Playwrights Wronged
Local actors/playwrights Carrie Betlyn and Peggy Dunne are noising it about that they’ve been wronged by Arthur Miller. Their bid for sympathy turns on their own enthusiasm, idealism, and obscurity, and the spectacle of a great man hiding behind not just an agent but contract law.
Aschenberg went on to say that stock and amateur rights to Miller’s play were controlled by Dramatic Publishing Company of Woodstock, Illinois. She concluded, “Please do nothing whatsoever with your script. The rights are not available.”
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Then Betlyn told him a thing or two about their own. “We organized a reading at Shattered Globe Theater in Chicago last November,” she related. “There we received feedback that told us of a compelling experience and renewed our sense of the story’s importance. It is a huge and wonderful piece within which many of Fenelon’s images have begun to emerge. Images of women struggling with their ideals, their art and their survival. Our process continues to flow as we explore Fenelon’s timeless humour and humanity in light of current world tragedies. We believe that Fania Fenelon’s story is in good hands.”
By now Betlyn had unearthed Miller’s address. She sent her next letter straight to his house, enclosing a copy of Dunne’s “project statement.”
That leaves the court of public opinion, aka the power to embarrass the mighty. Last Friday Betlyn and Dunne confronted Sergel on WBEZ’s Artistic License. They’ve been interviewed by PerformInk. Now here they are in Hot Type. And any sympathy Sergel once had is long gone.
This argument dignifies Miller as an ethical businessman whose business is theater. The other arguments escape us. If Ed McMahon is within his constitutional rights writing to Arthur Miller on Tophet Road in Roxbury, Connecticut, so are Betlyn and Dunne. Perhaps Miller should speak for himself. Aschenberg, who refused to talk to us, and her officious young assistant Christopher, who talked down, aren’t the sort of people you’d want representing you if it matters whether you’re perceived as a horse’s ass. Betlyn confided that she’s heard Aschenberg is supposed to be the top agent in New York. We told her not to worry, they all are.
The long-dormant Inland Architect has finally reappeared, looking as thin and frail as any other patient after brain surgery. We aren’t comforted by the note from the doctor. Says new publisher Steven Polydoris, in a memo to readers: “The marketplace has dictated a whole new set of groundrules in the building arts industry for the nineties. Of course, this is no big surprise yet to merrily go along and to assume otherwise is ignoring reality.
