Outside Readers

When I was wrapping up my MA at the University of Toronto, I found out about a convention they had there that is only sporadically followed at other graduate schools I have been involved with or am aware of. When PhD candidates are in the final phase of their candidacy, they bring in an outside reader/auditor. And outside means not outside the department but from an outside university. This person either reads the dissertation (with fresh eyes) or simply comes with many questions for the oral defense. The problem with insiders is that they become advocates for the candidate and lose objectivity in many cases. The presumption is that if someone has persisted long enough, they are worthy of the degree, since the chair couldn't simply be fooling himself or herself, right? And it can be hard for the second or third committee-member to break bad news to a chair (not in all cases -- some members delight in being brutally honest -- but probably not enough). Thus, someone is brought in with no stake in whether the candidate passes or not.

Perhaps you can guess my drift here. To their credit, Chicago theatres are producing a lot of new work, but they also seem notorious for putting on well-acted productions of half-baked plays. In a few cases, you really wonder how the piece was green-lit. Or it is painfully obvious that it was green-lit with only part of the play written and pulling it would not only cause a mini-scandal but would open a huge hole in the schedule.

In general, I think artistic directors and literary managers need to be more honest with the authors of brand new work, but this can be very hard, particularly when there are long standing relationships, as is the case in some companies. But in some cases, they themselves are so caught up in their closeness to playwrights that they don't see the problems or think they can paper over them on the strength of the cast (I have to wonder if this is the Steppenwolf strategy).

If the play gets as far as rehearsals and problems are still evident, who will speak up? Particularly if it means cutting (and most new plays do need to be cut, even my own). Will any actor voluntarily give up a lot of lines or an entire part to make the play stronger?*

I don't know if having objective** outsider observers around at various stages would help or not, but it is something to consider. It would probably only work if there was early intervention, matched with a playwright who was open to making necessary changes. But at some point, it simply becomes too late in the game to pull a production. Let me know if you have other ideas to avoid some of the train wrecks that have hit Chicago theatre lately.

* I am thinking specifically about an interesting new play called "Under America," which had a strong second act, but really was fairly broken otherwise. I have to agree with the critical consensus that the backstory of the reporter was completely unbelievable and should be completely dropped, which would radically streamline the play and drop a number of secondary characters. It's hard to imagine the ensemble agreeing to this, even though that was what the play needed.

** Pure objectivity is probably impossible in this plane of existence, but finding people with some distance from a company who will give an honest opinion should be possible, shouldn't it?