workshopping scripts

It's horses for courses, isn't it? If a writer does not want to have the work workshopped, there's no point in forcing her or him to do it. If you do submit to workshopping, you have to be both brave and open to suggestions. In my time of participating in the National Playwrights' Conference in Canberra, 'feedback' often became 'fightback' and, indeed, I know of only a few scripts that ever got into full production. If we equate 'collaboration' with 'workshopping', Big Big Shakespeare did it; I don't know about Aeschylus, Euripides, Ibsen and Chekhov; I can't imagine the opinionated GB Shaw would have a bar of it nor, I think, would dear Oscar have done it (workshopping, I mean). I've seen nothing to suggest that Sam Beckett did it, either – but who would want to? On a related subject, Rebecca Jo has asked whether a writer should direct a production of his/her work. No … nor act in it, either, if you want to learn something. FLIPMAC