A Review of Cutting Plays for Performance: A Practical and Accessible Guide by Toby Malone and Aili Huber

 

(London/New York: Routledge, 2022). ISBN: 978-0-367-74888-3

With the COVID-19 pandemic almost all but behind us (although two Broadway shows were shut down last week because of lead actors testing positive), the theatre community is trying to get back on its feet and back to work.

As a playwright, script doctor, director, artistic director of a theatre company, and actor, I’ve met with the challenges, repercussions, and sometimes joys of cutting scripts for over thirty years. Audiences, while able to sit in a movie theatre for three hours to watch, for instance, this year’s The Batman, are far more impatient when it comes to the length of stage productions, which makes it especially difficult for those specializing in Shakespeare and other public domain classics of considerable length.

In a perfect world—as opposed to the theatre, which thrives on imperfection—plays would always be the perfect length. After all, a playwright is a skilled technician specializing in conflict, character, plot, narrative, subtext, and location. We have the benefit of standing on the shoulders of giants who have devised and graphed the well-crafted play and, if we follow their lead, we have a solid, time-tested structure from which to work, be it a one-act play or one with five acts.

For new plays—which aren’t covered in the book because of the strictures against making any changes to them at all—we have the benefit (and sometimes challenges) of working with the director, producers, and a production team in new play development. One of my current commissions for the stage required an exact cast size and run lengths for act one and act two right after I finished the initial treatment. Conceiving of the play with a cast of twelve, I had to rethink things when the budget and touring schedule only allowed for eight. These are the challenges to which skilled playwrights inevitably rise.

Cutting Plays for Performance is an erudite handbook—a step-by-step guide—on the craft of cutting public domain classics. Two longtime practitioners have written it (the theatre doesn’t have many pure theoreticians because, as Helen Hayes told us, “Acting is a verb”)—who have myriad experience with their subject matter. But they don’t keep exploration of this complex task between themselves… this handbook is filled with anecdotes by nearly twenty dramaturgs and others who have cut Shakespeare et al. for some of the most prestigious theatre companies in the world. The sidebar excerpts from their interviews with the authors take the technical expertise on the page and illuminate it with the light of far-ranging practice. Technicians all, they talk about the half-dozen key ingredients I mentioned earlier that go into a well-crafted play.

Although I have been studying theatre and reading plays for more than forty years, I learned quite a few things about the history of many classic plays. Any theatre practitioner, no matter their primary role, will benefit from this information. From the different quartos and folios for Shakespeare to the considerable difference between the A and B versions of Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus, the fact is that stage scripts were not sacrosanct hundreds of years ago as they are today. They were changed (sometimes often) based on location, budget, sociopolitical conditions, company size, and more.

So if you think that classic plays in the public domain are sacrosanct (aka you are a “purist”) then it’s time to reconsider that position, because it runs thoroughly contrary to centuries of theatre history.

After immersing the reader in the realities of the foundations of the modern theatre, with the end goal of saying, “It’s okay to cut these—it’s been going on since they were written,” the authors pose three questions vital to deciding what to cut: Who is my audience? What is my story? How much time do I have?

I have already referenced two of these in context. The third—What is my story?—is the lynchpin of the process. Because skilled playwrights agonize over every character, word, scene shift, subplot, and theme, cutters are working, in essence, with a Jenga tower when they cut (a beautiful example used by the authors). There are famous stories of film scripts ruined by indiscriminate directors—we say they are riddled with plot holes. Nine times out of ten, those holes were not there until the director and producers (often not story specialists) began to muck with the script once it was delivered.

As the book moves from history to how-to, prepare to revisit advanced theatre classes from undergraduate and graduate school. The authors share Freytag’s Pyramid and other essential tools from the playwright, dramaturg, and director’s tool kit. As a playwright and screenwriter, I deconstruct my work using half a dozen tools like Freytag’s Pyramid, from initial conception to treatment/outline to drafting and rewrites. To illuminate the parts and pieces of the story—the same way strong lights illuminate the surgery table or engine compartment—you must have well more than a passing understanding of the story.

As the authors and their colleagues work through the complexities of how you go about answering these questions and applying the answers to your decisions about what to cut, they offer abundant examples of before and after scripts, monologues, and parts of scenes. They also offer strategies for tracking cuts, presenting them to actors (who can be the hardest group to convince that the cuts are sound because of their technical expertise on character psychology, dialogue, and arc), and defending them to purists in the audience.

Like any good handbook or course presenter should, the authors have deftly scaffolded Cutting Plays for Performance, culminating with an extended case study of Richard III, focusing on a production where Richard was played by a female.  

How to cut a script to alter the theme or to place more emphasis on a certain character was one of the highlights of the book for me. With the challenges the modern theatre faces in terms of diversity, inclusion, and social justice, this is essential reading for producers, directors, dramaturgs, and playwrights.

There are three appendices. The first covers legal concerns. Again: do not cut modern plays unless you have express permission to do so. I was recently told about a situation where a company produced an older version of a play for which the writers are no longer granting the rights. No matter your intent—or opinion on the changes a writer chooses to make to their work—this is not okay. If a company’s rationale for changes makes sense to me, I will happily grant permission. But we must be asked.

The second and third appendices provide cutting activities and a reading list.

Whether or not you are responsible for making cuts to a play, this text is a valuable resource for producers, artistic directors, directors, dramaturgs, actors, and even audience members who truly love theatre, its history, and its mechanics.

Toby Malone and Aili Huber deserve a standing ovation for the time, expertise, and passion they have put into this handbook. I will keep it in a handy spot on my shelf, because I know I will be consulting it time and time again.