Writing for Theatre - Arnold Wesker

3: Responsibility to the craft

Be jealous of it, as for a child from whom you want perfection. Perfection is an impossible state, but that should not prevent the writer from aspiring to it. The writer has chosen his/her craft, no one else. And with such a choice comes responsibility, as with an adopted child, But it's not a one-way process. Respect your art and it will feed back with self-respect.

You must know everything your craft is capable of achieving. The stage can tell the story of an hour or a hundred years. You can sail seas, go down a mine, fly a plane, ride a train. You can also, if you've found the right words, move audiences on a bare stage. You cannot be careless or indifferent. If you merely toss off any old thing, then you too, in turn, will be tossed aside.

4: The artist as guardian of truths as they see them

Even unpleasant truths. Even unpleasant truths about those you love or who are "on your side". Even unpleasant truths which attract hostility from friends, colleagues, sisters, brothers. Even uncomfortable truths which briefly place you in the "enemy's camp". The artist's voice must be an individual's voice, not the mouthpiece of a group or of a dogma. This is especially true in the age of "political correctness".

Example: If you are a black, a Jewish, an Irish, a German writer, and your experience of human relationships is that it sometimes breaks down for reasons rooted in inherited cultural characteristics - explore them. The same applies to gender. There are dreadful men who are dreadful in a way that is identifiably masculine, and there are dreadful women who are dreadful in a way that is identifiably feminine - tell it.

Which brings us to a paradox: people need to know that is at least one kind of person they can trust to say what they really feel an think, rather than what is expected of them, or what is most comfortable or opportune or them to say. When this happens, then it is often discovered that what had begun as an individual's voice turns out to be, unexpectedly, the voice of the many.

Artist's must never be opportunists, but fiercely independent. Their talent is a unique gift given to them for safe-keeping, cherishing, nurturing, for handing on in a dependable condition to the next generation of artists. The individual vision is singular, the only hope for the future. The group may be needed for protection, co-operative physical endeavour, a sense of security to give the individual a sense of belonging. But - no group should ever be given the right to stifle the individual voice or the group itself will be doomed. Group decisions involve compromise. The group often finds it less trouble, less demanding to bless and support mediocrity. It has a tendency to become satisfied with the status quo and thus atrophy. For this reason it needs the voice of the independent artist. Such a voice is refreshing, often proving to be not the feared destroyer but the reviver of tradition, adding to it, even creating new ones.

To be an artist, then, requires patience to develop, enrich, hone your craft, and the courage to stand alone for what you've perceived and think about human beings and their condition.

An artist must not set out to intimidate, though that consequence may result from their work, not should they allow themselves to be intimidated.

1: The difference between art as therapy and art as experience
2: To distinguish between material that is the stuff of literature and material that is anecdote
3: Responsibility to the craft
4: The artist as guardian of truths as they see them
5: The craft of theatre involves...
6: They will not love you forever