[Office
of Literary Agent.]
AGENT I’m sorry, but the play just doesn’t work.
AUTHOR Why not? This is my most important work,
Andrea; you liked the other pieces. What’s wrong with this one?
AGENT Well, it just doesn’t work as a play. It’s
like watching paint dry, or having to sit through “My Dinner with Andre” for
the fifth time.
AUTHOR Well, I liked that movie. I am not sure I
could sit through it five times, but I have done it three, at least.
AGENT But this is like a political dialogue, a lot
of talking, about Empire and things people don’t care about anymore. And
there’s no dramatic action.
AUTHOR What do you mean? The protagonist gets
hanged, and the antagonist is arrested for exposing himself. What more do you
need?
AGENT Well, that would be fine, but they happen at
the end, and the build up has nothing dramatic.
AUTHOR There’s an interrogation of a major
historical figure. Isn’t that dramatic?
AGENT It’s like you and me sitting here chatting;
it doesn’t feel like an interrogation.
AUTHOR Well, I admit the stakes have been raised by
Abu Ghraib and waterboarding, and so what we used to think of as dramatic, no
longer seems so any more. But, that’s history, these were all gentlemen; they
addressed each other in a civil manner, even if the stakes were still great.
AGENT But, that’s another thing about it. Nobody
knows or cares about some obscure Irishman executed during the First World War.
It isn’t important history.
AUTHOR You are so wrong about that. Just because no
one knows about it, doesn’t mean that it isn’t important.
AGENT Well, even if I am wrong, the fact that no
one in your audience will have a clue about the significance of what is going
on will just mean that they won’t fill the seats.
AUTHOR This is a play about Ireland. I could just go
onto any street in Dublin or Belfast and read the text aloud and I would get an
audience.
AGENT But we aren’t in Dublin. And American
audiences don’t know this stuff; they need a kick in the pants to help them
digest their history – particularly when it isn’t something that they had spoon
fed to them in their high schools.
AUTHOR But there are a lot of Irish Americans, and
even more German Americans. Don’t you think they would be interested in knowing
how the British manipulated American society and how they shaped American
history? The outcome of this story largely determines the cesspool that the
twentieth century would become.
AGENT Really? I certainly didn’t see that.
AUTHOR Well it is true nonetheless. If the British
hadn’t been able to neutralize Casement, it would have been very difficult for
the Americans to support the British in the way that they did. What Thomson
does in my play – along with everything else he was doing at the time –
essentially wins the war for Britain. This was the most unpopular war ever
fought by the Americans, so if Casement had been able to promote an Irish
position in opposition to it, Woodrow Wilson would have been in a jam. You know
he was the president, right?
AGENT Don’t get snarky. I still don’t think it
works as a play.
AUTHOR Look, I have some people workshopping it
nearby. Could you at least come to see them work over the next couple of days?
It may help you to see that the play is more interesting and dramatic, than you
think.
AGENT If I must. I am not confident about its
prospects at all.
