Notes on "GH" (and a trio of solo works)

Something I learned recently, in between a rant against Spotify and a nervous collapse over the new Smart TV, is that the word “technology” did not always mean what it means today.

I learned that the word dates back to the 17th century and was formed from the Ancient Greek roots tekhnē (art, craft) and -logia (discourse, theory, science), and it meant, broadly, the study of an art or craft.

This encompassed theater, dance and architecture as well as mathematics and engineering: things which are forged by humans into existence. (Note its resemblance to the word “technique.”) 

Its current meaning, to describe computers, phones and other devices — tools to help humans — was cemented as recently as the late twentieth century. Naturally, I learned this on a Google search.

My hang-up about this new (to me) idea isn't some distress that we've strayed from the original usage of the word “technology” — languages change and evolve constantly — but that I can't think of another word that's taken the place of its original usage. 

The study or science of art and craft. It’s an entirely different idea than “technology” as the invention of tools which make our lives easier. And when we no longer have the word for an idea, what happens to the idea?

“Playwright” is another word whose meaning has shifted. 

The word seems to have first been coined by writer Ben Jonson in his satiric poem “Epigram 49” around the year 1612. Contrary to what’s suggested in Shakespeare in Love, the culture of Elizabethan England did not regard dramatists highly. The name of the author of Romeo and Juliet would likely have been unknown to most audiences, seeing as there were no printed advertisements or programs. 

There was no settled term in the English language to describe the person who creates plays. And though Jonson invented the word “playwright” to mock his contemporaries (including Shakespeare), whose works he considered crude and un-literary, the word stuck.

What’s key in this etymology is the suffix “-wright,” which comes from the Old English word “wrytha” meaning “worker or shaper of wood.” Other words that have employed this suffix include: cartwright,millwright, shipwright, wainwright (wagons), plowwright, and wheelright.

A “wright” is a builder, a forger, an architect. And for over 400 years this meaning has been embedded in the word we use to describe those who create plays.

Anyone engaged in the making of new plays — playwrights, actors, directors, stage managers, designers, production managers, fundraisers, press reps — would recognize that plays are not “written” so much as they are “wrought,” an event constructed from time, space, language, bodies, movement, light, and sound, interwoven to pose a dramatic question.

That “wright” is a homonym for “write” is mere coincidence. One of many oddities in the English language. Yet we have come to see the word “playwright” (as in “Playwrights Horizons”) and look past the crucial “wright,” automatically substituting it in our minds with the meaning “write.” 

And, in doing so, we drastically narrow not only the definition of how plays get made, but who gets to make them, what is considered legitimate, what constitutes theater training, and what types of audience theater is made for. 

Plays can be written, and they mostly are. But that is only one means by which a play can be wrought. And, in my opinion, as we are striving for greater inclusivity and access in the theater, we’d do well to embrace a wider understanding of what the word “playwright” means, rather than maintain that narrower definition. We’d do well to shine a light on that critical “gh” and not lose sight of its meaning.

This, anyway, is one of the thoughts that I and my colleagues at Playwrights had in mind as we were designing our upcoming collection of three writer-performed solo works running together in rep: Alexandra Tatarsky’s Sad Boys in Harpy Land, Milo Cramer’s School Pictures, and Ikechukwu Ufomadu’s Amusements.

For decades Playwrights Horizons has held fast to our mission to advance the new work of playwrights and to bring this work to audiences. This series is without precedent in the long history of our theater, and its innovation aims to deepen how we serve our mission, to consider our definition of what “playwright” means. Each of these new works is unquestionably a play; what other word do we have to describe the people who made them?

Where do we get the idea that “playwright” means words on a page? Who decided that a play must be one thing, or another thing? I have heard in many theater lobbies the comment, “It’s good, but it’s not a play,” as though that means something. Our work at Playwrights Horizons is not to be an authority on what a play is, but to spark the imagination around the many things a play can be. We are here for the builders, architects, and forgers as well as the writers.

These three plays defy easy categorization and, accordingly, the process of making each was unique. Sad Boys in Harpy Land was built by Tatarsky through a shifting collaboration with many artists over many years, made by integrating physical theater and clowning with sound, scenic design, an idea about hell, and a somewhat obscure German text. School Pictures began with fingers on a ukulele giving urgent voice to some characters collected through Cramer’s strange, desperate, real-life day-job as a tutor. And Amusements was crafted and tested and re-crafted over time in front of audiences, finding the blurry line between the comedy club and the theater. None of these plays are literary; they are works of theater.

And I’m proud to present them to you in rep format. Individually, each play is thoroughly compelling, but produced together this trio is a gust of fresh air, a re-consideration not only of how our scheduling, ticketing, and budgeting might work at Playwrights Horizons, but of the terms we use to describe our work. I’m so happy to share this with our audience. Thanks for coming along for the ride.