On reading Tom Stoppard’s life
-Why are there so few rightwing playwrights?
-Good playwrights seem to see a lot of theatre
-I don’t want fame
-Theatremakers as not-writers
I never want to be so famous that someone will want to write a biography of me. Even a friendly biography must cover some light warts even if not deep scars. I
In my early years, I never read much biography or even non-fiction. Poems, plays, novels, graphic novels even. The world of imagination seemed the most exciting.
As I age, I read more non-fiction. Real life is some times more incredible than fiction. Where ideas come from has been of increasing interest to me as well as what the ideas or stories are themselves.
Tom Stoppard has been described by David Hare as “conservative with a small c” although I can see his politics are complex and don’t easily fit on a left-right scale.
Still this makes Stoppard one of the only 5% or maybe 10% of playwrights who could be viewed more right of centre - with particularly emphasis on freedoms and freedoms of speech.
I find this notable on many counts but first:
Why are so few playwrights right wing? If you take the recent UK and US elections or more broadly you had for example a 69 / 66 million split in favour of Biden over Trump that’s almost 50/50 whereas playwrights would by 95/5 I am guessing. Is this more pronounced in theatre writers over even other creative arts? I’m unsure.
But, then how interesting to have such a well regarded playwright be “small c conservative” - are there ideas we should confront ourselves with in particular, as Stoppard writes in theatre from such a theatrically under-represented tribe? These are not the extreme views of an Ezra Pound but a rightish-centre.
Secondly - the importance of letter writing within all this - both as a record of what was happening and as an important medium of the time - the 1950s,1960s - perhaps emails have replaced that now but there is an element that we seem to miss from those letter writing days. I would not swap it back and lose emails but there is a piece of slow thinking we would find helpful.
Stoppard seemed so fully immersed in theatre and arts - via journalism and meeting and conversation - in the 1950s and 1960s and of course beyond.
Theatre was particular exciting creative art of that time. The biographer Hermione Lee conjures up the theatre and artistic discourse of the time and extracts strangely intriguing patterns and details
Pinter was a figure of great interest to Stoppard, long before they became friends and fellow playwrights. He would never forget their first encounter, in January 1962. When, just over fifty years later, Stoppard was awarded the PEN Pinter Prize, he began his acceptance speech with that memory. Pinter came to Bristol to see a student production of The Birthday Party for the Sunday Times Drama Festival. Stoppard found himself sitting behind him.
Thereupon I became distracted by the necessity of speaking to him. I needed an opening gambit, and started to consider several. So, when The Birthday Party – to which I gave as much of my attention as I could spare – was over, I tapped him on the shoulder, and – I’m sorry to say – spoke to him as follows: ‘Are you Harold Pinter or do you only look like him?’ He turned round and I got an early inkling of Harold Pinter’s unflinching, unswerving gaze. He said, ‘What?’ [This word performed by Stoppard in a low, sinister, threatening tone.] I don’t remember any more. Perhaps I fainted.
The next day, Pinter spoke to the drama students, and Stoppard was there with his notebook. His report (‘The Tense Present’), though unsigned, was unmistakeably his work. He described Pinter’s talk as ‘an erratic staccato of grudging self-exposure’. It had ended with an unidentified quotation: The fact would seem to be, if in my position one may speak of facts, not only that I shall have to speak of things of which I cannot speak, but also, which is even more interesting, but also that I, which is if possible even more interesting, that I shall have to – I forget, no matter. Stoppard recognised this from Beckett’s novel The Unnamable, and finished the quotation in a footnote: ‘And at the same time I am obliged to speak. I shall never be silent. Never.’
So this piece in the Western Daily Press of 8 January 1962 is the first publication in which Beckett, Pinter and Stoppard are on the same page – all speaking, in their different ways, about the relationship between speech and silence. [My emphasis]
He noted that the student questions which followed Pinter’s talk ‘suggested respect, reverence, suspicion, antagonism and scant understanding. Mr Pinter remained polite.’ And he gave extracts from what Pinter had said, prefacing them with the phrase ‘Harold Pinter, he say:’ – as if listening to an oracle. These were some of the oracle’s words, as reported by an otherwise silent and anonymous Stoppard:
I’m going to make categorical statements which should not be taken as categorical.
If I were to state a moral precept, it would be: Beware of the writer who declares that his heart is in the right place and has it in full view. This is a body lost in an empty prison of cliché.
My characters tell me so much and no more.
Between my [knowledge] and what they say there lies a territory which is compulsory to explore … Not that I regard my characters as anarchic, out of control. I do the donkey work. The shaping is me.
[I do not agree] with the tendency to seek allegories in my plays.
There are two silences: one is where no word is spoken, and another where there is a torrent of words. The speech we hear is an indication of the speech we don’t hear … an anguished smokescreen, a constant stratagem to cover nakedness … What takes place in the silences is an evasion, a desperate rearguard action to keep ourselves to ourselves.
Of all these Pinter-statements, the one that stayed longest in his mind was: ‘Writing for me is a completely private activity … What I write is not obligated to anything other than to itself.’
He quoted it, half a century on, as a demonstration of the quality he most identified with Pinter: honesty.
How immersed in creative discourse are our greatest writers? It seems to me a great many of our playwrights are extremely immersed.
From Stoppard to Hare to Bennett to Pinter to Churchill to Ravenhill- I hear the stories of them going to, involving in and absorbing from the theatre. Even those who never go on the public record such as Caryl Churchill (who is one of the very few British writers who could possibly argue for more greatness than Stoppard in theatre) are seen heavily engaged.
Certain novelist seem to be able to be more recluse but it seems to me that theatre writers are in a constant conversation to form their work.
Tom Stoppard was very seriously involved in the craft of plays. He reviewed over 130 in a year in the early 1960s. He went over Godot line by line for a failed film adaptation. He wrote a lot. Saw a lot. And was friends with remarkable other artists ranging from O’toole in his early life (early 20s) to Pinter. He had a strong agent from early on (Kenneth Ewing).
He travelled fairly widely. I’m only in his early life but his immersion in the world of theatre and creative arts seemed very deep. That does bring me to advice I hear for young writers who want to be brilliant but who don’t see much theatre. It seems to me that within theatre at least - active involvement seems to be a helpful and maybe necessary step on a path to brilliance.
I think it’s noteworthy to dwell on what type of theatre maker Tom Stoppard is not. Stoppard is in “the playwright as the centre of the theatrework” tradition. There is a counter tradition from ensemble work or theatremaker not-as-playwright.
To me this was a running debate in the 2000s between David Eldridge and Chris Goode, in a series of blog conversations. It also influences my work today as I’ve produced work which arguably might fit in both traditions at times.
I won’t recount the debate here but there was a recent podcast* where Eldridge and Goode reconcile and reminisce on their respective views.
Coda one, while having a long running intense disagreements, I’m fairly neither would be considered rightwing theatre makers.
Coda two, biography Hermione Lee is in her own right an admired and accomplished biographer.
Links:
Amazon link to Hermione Lee’s biography on Stoppard