The Good Doctor, A Dramaturgy

Saturday, January 28, 2012

The Good Doctor Program Note

Enter Neil Simon, born 1927 in Bronx, USA, and Anton Chekhov, born 1860 in Taganrog, Russia. Simon’s The Good Doctor took the Broadway stage in 1973 as a series of sketches celebrating Chekhov’s short stories bound by Chekhov’s reincarnation, the Writer, who states in the opening monologue, “here I am, day after day, haunted by one thought, I must write, I must write, I must write.”

And write both Chekhov and Simon did, becoming two of history’s most eminent and prolific authors. But as Simon claimed, “[Writing] doesn’t just come. It’s always hard and it’s never easy.” Passion is not enough. Reports describe Chekhov, argued as the greatest writer since Shakespeare, writing every spare second, often starting and finishing a story in a single evening. Others account Simon, the world’s most produced living playwright, habitually carrying a bag of in-process scripts, furiously writing and rewriting to the final rehearsal. Ceaselessly, both created comedies of human nature, presenting everyday follies and foibles as humor.

Despite renown, many critics dismiss Chekhov and, as a result, Simon’s The Good Doctor, claiming nothing happens or resolves. To such criticism Chekhov wrote, "in real life people don't spend every minute shooting each other, hanging themselves and making confessions of love. They're more occupied with eating, drinking, flirting and talking stupidities.” Striving towards objectivity, Chekhov presents such behavior in his writing, unaffected but not unheightened. Just as he found absurdity in the commonplace, he also found significance, observing, “People eat their dinner, just eat their dinner, and all the time their happiness is being established or their lives are being broken up."

Reifying this import in the day’s gestures, for the company of The Good Doctor, in sewing a thread, adjusting a light, painting a wall, and memorizing a line, significance exists. These actions strike steel to flint, producing sparks, tiny fires kindling our resolve to show up every day and amassing into our show this evening.

Tonight we present the culmination of the January theatre Exploration term. Twenty-six students arrived morning after early morning to work through sunset on this undertaking, because as Simon and Chekhov demonstrate, passion is not enough. Theatre is neither art nor business but craft— skilled work propelled by purpose but work nonetheless. So why do it? When the Writer in The Good Doctor asks himself why he writes, he answers, “I am a writer.” I respond likewise. We, The Good Doctor Company, consign our January to theatre because we are designers, directors, technicians, managers and actors. We have heard the counsel, “If you can do anything else and be happy, do it,” and have responded, “I am doing it.”

Dear audience, my wish is the same for you. Thank you for being here with us.

– Anna Rose MacArthur, Dramaturg