Plays like Topdog/Underdog are created expressly for critics and teachers. But they also exist for the benefit of the institutional theaters that produce them. Parks’ virtue as a playwright lies chiefly in her fundability. Why foundations want to support her is puzzling: she can’t write. But the reasons for the Public Theater’s interest in her work are clear. Her value to George Wolfe consists in the fact that she is such a poor writer. Good writers aren’t developable. They just write plays—good plays that don’t need to be endlessly workshopped and dramaturged. Good writers don’t pay arts administrators’ salaries and buy prime real estate in New York. But a playwright like Parks is a meal ticket: she’s worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Public Theater. Continue reading

Read more...