Evanston’s Next Theatre has staged some wild plays over the last 29 years—from Tracy Letts’s Killer Joe to the current sci-fi piece, War With the Newts—but not many stranger than the real-life drama that’s unfolded there over the last few weeks.
The letter cited themes and other elements original to Gaon’s work, including lines from the Next production that appeared to have been lifted verbatim from an English translation of his play.
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I never read the play which had been produced in Tel Aviv because I didn’t want it to influence my work. I was inspired by both the novella and by the hours of research I did, but the play I wrote was shaped by the needs of theatrical staging and a contemporary American audience. A novel and a play are two drastically different art forms, and each medium requires different approaches. I only had about 4-6 weeks to write the first draft, which was due on November 21, and then about another month to turn in the second draft. I turned in the second draft on January 2, and rehearsals began on January 5.
I feel terrible that this happened. Mr. Gaon has been wronged, and so have I. I’ve struggled in storefront theatres for ten years to build my reputation, and now it may be ruined. Independent playwrights are always in a precarious situation. We need to please directors and producers in order to get our work mounted, and that makes us very vulnerable. More often than not, during the development process, suggestions are made that the writer is uncomfortable with but allows anyway, in the name of collaboration or simply to please a powerful producer. This isn’t just true for me. Every writer I know talks about this conflict. We get so much feedback from so many people that it’s a constant struggle to maintain the coherence of our vision. This is the worst example of what can happen when there is no respect for the script and the writer.
