Neil Simon, A Great Chronicler of American Life: Guest MINDSETTER™ Kevin Broccoli
Sunday, August 26, 2018
The first play I ever read was by Neil Simon.
My mom bought me one of his compilations, and I read it so quickly, I had to go back to the bookstore the next day and buy the other volumes.
There are a lot of things he doesn't get credit for, and one of them is that his work is a wonderful introduction to theater no matter your age.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTAdmittedly I'm one of the people who have cracked jokes at Simon's expense because so many theaters find it easy to trot out a production of "Barefoot in the Park" when they have empty space on their schedule, but the truth is, he's a great chronicler of American life.
We see such a small section of his work that we often forget about incredible plays like "The Gingerbread Lady," "Chapter Two," "Biloxi Blues," and many of his other works.
We forget that he was one of the great collaborators--working with Mike Nichols, George C. Scott, Gwen Verdon, Maureen Stapleton, and Bob Fosse--as well as creating books for musicals like "Sweet Charity" and "Promises, Promises." We forget that the man won two Pulitzer Prizes and multiple Tony awards. That to this day he holds the record for having the most plays running on Broadway at one time.
If you read his autobiographies (and you really should), you'll get an invaluable class in writing. I read them after I tore through all his plays and wanted to find out more about this man who had helped foster a love of theater in me. Here are just a few of the things I learned--
- Don't be precious about your writing.
- Cut don't trash. Save everything you write in case you can recycle it.
- Writing as therapy may not make great art, but it's necessary all the same.
- You don't need a big idea to start writing. Just write.
- Certain words are funny. It's true.
He was so prolific and so precise. Try to find a wasted word or misshapen sentence in anything he's written. It's nearly impossible. Not everything works, but the work itself is solid.
Like so many writers of a particular time period, Simon has been dismissed over the years as dated and overdone, but you could make the same argument about a lot of writers who are still widely produced with reverence and respect. I wonder if we would view him differently if he had written high drama his entire career instead of pursuing an equally noble pursuit--to make people laugh.
I'm going to go find that volume of his plays and spend the day reading them. It's true that theater is meant to be seen and not written, but it says something about a playwright when his words paint such a vivid picture in your mind of what it is you're meant to see on the stage. When you can hear the characters speaking to each other. When you can feel what they feel. When you can laugh--all by yourself--at something written by someone fifty years ago.
The kind of transcending experience--that's art. The man was an artist.
Was he Michelangelo or Beethoven or Ibsen? No.
But then again, Ibsen never made me laugh.
Kevin Broccoli is the Artistic Director at the Epic Theatre Company in Rhode Island. In May, Brocolli won a legal battle to bring his satire “James Franco and Me: An Unauthorized Satire” to New York City as part of FringeNYC.
