I often wonder what Arthur Miller would do if he were setting out to be a writer today. What kind of writing would the author of “Death of a Salesman” be doing? I think the same for Tennessee Williams, Eugene O’Neill, Ibsen, Chekhov and so on. Would they even be writing plays?
I found the following quote by Miller from an interview he did back in 1960 with Henry Brandon in an article called The State of Theater:
“A playwright provides answers by the questions he chooses to ask, by the exact conflicts in which he places his people. Chekhov wrote, ‘A conscious life without a definite philosophy is no life, rather a burden and a nightmare.’ A writer who has not spent his life trying to find and articulate ‘answers’ could not have written this.
I am not calling for more ideology, as Ustinov implies. I am simply asking for a theater in which an adult who wants to live can find plays that will heighten his awareness of what living in our time involves. I am tired of a theater of sensation, that’s all.”
Arthur Miller
Conversations with Arthur Miller
page 59
Obviously he didn’t like the direction theater was heading — and that was almost 50 years ago. But these days, what area of our lives is not ruled by sensationalism?
[…] I often wonder what Arthur Miller would do if he were setting out to be a writer today. What kind of writing would the author of “Death of a Salesman” be doing? I think the same for Tennessee Williams, Eugene O’Neill, Ibsen, Chekhov and so on. Would they even be writing plays? I found the following […] Original Source… […]
On writing, Arthur Miller also said “his forgetery was as important as his memory.” It is true in any kind of creative work that what you leave out is as significant as what you include. In other words, don’t tell the whole story. Some things must be left up to the viewer and that is where they ‘enter’ the story….in all the unsaid, they insert their own courage, their own spirit, their own pain and comradery with the character.