True to the Spirit

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Eric Schlosser talks to Heather Neill about the writing of We the People.

What were your sources for We the People?
I based the play almost entirely upon primary sources. The Philadelphia Convention took place in secret, but the notes, letters, and memoirs of delegates give a strong sense of what occurred in that room. The Yale historian Max Farrand published every surviving scrap of paper he could find about the convention as a four-volume collection in 1911. Farrand’s books were invaluable not only to my work, but to the work of just about every historian who’s studied the convention during the past century.

You are best known as a journalist and the author of investigative non-fiction, especially Fast Food Nation and Reefer Madness. Is this play documentary theatre?
I’d call We the People a ‘history play’. Strictly speaking, it isn’t really documentary theatre. To be fully accurate, the play would have to be four months long. Although a few of the speeches survive, it’s impossible to reproduce the debates verbatim, since what we know about them comes from handwritten summaries by various delegates. I tried hard to be true to the spirit of the history, but not too literal. Alexander Hamilton’s speech, which occupies less than a page of my play, lasted almost five hours in Philadelphia. Using the full speech wouldn’t have been fair to the audience.

In the play James Madison takes notes. Do we have his testimony and is it reliable?
James Madison’s notes are terrific, and he remains by far the single best source on the debates. Madison was a human being, however, and his notes aren’t entirely reliable. Though he strived to be impartial, you can tell which delegates he liked and which ones he couldn’t stand. By the end of the convention, his note-taking had become much less enthusiastic. After four months of it, Madison was sick and tired and ready to go home.

It is in the nature of the subject matter that there are few women in the cast. Does that bother you?
It does bother me. This small group of white men determined the future not only of my country, but of the world. It would have been nice to have some real diversity in the room. But the play is set in 1787, not 2007, and that was the historical reality.

What were these particular men, the Founding Fathers, like?
For the most part they were wealthy, brilliant, and well-read. They were a remarkable group of men, a social and political elite forced to confront fundamental questions about civil society. But the founders were hardly perfect, and mainstream historians tend to ignore their flaws. Some of these men were dishonest; some were corrupt; some were driven by a lust for power; and a handful - Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Mason, Franklin, and Tom Paine - truly were great men.

Were they successful in what they set out to do?
Their greatest success was the creation of a society without a monarchy, without hereditary titles, without an established religion, with a dedication to civil liberties and a government deriving its authority from the people. Their greatest failure was allowing slavery and the slave trade to gain legal sanction from the Constitution.

Have you had to bear in mind that a Globe audience may well not be familiar with this episode in American history?
Most Americans, even well-educated ones, aren’t familiar with the details of how and why the Constitution was written. In school we tend to learn more about the Revolutionary War and the Declaration of Independence. When most people think of the Constitution, they think of the Bill of Rights, which came later. I tried to keep all that in mind, while writing the play. Hopefully, We the People can be enjoyed by someone who knows almost nothing about American history.

Was there such a thing as an American accent in the late Eighteenth Century?
Most likely there was - but nobody knows what it sounded like. We don’t know what Abraham Lincoln sounded like, almost a century later. I’m sure that by 1787, a number of regional accents had emerged in the United States. The states were often distant from one another and culturally distinct. By the end of the 18th century, some American families had not set foot in Great Britain for generations, and as a result they probably sounded different from their British counterparts.

Who are your own influences as a playwright?
Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Eugene O’Neill and Thornton Wilder - that’s my theatrical pantheon. With the exception of O’Neill, they’re writers who were drawn to the theatre at a time when movies had already been established as the dominant cultural force in the United States. They saw the stage as a vital place where issues could be explored and character could be brought to life without compromise. For me, the theatre still is that place.

A Globe audience has a very particular relationship with the action onstage and sometimes taking place among them. What are you hoping for in this case?
I wrote We the People for the Globe, fully aware that a lot of people would see the play while standing. I don’t want my work to put anyone to sleep or cause any of the groundlings to keel over. It was a challenge to condense four months of political discourse into two hours of theatre. Most of all, I hope the audience will be drawn into this story and care about what happens to these characters. We are the future that the founding fathers are debating and contemplating throughout the play.

Have you enjoyed writing for this unique - but perhaps daunting - space?
I love the Globe. I love the elemental quality here. There’s nothing pretentious about it. The power of the space has nothing to do with elaborate sets or gilt ceilings. The audience isn’t supposed to think that reality is unfolding before their eyes. The emphasis is on the words and the actors and the sky above. It encourages a feeling that’s loose and playful. I actually find the Globe less daunting than more conventional theatres. At the Globe, even if the play’s crap, the audience is getting some fresh air.

Did you enjoy the opportunity to write so many characters?
In the States you’re lucky to get more than two actors in your play. At the moment, the ideal production, from a purely economic point-of-view, is a one-man or one-woman show. So it was great fun to write a play that would put so many actors on stage without requiring them to be dressed as cats. I really like actors. They deserve to be employed.

What can a modern playwright learn about writing for the Globe from Shakespeare’s own work?
I think the most important lesson a modern playwright can get from Shakespeare is not to take yourself too seriously. He embraced it all, the bawdy and the tragic, without pretension. His genius is impossible to replicate. But his brutal honesty, his humour, and his openness to every facet of life, those are things worth trying to emulate.

You have stipulated that slave music be played from the beginning of the play. Why is that?
It’s a reminder of those who were not invited to the room. Slavery was crucial to the economy of the United States, but slaves had no voice whatsoever in society. In the play the music offers them a means to be heard. And it’s wonderful music.

Do you see much relevance to us today in the debate which led to the Constitution?
The conflicts at the heart of the play - between centralized and local control, between democracy and ruling elites, between civil liberties and the power of the state, between the need for self-defense and the desire for military conquest, between public service and a private life - are timeless. The delegates at the convention reached one set of conclusions. We are still free to choose others.

Heather Neill is a freelance journalist and theatre writer.

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