A version of this article originally ran April 5, following the book's publication in the U.K.
Dan O'Brien is out with a new book in the U.S. September 14, called A Story that Happens: On Playwriting, Childhood, & Other Traumas. The playwright and author presents four essays鈥攁ll previously used as lectures at the Sewanee Writers鈥� Conference鈥攖o take a look at what it means to be an artist in today鈥檚 world and how personal pain can be used to create stories.
O鈥橞rien鈥檚 work includes The House in Scarsdale: A Memoir for the Stage, winner of the 2018 PEN America Award in Drama. His The Body of an American received an off-Broadway premiere at Primary Stages in a co-production with Hartford Stage and won the Horton Foote Prize for Outstanding New American Play as well as the Edward M. Kennedy Prize for Drama. It also ran at the Gate Theatre in London, Portland Center Stage, and other regional theaters in the US. His plays are published by Samuel French / Concord Theatricals and Oberon Books / Bloomsbury. His other books include the poetry collections War Reporter.
Check out an interview with O鈥橞rien below, and for more information about the book. The author's book of poems, Our Cancers, is September 14.
What can readers expect from your book?
Dan O'Brien: My hope is that readers find this book to be a deeply personal contemplation of playwriting, and of writing in general, from the point of view of a survivor of childhood abuse and, more recently, cancer. Throughout, I try to relate my ideas about playwriting鈥攃ertainly I don鈥檛 intend to deliver rules or maxims, because I don鈥檛 believe in them鈥攖o my personal story, and why the theatre and writing plays for it has been so crucial in my life. In a larger context, and considering that the concluding essay was written in the heat of last summer鈥檚 pandemic unrest, the book is about our very human reactions to catastrophe and how we can find resilience if not transformation by making sense out of chaos.
What spurred you to present these specific essays together?
I鈥檇 been teaching playwriting at the Sewanee Writers鈥� Conference almost every summer since 2009, but I hadn鈥檛 had the opportunity to deliver a lecture there yet. Traditionally the 鈥渟enior鈥� playwrights did this: Paula Vogel, Beth Henley, Naomi Iizuka, Romulus Linney, Lee Blessing, and Daisy Foote, to name some of the playwrights I鈥檝e co-led workshops with at Sewanee. In 2017, I was offered the opportunity to deliver my own lecture, and with no small amount of fear and insecurity, I accepted the challenge. I had just finished cancer treatment and I was already, naturally, in a state of profound displacement and high-stakes reflection.
With that first lecture, which became the first essay in this collection, I felt compelled to rethink and maybe even reinvent some of my ideas about playwriting. When I wrote that first essay I was harboring a secret ambition to write one of these each year until they became some kind of book. That said, I didn鈥檛 know how many years (or months) I might have. But this sense of mortality and immediacy became the central theme of the book: how trauma wakes us to the reality of our lives, just as a drama onstage wakes us to that play鈥檚 concerns.
What are some examples of times you 鈥渂et on yourself,鈥� like playwright Chris Shinn suggests in your book?
Just writing these essays, and thinking of it as a long-term project for the last four years, is an example. The same goes for the new plays and poems I鈥檝e written since my cancer treatment, as both are such long-term and often inconclusive endeavors. Of course, Chris was talking about 鈥渂etting on yourself鈥� in terms of survival: that even if one鈥檚 statistical odds are daunting that doesn鈥檛 mean one needs to give up hope. We can choose to believe that we may be the exception. Such a choice is familiar to artists: we are always creating in the face of staggering odds鈥攐dds of 鈥渟uccess鈥� commercially, but artistically too. Yet we do it anyway.
In light of several personal tragedies, you say 鈥淚n all these cases the thought occurred to me, concurrent with my panic and dread, that I was receiving a gift, if only I could survive it.鈥� Where does that mentality come from?
I suppose this special brand of optimism was an adaptive mentality formed in childhood. My family was significantly dysfunctional, riddled with secrets and lies and abuse. And early on I discovered that writing鈥攁 poem, a play, a story鈥攐ffered me clarity, a sense of reality that lit a pathway out. So when other uncontrollable and painful events have occurred in my life鈥攂eing disowned by my family in my earlier thirties, my wife鈥檚 cancer diagnosis followed six months later by mine鈥攚riting has always been how I鈥檝e tried to survive. And writing not just to escape but to connect to others, to receive understanding and to give mine in return. This is why I love the theatre so dearly: our connection happens publicly, conspicuously. The intimate connection a reader has with a poem or a novel is precious in a different way, but the communion of strangers in a theatre exercising their empathies upon the same, singular story鈥攖his is the gift I wish to receive and to pass along. It鈥檚 the gift of trauma reimagined as art.
