The Playgoer: Dramatists Guild: Changing of the Guard

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Friday, March 20, 2009

Dramatists Guild: Changing of the Guard

Attention playwrights: your new leader is...Stephen Schwartz!

Or at least he's been elected the new prez of the Dramatists Guild.

His administration?

  • VP: Peter Parnell
  • Secretary: Doug Wright
  • Treasurer: Theresa Rebeck
Ok, so Schwartz may be a "wicked" songwriter (ha!) and not a playwright per se, but between him and these others, I guess it's not bad to have some successful heavy hitters carrying your flag, no?

Or no? Tell me, scribes.

And tell us if the Guild is even living up to its name these days.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm less than thrilled about a songwriter being head of the Dramatists Guild.

But that's just me.

The Cole Mind (get it? Cause I'm mining up ideas from my mind...and my last name's Cole!) said...

Past famed presidents have included Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein, Alan Jay Lerner (My Fair Lady, Camelot, Brigadoon...), Peter Stone (Curtains, Titanic, The Will Rogers Follies, 1776)

We've had librettists/songwriters with this job before and it has worked. Besides, this isn't any songwriter. I know we may have some haters here, but no one can deny that Wicked is the best selling musical of all time. I'm not particularly the biggest fan of it mostly, I admit, because I'm bitter that audience members sometimes don't try and see other hot shows on/off broadway. But he obviously did something right.

Anonymous said...

You do know that the Dramatists Guild is a guild of Dramatists, right? And not just playwrights? It is, and always has been, a membership of playwrights, composers, librettists and lyricists. The Guild represents dramatic writers of all stripes. Why would having a songwriter as the president be even remotely controversial, when song writers are legitimate and active members of the guild?