5 Questions for Robert Schenkkan

Robert Schenkkans All the Way won the Tony Award this year as Broadways Best Play. The acclaimed drama about the first year of Lyndon B. Johnsons presidency opens this month at Seattle Repertory Theatre with primarily the same cast that introduced thea-tergoers to Schenkkans play at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 2012. In December, the Seattle-based playwrights sequel, The Great Society, debuts at Seattle Rep and runs concurrently with All the Way for a month. Schenkkan recently agreed to answer five questions about his plays and the motivation behind them.

SEATTLE BUSINESS: All the Way centers on the first year of LBJs presidency, from November 1963 to November 1964. Why did you choose that period and is it more relevant to explore it now than, say, 10 or 20 years ago?

ROBERT SCHENKKAN: I chose the first year of LBJs presidency because it is a hinge point in American history. So many things change in that year: passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which is the beginning of the end of Jim Crow and the beginning of a major political realignment in which the Republican Party, heretofore the Party of Lincoln and civil rights, dismantles the historic Black and Tan Coalition” and purges itself of African-American members, and the Democrat Party, heretofore the party of racial privilege, becomes the party of civil rights and loses control of the South. It is the beginning of the modern codification of race in political discourse. It begins what will be a high-water mark in progressive politics, including the beginning of meaningful reform in gender parity and, of course, with the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution it is the beginning of the slippery slope to our national disaster in Vietnam.

I dont know if revisiting these issues is more relevant today than 20 years ago, but it is certainly important.

Are there rules that you follow in condensing or repurposing documented moments and conversations while trying to remain true to the historical record?

When discussing these plays, I always emphasize that I am not a historian or a documentarian. I am a dramatist. That means I consciously take liberties with the historical record: Some of the scenes I write never happened, most of the dialogue is invented and I play with chronology. Having said that, I try to stay as close as possible to the commonly accepted history and I make very sure that, at the end of the day, I can defend my portrayal of any historical character.

What was your purpose in writing All the Way and The Great Society?

I was interested in the complicated moral issues that get raised in the acquisition and exercise of presidential power.

How would you rank LBJ as a leader?

In terms of his ability to get things done legislatively, I dont know that we have ever had a more effective president. He was very clear on what he wanted and he pursued his goals relentlessly and with enormous energy. He could be extraordinarily effective motivating his people, utilizing a mix of charm, guile, reward, punishment, intimidation and cruelty. Ultimately, his paranoia, dishonesty and inability to share power would seriously undermine his effectiveness. If you could strip Vietnam from his record and, of course, you cant he would be on Mount Rushmore.

When you set out to write plays such as these, how much of a role does commercial viability play?
I am aware of the broader commercial limitations of my art form. I cannot employ a cast of hundreds and because of union costs, it is much better from a financial standpoint to keep my running time under three hours. Beyond that, I think a play is an organic thing and you cannot force it down on a procrustean commercial bed without doing serious damage to it. All the Way is an outlier in modern drama. It has a cast of 20, which is enormous by contemporary Broadway standards, and it runs 2 hours and 50 minutes. Yet it went on to win every major New York award of the season, including the Tony, and set two box office records. The lesson, I think, is to tell an interesting story well and people will want to see it. But the story comes first.

All the Way 11/141/4, The Great Society 12/51/4. Times and prices vary. Seattle Repertory Theatre, 155 Mercer St., Seattle; 206.443.2222; seattlerep.org.