Who's Afraid of Collaboration?

Over at Parabasis, Isaac Butler muses a lot (just one link in a long daisy chain), and quite transparently and graciously despite his very strong opinions, about intellectual property and the relative creative participation of directors and playwrights in staging new work. I don't personally have a dog in that race, but I was struck by this gauntlet, thrown down in a recent issue of the L.A. Weekly:

The big problem is the assumption that writing a play is a collaborative act. It isn’t. It’s a creative act, and then other people come in. The interpretation should be for the accuracy of what the playwright wrote. Playwrights are expected to have their text changed by actors they never wanted. Directors seem to feel they are as creative as the playwright.

Thus spake Albee. Read the whole thing here.