Stage dramatists have helped add a shine to television’s Second Golden Age
From the start, theater was a vital strand in television’s DNA.
In fact, what is considered the first Golden Age of Television (approximately the late ‘40s to the late ‘50s) acquired that lofty status thanks in no small part to the dramas broadcast on programs with names like “Playhouse 90,’’ “Kraft Television Theatre,’’ and “The Philco Television Playhouse.’’ The fingerprints of playwrights like Horton Foote and Paddy Chayefsky were all over early TV.
That was followed, however, by a protracted period when theater and television largely kept a polite distance — so much so that it was considered big entertainment industry news in the mid-1980s when David Mamet wrote a script for NBC’s “Hill Street Blues,’’ not long after winning the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for “Glengarry Glen Ross.’’
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But once the second Golden Age of Television began — let’s start the clock in 1999, when both “The Sopranos’’ and “The West Wing’’ premiered — the traffic from the stage to the small screen began to accelerate dramatically. Surveying the TV landscape two decades later, I would argue that the influence of playwrights-turned-scriptwriters has been as profound in this era as it was in the ‘50s, if less ballyhooed.
Stage-trained dramatists have created, written for, produced, or worked as showrunners on such noteworthy TV programs as “The West Wing,’’ “House of Cards,’’ “The Americans,’’ “Six Feet Under,’’ and “The Affair,’’ just to name a few. Importing theater’s emphasis on character, dialogue, and situation to the electronic medium, they have collectively helped to shape the aesthetic aspirations of Peak TV.
Because they hail from theater backgrounds — where budgets are small, special effects are few, and the word is king — these writers have been inclined to use the small screen to tell psychologically complex stories about grown-ups, for grown-ups. This, at a time when much of the movie industry has gone in the other direction, serving up a steady diet of spectacle and superhero franchises.
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Of course, many of the most important forces behind Peak TV trace their roots to television rather than the stage. You cannot overstate the contributions of powerhouse TV creators like David Chase of “The Sopranos,’’ Matthew Weiner of “Mad Men,’’ and Vince Gilligan of “Breaking Bad’’ and “Better Call Saul.’’ But writers from the world of theater have played a solid supporting role in making television as good as it is today.
It’s sometimes forgotten, for instance, that Aaron Sorkin spent several years in the theater before becoming one of the best-known TV writers of our time. His breakthrough drama, “A Few Good Men,’’ began life as a Broadway play in 1989 before it was adapted into a movie a few years later. Even the television shows Sorkin went on to create, such as “The West Wing’’ and “The Newsroom,’’ owed much to the dramatic structure and the rhythms of speech he’d honed in the theater. In 2018, Sorkin returned to Broadway with a stage adaptation of “To Kill a Mockingbird.’’ It was a major hit.
Sorkin is just one of dozens of playwrights who have flocked to television in recent years, sometimes to stay, sometimes just to visit.
Not long after his political drama “Farragut North’’ received its New England premiere at Boston’s Zeitgeist Stage Company a decade ago, Beau Willimon created “House of Cards,’’ the series that helped put Netflix on the map. Heidi Schreck, whose “What the Constitution Means to Me’’ was a finalist last year for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama, has written for Showtime’s “Billions’’ and “Nurse Jackie.’’ Theresa Rebeck created and executive-produced (during its first season) NBC’s “Smash,’’ about the development of a Broadway musical on the life of Marilyn Monroe.
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Earlier this year in Boston, Actors’ Shakespeare Project presented Tanya Barfield’s “Bright Half Life,’’ which tracks the intricacies of a long-term lesbian relationship. Barfield, who codirects Juilliard’s playwriting program, is a writer and producer on Hulu’s “Mrs. America,’’ a miniseries about the struggle to pass the Equal Rights Amendment.
In 2012, Cambridge’s Central Square Theater presented Sarah Treem’s “The How and the Why,’’ a cerebral drama about a showdown between evolutionary biologists. Treem went on to cocreate “The Affair’’ for Showtime and is now developing a show about screen actress Hedy Lamarr for Apple TV+. In addition to Treem, the notable playwrights who contributed scripts to “The Affair’’ included Lydia R. Diamond, David Henry Hwang, and Sharr White.
Melissa James Gibson, whose “This’’ was produced at Pittsfield Barrington Stage Company three summers ago, wrote for FX’s “The Americans’’ and served as a “House of Cards” showrunner. Before creating ABC’s “Brothers and Sisters,’’ Jon Robin Baitz learned his craft on the writing staff of “The West Wing’’ and “Alias.’’ Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa wrote for “Big Love’’ and “Glee,’’ then worked on HBO’s “Looking’’ as a writer and co-executive producer. Adam Rapp wrote for “In Treatment’’ and “The L Word,’’ and now writes for Starz’s “Flesh and Bone,’’ while Craig Wright wrote for HBO’s “Six Feet Under’’ and ABC’s “Lost.’’
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All in all, it’s been a busy passage back and forth between the two mediums. What’s behind it?
On one level, it’s a simple matter of supply and demand, the market answering the imperative to feed an ever-growing beast. After all, writers are content creators first and foremost, and the need for content on television has absolutely exploded. There have never been more TV and streaming outlets for storytellers and wordsmiths than there are today.
Playwrights who write for TV get a larger audience, fatter paychecks for their work, and the excitement of taking part in a quality revolution. For their part, TV networks and streaming services get to add prestige names to their writing teams at a time when American playwriting is enjoying something of a golden age of its own. Besides, having an eager supply of talented writers at the ready surely helped network champions of scripted storytelling push back at least a little bit against reality TV’s dismal tide of unscripted programming.
What theater gets out of the relationship, however, is harder to pinpoint.
One likely dividend is that even an intermittent TV paycheck makes it possible for many important playwrights to keep writing for the stage. And then there are the story ideas that working in another medium could theoretically inspire. Chayefsky, of course, turned his knowledge of the TV business into a 1976 movie, “Network,’’ which was adapted by Lee Hall into a play that opened on Broadway two years ago. Mamet’s 1988 play “Speed-the-Plow,’’ a blistering Hollywood satire, was written after he had some experience in the movie business.
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The theater-TV relationship is something of a one-way street. Though TV dramas like “Fosse/Verdon’’ and “Smash’’ have been set on Broadway, and some shows (“Glee,’’ “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend,’’ “Scrubs,’’ the new animated series “Central Park’’) have drawn heavily from the traditions of musical theater, series or story lines inspired by the stage are not common. “Slings and Arrows’’ (2003-06), a loving and knowing backstage dramedy set at a Shakespearean festival, has been the gold standard for series about the theater, but it was the product of Canadian television.
American TV networks generally view the stage as a talent pool for writers more than a launching pad for stories about the theater by those same writers. In other words — most predictable plot twist ever! — television turns out to be mainly interested in itself.
Don Aucoin can be reached at donald.aucoin@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @GlobeAucoin.
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June 05, 2020 at 03:41AM
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In TV, the playwright’s the thing - The Boston Globe
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