Monday, October 15, 2012

"Seminar," starring Jeff Goldblum



Stories Must Be Double-Spaced in 12 Pt. Font

A couple of weeks ago, I went to see the play, Seminar, at The Ahmansen with a writer friend who was in several of my college workshops.

Seminar is a comedy by Theresa Rebeck about four young adults who pay $5,000 for a professor/editor to spend ten sessions with them, working on their manuscripts in the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Jeff Goldblum stars as the professor.

Seminar is peopled with funny caricatures of the kind of students you sometimes find in workshop, mixed with real-life examples of Stuff White People Like. There is Kate, the rich, white girl who writes about women who like Jane Austen; there is Izzy, who writes good, “sexy” pieces and then proceeds to sleep with all of the men in the group (at the same time). Of the men, there’s pretentious Douglas, who talks in complicated abstractions. He’s a mediocre writer encouraged to go to Hollywood. When describing a writer’s colony’s landscaped grounds, he says it’s a place where there’s “a convergence of the interiority and the exteriority.” This becomes a running joke.The last student is Martin, who is quiet, shy, honest, and who ends up writing the best manuscript of all (he reminds me of Leonard, from The Big Bang Theory).

Not to confuse you, but their professor’s name is, actually, Leonard. He’s a sharp, foul-mouthed professor who thinks the only relevant stories are about HIV-positive amputee war veterans who beg on the streets in Somalia. That’s because he’s always going off and having near-death experiences in dangerous places–like Somalia.

Though there were funny lines, situations, and characters, I felt like it could have been even funnier with more characters.

It was well-written, but it could have been better written: near the end of the play, one workshop participant makes a choice that is inconsistent with her character When she is asked about the decision, she says, “People are complicated,” as if that is supposed to address and explain the inconsistency. This is a cop-out. Of course people are complicated, but as the playwright, it’s Rebeck’s responsibility to help us understand the complications of these specific characters. Having characters acknowledge a problem within the production only works sometimes–and this is not one of those times. This, plus the one set change, signalled a kind of odd shift in tone between the first 3/4 of the play and the last 1/4.

Seminar is a fun, sharp play that might have benefited from a minor workshop of its own.



Originally published online by Cliche Magazine.