Playwrights taking skills to small screen as TV landscape changes
Christina Ham has become one of the country’s most-produced playwrights, thanks to regional theaters embracing “Nina
Simone: Four Women” and “Four Little Girls: Birmingham 1963.” But it wasn’t until she started conjuring up dialogue for a teenage witch that she could afford $20,000 in plumbing repairs at her Los Angeles house.
“It’s hard to be a playwright and earn a living,” said Ham, who joined the writing staff for Netflix’s “Chilling Adventures of Sabrina” for its first two seasons and is also the supervising producer on HBO’s “Westworld.” “You spend 25 or 30 years scratching and scraping, trying and trying and then suddenly you’re in a new business that appreciates your work in a different way.”
More and more playwrights are using their stage success to transition to television for fatter paychecks and wider opportunities.
In 2020, nearly 500 scripted series premiered on the air, more than double the number launched a decade earlier.
“It’s a radical difference,” said Jeremy Cohen, producing artistic director for the Minneapolis-based Playwrights’ Center. “It’s not just Netflix, Hulu and Starz. It’s web content, video games, virtual reality games. And they’re getting paid well for them.”
Before working on network shows like “Law & Order: Criminal Intent” and “American Crime,” Diana Son watched her play “Stop Kiss” make it to off-Broadway in 1998 with a cast that included Sandra Oh. But while soaking in the accolades, she was still anxiously waiting for the Syfy Channel to pay her for providing “Star Trek” trivia questions for its website.
“It wasn’t like I woke up with a bag on money under my pillow,” said Son. “Moving to TV gave me a steady paycheck and the chance to live a middleclass life.”
Son eventually joined “13 Reasons Why,” where she served as a showrunner, usually the most powerful position on a TV series. But before getting there, she had to start at the bottom of the ladder, serving the creative vision of someone else.
Her first entry into television, as a story editor on “The West Wing,” was frustrating, she said, largely because the primary writer, Aaron Sorkin, wasn’t interested in input from his underlings.
“As a playwright, you’re in a situation where the actors will ask if you mind if they add a ‘yeah’ before they say their lines,” she said. “Then you’re a staff writer on a TV show, and you’re a soldier. You’re there to execute that showrunner’s vision.”
Once playwrights do rise to a position of authority, they often are more successful than those who got their training in the TV or film world.
Phoebe Waller-Bridge (“Fleabag”), Peter Morgan (“The Crown”) and Julian Fellowes (“Downton Abbey”) all had stage experience before making their mark on the small screen.
Karl Gajdusek, who created the plays “Minneapolis” and “Greedy” before running the first season of “Stranger Things,” said theater veterans are in high demand during this golden age of television that has welcomed language-driven shows like “The Wire,” “Breaking Bad” and “The Sopranos.”
“The playwright’s imagination may have been counterproductive on a show like ‘CHiPS,’ ” said Gajdusek. “We’re now in a new place. The pace has slowed down. Characters have gotten deeper. The writing has elevated.”