​Do Talk to the Director

 Don’t Talk to the Actors is loosely based on playwright Tom Dudzick’s experiences having his play, Greetings!, staged Off Broadway, at the John Houseman Theatre, in 1993.

Dramaturg Bill D’Agostino spoke with Tom during the first week of rehearsal for Don’t Talk to the Actors at Montgomery Theater.

What was the original impetus for Don’t Talk to the Actors?

Whenever I start a new play, I go back to the “How to Write a Play” books, and they’ll say something like, “If you’re looking for an idea, write something that scares you or gave you a terrible time.”

There were a lot of rough, rough spots while putting up Greetings! I just started making notes about it: “Oh that could happen. Oh that did happen. He really was like that.”

And then my wife said, “Why don’t you write something that’s just funny?”

This play, like a lot of your plays, is somewhat autobiographical. Can you talk about the process of taking something from life and turning it into art? How do you know what to leave behind and what to put in the script?

You leave in the things that were highly emotional, and then you decide what story you’re going to tell for these two hours. Telling the story is the real craft of it. It’s got to work and it has to have all the elements a good story needs. That is the toughest part, knocking out that story. That’s when you think, “Should I be in this business?”

There’s something wonderfully “funhouse mirrors” about this production, with you coming to direct a play you wrote, which is about the rehearsals for a play you once wrote and has a character who wrote a biographical play about his parents.

Not only that, now as a director I can talk to the actors, which as a playwright I wasn’t allowed!

What’s the danger for the playwright to talk to the actors about the play?

The main thing is: There should be one voice with the actors, and that’s the director. Because you could sit down to have a friendly discussion with the actor and you talk about the play and the motivation behind what the character does, and then the next day the director says, “The actor just told me you told them this. Nooooo. That undoes all the work I’ve done!” (Laughs.)

There are a number of old actors, writers and directors mentioned throughout the play: Sam Jaffe, Belle Barth, Kaufman and Hart, Mack Sennett. There’s something very old New York and old Hollywood about those references, and they seem contrasted with new Hollywood and new New York.

I was born too late. All the things that are meaningful for me are in the entertainment world are from the ‘30s and ‘40s and ‘50s. I just love that era. And so all the actors and places and things that I remember are from those old movies and old actors. It’s just where my interests lie. The entertainment of today doesn’t grab me as strongly.

There is a certain glibness in a lot of today’s comedy.  But I think people are searching for something that’s a little more authentic.

And if they’re not searching for it, I think when they come across it, they recognize it and enjoy it and appreciate it.

They might ask themselves: “Why do I like this better than that?” And then depending on how much they want to soul search, they might find the answer: Because it’s more authentic, because it’s more real, because it’s anchored in reality.