In Defense of Her Director

Regarding F. Kathleen Foley’s review of my play, “Who Lives?” (July 25), I have to respond. I write not to protest her right to her opinion, but to question her objective.

She wrote that I “attempted” to examine ethical issues, which reads that I failed in her opinion. While I do disagree with that, I don’t fault her approach. At least she indicates that I’m taking on big issues by saying that the action revolves around “human beings [who] are called upon to assign a specific quantitative value to individual lives.”

However, my mouth fell open when Foley called director Debbie Devine’s direction “callow.” I got to know Debbie after seeing her plays “The Snow Maiden” and “Frankenstein,” which were so imaginatively and sensitively directed, I had to meet her. She is an artist. She feels drama can heal and explore. Callow she is not.

Audience members often stay afterward to discuss “Who Lives?,” calling it engaging, entertaining and stimulating to the point that they have questions about their own lives. What more can a playwright want?

What puzzles me in Foley’s review is where she undercuts herself. Right after she says, “Also fascinating is Meeks’ treatment of the female characters in his pre-feminist period piece,” she says that the committee members are stereotypical. So they are both fascinating and a cliche?

Two or three centuries ago, one of the great beliefs in art was that “time is the partner who finishes painting.” Similarly and ideally, the critic should be the audience idealized, and should work to make the play and the audience more deserving of each other.

CHRISTOPHER MEEKS

Los Angeles