Your play, Bartleby the Scrivener, is based on a pretty well-known novella by Herman Melville. How did you approach adapting a work that is so familiar? What challenges did that present?
The difficulty of the story is that at its center is a character who is unknowable and must remain so. Any attempt to explain Bartleby’s mystery, to “psychologize” him, trivializes the tale. In working it became clear to me that the story was most dramatic if the lawyer is the protagonist and the play shows how he is transformed by his encounter with Bartleby.
What drew you to Bartleby the Scrivener and made you want to adapt it?
I’m always interested in stories in which a workaday, quotidian world is invaded by a figure of mystery. Bartleby the Scrivener is the quintessential version of that story.
You started your college teaching career at Stanford and MIT, two schools not known for their theatre programs. What was your experience like at both schools?
Both programs were interesting precisely because neither was aimed at pre-professionals. The students were exceptionally talented and motivated but without career aspirations. This allowed a kind a freedom. MIT was particularly exciting: my job was as the Artistic Director of a student-run, touring Shakespeare Ensemble that presented two full Shakespearean productions annually and maintained an active repertory of over fifty scenes. For three years I was immersed night and day in Shakespeare—language, dramaturgy, world-view. It was an invaluable experience.
You also started and ran your own theatre company for 12 years. What was that experience like? And what caused you to start your own company?
I started my own company because I wanted to direct plays that interested me and to work with the people I chose. For the first few years, the experience involved 90-hour work-weeks and doing whatever needed to be done: sweep the floor, write the press release, manage the box office, direct the play. There were a group of five of us who were involved at the outset and this made it excitingly communal and collaborative. I couldn’t have done it alone.
Would you ever start and run another theatre company?
It was a great experience but at this point I’m more interested in writing and directing than in the huge entrepreneurial and administrative effort that starting a company requires.
Many of the authors in Playing With Canons are also actors. How about you?
I was a good high school actor (my great triumph was in The Caine Mutiny Court Martial). Nothing since then.
What's up next for you, professionally speaking?
I’m focusing on writing and am in the process of completing a new play, The Supper at Emmaus, about a painter who faked Vermeers during World War II. And I have three or four other play ideas that I would like to pursue as well.
Interview with R.L. Lane was conducted by Michael Criscuolo October 2006.