The Director and the Playwright

Next week sees the opening of the Garrick One Act festival. This sees the debut of Jeff Watkins, aka, Lubrug, as director for ‘Quake’ and myself, as playwright for ‘Awakenings’. It is important to allow new people into these guarded roles. Too many times I see the same directors putting on ALL THE WORKS IN PERTH by the same playwrights. Now, I am not saying Neil Simon or Ray Cooney isn’t a great playwright, but enough already. This season at Garrick will not only introduce a new director, with a new prospective, but will give the theatre its life-blood – a new story. I think theatres need to take a risk now and then and allow new directors to give it a crack and original scripts to be performed. Theatre has to be more than getting bums on seats with whatever generic comedy/musical that will get ticket sales. I feel that this conservative mindset is making things a little stagnant and if this trend continues, I’ll choose to stay at home and watch DVD’s instead.