SO MUCH FOR TRAINING
Helene Hanff, author of 84, Charring Cross Road, first went to New York City nearly 40 years ago after winning a playwriting contest. She writes about the results of that contest: The Theatre Guild knocked its brains out training 12 of us to be playwrights because the year before we won our contest, two other contest winners had been given their fellowship money and went wandering off on their own. The Theatre Guild knew this was very bad because playwrights didn’t need money as much as they needed training, so they held seminars for us and we went to all the plays on Broadway and we took lessons in how to produce, write, act and direct. And when the year was up, everybody agreed it was a great success — except that not one of us ever became a Broadway playwright. The two writers who had been given the money and went wandering off on their own with no training…
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