‘Every seventeen minutes the crowd goes crazy’ by Paul Zindel, is a comedic play about parents who have run away from home. They leave so that they can live a life without their children and spend time at racetracks and their money on gambling in casinos with no intention of coming back. They leave their children behind to fend for themselves and the play shows how these children learn to survive without their parents. All the children have different reactions to what has happened, which makes this a crazy but also frightening play. There is also a chorus that represents the wild nature of growing up and helps demonstrate major themes by adding to the chaos of each scene. 
 

This play by Paul Zindel was written in the 1970s, a time of disco and hippies. Zindel was born in 1938 and was influenced by the social context that surrounded him throughout the period where he wrote the majority of his works.  His first play, ‘The Effects of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds’ written in 1965 has very similar themes to Every17 Minutes (Clapsaddle). The 1970s continued the 60s fight for equality movement regarding socially marginalised groups (history.com). It was a time where women, gays, African Americas fought for equal rights in America. Society was going through a period of cultural and social oppression where the need to fight and express opinions became increasingly popular. Zindel also felt the need to express his own ideas because he too felt resentment and a need to feel equal and accepted again. Two years after Zindel was born, his father ran away from home with his mistress, which had a huge impact on his life and creative works (PaulZindel.com, 2017). During his childhood, Zindel was also bullied and felt as though he was being marginalised in his own society of people because he did not feel the social acceptance other people of his age did. He used playwriting as an expression of this resentment he felt and said how he “dared to speak and act my true feelings only in fantasy”, which he says is what made him a writer (Paul Zindel Interview: Scholastic). He also wrote because it was a way of explaining relevant family issues that audiences would be able to relate to. He said that he writes most of his plays for “the teenage audience” because he wanted them to feel as though they were not alone in their struggles as he also suffered (Janeczko).  This care he has for this audience was reflected in one of his interviews where he mentioned how he loved hearing about “anything you care to tell me straight from your heart” (Megyeri). The marginalisation in society helped stimulate this movement for freedom, and Zindel did not want to also feel like he had been marginalised in his childhood so used writing an expression, which helped him with Every 17 Minutes. 

Every 17 Minutes was therefore written with the intention of being a performance that expresses his own “confusing, funny, aching teenage days” (Paulzindel.com, 2017). The cultural context of this play lies in Zindel’s childhood because it was written as a response to some of the challenges he faced during this time. All of his other work such as ‘And Ms. Reardon Drinks a Little’, 1967 and ‘Amulets against the Dragon Forces’, 1989 are also about family struggles and issues faced within the home (Paulzindel.com, 2017). This similar theme of abandonment in Zindel’s other works helps to show how much of an impact his father leaving their family had on him because it influenced the way he wrote. It stemmed from this anxiety and Every 17 Minutes pinpoints this anxiety exactly. 
 

The play portrays the nature of childhood with the absence of a prominent parental figure showing how the cultural context of the play influenced some of the major ideas that are encapsulated in this piece. Zindel said he felt “great pain at being left out” because he “had no father to teach me the skills to be a winner”, which is seen through this major idea of neglect in Every 17 Minutes (Paul Zindel Interview: Growing Up). He explains how important it is to have supporting parental figureheads in a child’s life, which is what makes this a significant theme in the play as it has impacts on many other children who will also go through this. Even if parents have not physically left, they may have emotionally left a child, which creates these feelings of neglect that Zindel builds on. Another major idea in the play is about growing up and some of the challenges that are faced. These challenges include the process of making decisions and also the desire for independence but the fear that this may also entail. Children want to feel like they can be independent, however this also comes with prime responsibility and so this internal conflict is something that is relevant because it happens so often.  These challenges are relevant because they are common issues that teenagers will face when growing up. Zindel expressed the challenges of growing up in an interview saying how “I was forced to dream of worlds that could be, rather that a world that was for me”, as he felt he could not fit in properly (Paul Zindel: Growing Up). Being a teenager makes people vulnerable because they are worried about the way people judge and view them. Fitting in is a huge part of this, which makes it a prominent anxiety, felt throughout childhood. It initially had such a great influence on Zindel and is a major theme in the play because it expresses the desire for something better, which could be the escape from social pressure. The challenges of growing up are therefore also an important theme in his play. This can link to the pressure of being a teenager and how to cope with struggle, which is another major theme in the play. It makes a character stronger when they are faced with challenge because they learn how to work around this and grow. However, children do still need support, which is why another theme in Every 17 Minutes is the chaotic nature of childhood and the emotional learning that comes with these times. 

Zindel is able to link these ideas together because they are all issues that teenagers can relate to. Issues that explain the nature of growing up. Issues that explain how family life can be disrupted and also the crazy chaotic way that life can sometimes fall into. The play was written in the 70s, however this does not change the relevance of this play because it contains social issues that are still seen very prominently considered today. This shows a strong link between ideas as they all mean something to the target teenage audience. Every 17 Minutes is also told through the eyes of children and teenagers as the play centers around these characters demonstrating a younger perspective of these issues. This perspective can provide a greater idea of the feelings that would have been distinguished when dealing with these challenges. The childhood perspective is very effective in linking these ideas together because it represents the direct impact of the issues regarding childhood neglect on children which gives the themes a much more personal feel within the play. The ideas are not glossed over, but are expressed in a witty and comedic way to draw attention how sometimes these problems may be obscured even when they are very much there. 

Zindel’s childhood was full of abandonment because he had to grow up without this support from his a Father and a Mother who “struggled to get money” (Paulzindel.com, 2017). Zindel felt an extreme amount of responsibility because he was left without a father from such a young age, which is a difficult role to fill. Feeling vulnerable, Zindel used these themes from his own life in the theatre that he wrote. Childhood abandonment features most prominently in Every Seventeen Minutes, as it is the central idea of the entire play. This experience from his own life helped him create performances and connect his own ideas with themes in his plays. The responsibility he felt is also seen in many of his plays and specifically with regards to Every Seventeen Minutes, because the characters react desperately in response to their parents leaving. Zindel suffered in his childhood and was able to use theatre as a means to develop themes in his works that resembled what he had gone through. 

I chose this play because it discusses issues that are relevant to us today. Even though it was written in the 1970s, it still discusses prominent social problems that people are able to relate to. I think that teenagers often reach a point in their lives where they are no longer expected to act like children but are not yet treated like adults. This point in life represents the transformational growth into adult hood and the responsibilities that this entails, which is something I hope to incorporate as a major theme in my directorial vision. The challenges children face when growing up and learning how to make decisions and handle themselves without parents, are all things we learn about through experience.