Writers get a bad rap, not without reason. It’s not hard to list names of people who wrote like angels but stood at the devil’s left hand in their personal lives. Hemingway comes to mind, but so does Alice Munro.
As readers, maybe we expect too much. A piece of writing can have a profound influence on someone who finds it at the right moment, but it’s a mistake to link the book and the author too closely. One is an entire imaginary world, and the other is the almighty creator of that world. How can we trust someone who spends their working hours making it all up?
“Seminar,” now in production at Shaker Bridge Theatre tosses viewers into a wasp nest of writers and their vanities, with mixed results. I enjoyed playwright Theresa Rebeck’s clever, profane dialogue and literary in-jokes, but I didn’t particularly like “Seminar.” The play’s five characters are all such peacocks that it was hard to root for any of them. Though “Seminar” first surfaced in New York in 2011, Rebeck’s effort at a kind of drawing room comedy wears the dust of the 20th century’s view of writers.
I think we’re meant to appreciate Martin and Kate, two friends who are taking a writing seminar with Leonard, a preening egomaniac who’d once been a literary star but now teaches writers and edits their work. Also in the seminar are Douglas, whose uncle is a famous playwright, and Izzy, who seems content to sleep her way to notoriety.
The play opens with Douglas rattling on about how he won’t go on retreats anywhere but Yaddo or MacDowell, the country’s best known artist colonies. Martin, who is struggling to make rent, finds him insufferable. The weekly seminar takes place in Kate’s family’s apartment, nine rooms in Manhattan for which the rent is a stabilized $800 a month.
The seminar comes across as an impossible contrivance to anyone who’s ever participated in such a thing. Writing is generally circulated in advance, so everyone can read it beforehand and offer thoughtful criticism. In Rebeck’s world, Leonard and the students glance at each others’ work and form judgments within seconds.
Leonard dismisses Kate’s story, which she’s been working on for six years, by reading only to the first punctuation mark, a semicolon. “I’m not even making it through your first sentence,” he tells her, which says more about him than about Kate’s abilities.
Part of the fun for viewers is seeing through the characters’ thin masks.
“Don’t fool yourselves,” Leonard tells the group. “You’re not in this together. … Writers in their native state are about as civilized as feral cats.”
The actors have a good time with these characters, in scenarios that are very much meant for an adult audience. Kate emerges as a moralizing force in the early scenes, as she rails against Leonard’s treatment. Leah Schwartz, in her first role at Shaker Bridge, gives Kate the necessary mixture of spunk and gravitas.
As Leonard, Shaker Bridge veteran Tim Rush has the physical presence to loom over the young writers. When their respect for him is at a low point, the script brings him back to the center, as the voice of authority. The students challenge him, but he doesn’t really care what they think and always seems to have the answers.
Martin, played by Xavier Markey-Smith, at first seems brittle, but eventually displays some steel in his dealings with Leonard.
Douglas and Izzy aren’t as fully developed as the other three characters, but that’s no fault of Ben Pereira and Brooke Friday, both new to Shaker Bridge. Pereira gives Douglas a kind of clammy eagerness, and Friday’s Izzy is all charm and sex appeal.
The weekly seminar is a struggle, as the authors fight over who has authority. Who’s able to command the language, to make it do their bidding, and who’s really got what it takes? It isn’t clear that even Leonard has it anymore.
In a long speech about how a writer’s career can curdle, he outlines what I assumed was his story. But even that tale of a writing career cut short doesn’t elicit much sympathy. Poor Leonard, getting paid $20,000 to work with four students while also traveling to conflict zones to write magazine stories. Such a comedown.
The trouble with Rebeck’s play is that there are no stakes in the game these five characters are playing. A writer’s ambition is a meager thing, but it keeps the play’s dialogue moving. Martin emerges as a bit of a hero, but Kent Burnham’s direction doesn’t give viewers much to go on in shaping how Martin is more worthy of admiration or even attention than the other writers.
Rebeck gives a lot of the best lines to Kate, but “Seminar” is about the fragile male egos, the Great White Hopes of the American novel, and whether they’ll break through. The days when even avid readers would care about such a thing are long over. Even at 15 years old, “Seminar” is a bit senile.
In the end, I couldn’t decide if “Seminar” was in earnest, or if it’s a cynical exercise, a writer’s study of her own field’s vanities or a mockery of the whole enterprise. I laughed at a lot of the lines in “Seminar,” but felt a little queasy about Rebeck’s view of writers and their motivations.
Having interviewed a lot of writers over the years, my impression is that most of them are hardworking, humble people. Even Hemingway said that most writers are just trying to write the best story, poem or book they can. Their chatter is funny, but beside the point.
“Seminar” is in production at Shaker Bridge Theatre in White River Junction through April 12. For tickets ($25-$45) or more information, go to shakerbridgetheatre.org.
