Lewis Black was happy to start a play and not have to complete the process, ‘It’s frustration, on all levels,’ he says.
For their Script Tease Project, improvisational comedians Naomi Snieckus and Matt Baram of the National Theatre of the World commissioned prominent writers to pen the first two pages of a new play. The resulting starter drafts were then sealed in an envelope, to be opened and read cold on stage each night. Ms. Sniekus and Mr. Baram then proceed to improvise the rest of the one-hour plays. Saturday's final two performances feature teaser scripts by the CBC's Rick Mercer and American author, playwright and ranting political monologist Lewis Black. We spoke to the excitable Mr. Black about writing plays – a job, he says, that is never done.
So, you were commissioned to write a play, but were told not to bother finishing the thing?It's perfect. Two characters, two pages. No responsibility.
You wrote a number of one-act plays in the 1980s. Couldn't you have just used one of those?I wouldn't be able to remember one. I can't remember what happened last Thursday. Actually, I did point out that they could do two pages of any of my one-acts. There's only one that's ever been done in Canada, at a college. So, you're right, they could do any of those, and nobody would know. Then somebody in the world would at least see two pages of one of my one-acts, and maybe the improvised version would come out better than mine did.
When you wrote the two-page starter script for Script Tease, did the format open up things for you?With this, obviously you don't have to think about arc. I thought of it in terms of the set-up and what costumes they're wearing. They allowed me to be a little crazy.
Do you have any background in improv?I do. A good friend of mine is Mark Linn-Baker, the guy from the sitcom Perfect Strangers. In order to make some money when we were studying theatre at Yale, we went around the campus and did some improv shows. But, to be honest, improv is not something I leap on these days.
Last summer, your friend Linn-Baker started in a new full-length play of yours, One Slight Hitch. What can you tell us about it?I started it some 30-odd years ago. It's a romantic comedy. A farce. I spent the last eight years and four workshops on it, rewriting it to get it to my satisfaction. Stand-up comedy is close to the bone, but you find ways to protect yourself. With playwriting, you just filet yourself in the back of a darkened room watching it. Why did I write that? Why are the actors saying it that way? I had forgotten what it was like.
So, what's it like?I describe playwriting like this: If you had a 1,000-piece puzzle of a blue sky, what you get done first is the edge, which takes about six months. Then you spend the rest of the time trying to put the inside pieces together. Eventually you borrow a hammer and start smashing until the pieces fit.
You must get some satisfaction out of it.It's frustration, on all levels. It's difficult. It's endless. And you get paid in cans of vegetables. In the end, One Slight Hitch was a lot of fun. It was successful. I still don't feel the play is all that it should be, but I have to let it go.