playwright to build a play around and do make for good plots and deal with the narrower issues. It can be easier for someone to build a story around who can use issues such as those, that have had an affect on them in some way (positive or negative). Its part of the creative process. I think most of it depends on what the goal of Playwright is. If its for commercial success a play can be written to appeal to a larger paying audience than a story which is more interpersonal which may appeal to a much smaller segment of the population. Just as in many other forms of art The Artist (Playwright) creates to what inspires them. To what makes them happy and comes from their heart. Not to some standard set by a commercial entity of sorts. If I reflect back to a time long ago where there was not as much social fodder or topics to write on I can see how a writer would have more options in using social and ethnic topics to build a story from. Plays are forms of entertainment and a form of expression that encapsulate a better understanding of our experiences. Having plays that focus on specific social and ethnic groups, limits creativity options. Plays that focus on social issues and different ethnic groups have their place in the scheme of things however it shouldn’t define the creative process.