Playwright
Handbook
Workshop #1 - Observing the
World as a Playwright
Workshop #2 - Writing a One-Act
Play
Resources:
Thomas G. Dunn and Frank Pike’s, The Playwright’s Handbook
Robert Benedetti’s, The Actor at Work
ADA4M: Workshop
#1 - Observing the World as a Playwright
Step One: The Five Senses
Good playwrights are good observers. They spot those little details that
say volumes about a person, place, or event. They jot down those sights,
sounds, smells, and other sensations we usually miss as we go through
our daily lives. Playwrights borrow constantly from their lives; they
ferret away physical sensations and emotional moments they have witnessed
or been part of to use in their plays. When writing about - or taking
from - an actual experience, a playwright selects vivid and concrete details
from the experience that best allow an audience to share that experience.
All observation and memory is sensory, linked to one or more of the five
senses. To capture an audience, you have to appeal to their reality -
to what they perceive and what they remember. Ideas, abstract concepts,
even emotions, not grounded in the concrete, specific images of everyday
life, make for political speeches, not good plays. They way to an audience’s
heart and head is through their five senses.
Instructions for the following exercise
[in which you choose a setting to observe]:
Sight:
It’s amazing how much we don’t see. When you observe a setting,
take in everything. What do you see that you have never seen before? How
does looking closely at a place affect you perception of the place? How
would you describe what you see without using clichés?
Sound:
Close your eyes and listen. Thinking in terms of concentric circles,
listen to sounds farther and farther away, to the very limit of your hearing
‘horizon.’ What sounds dominate? What sounds recede? Does
this hold true after you have been listening awhile, or has your ear selected
other sounds, perhaps more subtle, to focus on? How would you describe
what you are hearing in as simple a manner as possible?
Smell:
Have you noticed that if you smell something with a fragrance just like
something from years back, how vividly you remember? Stop and smell the
various aromas in your chosen setting: your new 100 percent cotton pants,
the upholstery of the chair, the glass of a Fruitopia drink. Try to describe
what you smell both succinctly and with originality.
Touch:
Have someone place a small object from the location you are in behind
your back, so you can’t see it. Feel its size, its weight, the texture[s]
of its surface, any distinctive features or irregularities. Is it hollow?
Solid? Without the benefit of seeing the object, try to describe it in
detail.
Taste:
Choose something ‘appropriate to the setting’ to taste. Slow
down as you eat or drink. Where does the food go in your mouth? How do
the texture and taste change as you chew? Is there a distinctive aftertaste?
Try to describe what you have tasted as objectively as possible, without
using clichés.
*ASSIGNMENT 1*
In a group of five or less, decide who will be responsible for what ‘sense.’
Decide on a setting to investigate - on school property please!
Record your observations as detailed above - without referring directly
to the setting.
Your group will share your observations with the class and we will try
to guess where you were. [10 marks]
Step Two: Creating Settings
The importance of setting is often underrated. For instance, an angry
shouting match between a man and his seventy-five-year-old father will
be very different if the confrontation occurs in the privacy of the man’s
kitchen or in front of the deli counter at the neighborhood 7-11.
Like all things in theater, even the most ‘realistic’ detailed
setting is not reality, but borrows from reality. Experienced playwrights
frequently use an actual environment they have observed as the basis for
a play’s setting, modifying it to best to fit the needs of the play.
Have an idea of a set that your play will take place on. However, be
flexible so that, as a director, you can be flexible. If your set is too
difficult or depends on some important structure [e.g. balcony], it will
be impossible to create here at the Collegiate.
BUT a simplified production doesn’t mean that you, as a playwright,
don’t need to know exactly what the setting should look like. You
must know every detail in the setting in order to use the setting to its
maximum effect. Edward Albee’s two-character play, The Zoo Story,
which takes place in Central Park, is usually produced with just a park
bench. But having the characters talk about what they see and have seen
that day evokes Central Park beautifully. When you read or see a performance
of the play, you know that before the playwright sat down to write, he
knew his setting inside out.
*ASSIGNMENT 2* - completed after school
hours
Explore several environments outside of the school, at least one public
and one private. Also, try to find one environment that is unfamiliar
to you. Concentrate on the physical setting; filter out any people or
activities. Using all five senses, jot down in journal format, as many
details as possible. Think about:
How you respond to the environment.
How does it make your feel? What sensory details in the environment do
you think make you feel that way?
Would someone else respond the same as you? Why? Why not?
How does the environment reflect the person or persons who created it?
Or the person or persons who use it?
Does the environment try to appeal to a certain kind of person?
Use objective, concrete details you have observed to back up your guesses.
You will be sharing your observations with your classmates the next day.
In groups, you will decide on which settings to use for further assignments.
[10 marks]
Step Three: Building Characters
Many of the potential ‘characters’ exist in the world around
you. Even the most ordinary person can be the beginnings of an extraordinary
character on stage.
When describing a character, just as when describing a setting, most
modern playwrights are as succinct as possible. The actor ultimately will
find out all he or she needs to know about the character from reading
and rehearsing the play itself.
Rule of Thumb: Include only the absolute essentials when putting together
character description. [BUT…that does not mean that you, as a playwright,
are not responsible for knowing your characters inside out.]
A simple, but very revealing, aspect of personality is how people dress
– what they wear and how they wear it. Building on your work with
observation and memory, begin looking closely at the people around you
– notice such aspects of dress as clothing, jewelry, footwear, hairstyle,
grooming, colognes, perfumes, eyeglasses…etc. When observing people
[or recalling a memory of a person], try to suppress your tendency to
be subjective and judgmental.
*ASSIGNMENT 3*
Write a short paragraph about how a person from your past that you were
close to dressed. Then, based on your recollections, write a brief personality
profile/life history of this person. You will be sharing these with your
classmates – and later using these profiles to select characters
for scenes. [Consider how they respond to the description and why.] [5
marks]
Step Four: Putting Your Characters in a Setting with Conflict
A. Characters on stage are revealed
by what they do and what they say. New playwrights often don’t realize
that what environment the character is in and what the character does
in that environment has a major impact on what the character says.
A playwright has to be aware of everything his or her character is doing
in a setting. The character’s activities in a setting are called
‘business’. Keep your stage directions to a minimum BUT, once
again, just because you don’t write it down, doesn’t mean
that you don’t know in detail what each of your characters is doing
in the setting.
The best way to increase your awareness of what a character might do
in a setting is to observe real people in actual environments. Watching
people do seemingly unimportant things gives you a gold mine of character
details for future use.
Keep in mind also that the setting should reflect conflict. Consider,
for example, the relationship of setting and conflict in Henrik Ibsen’s
A Doll’s House or Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman.
B. At the heart of every successful
scene lies a strong sense of conflict. Conflict propels the story forward
and pulls the audience along.
Let’s say that conflict is: A character wants [OBJECTIVE] something
[GOAL] that someone or something [OBSTACLE] tries to prevent that character
from getting. What that character wants might be a person [to have Louise
marry him], object [to gain control of the family fortune], place [to
go to New York], or an idea [to find happiness or security]. If the character
‘s motivation is strong enough, the character will try various means
of overcoming the obstacles [TACTICS] to achieve his or her objective.
*ASSIGNMENT 4*
In the groups assigned, you are to take those characters you wrote about
in Assignment 3, place them in a setting that allows for character development
and reflects a CONFLICT SITUATION in which one of the characters wants
something very much and the other character[s] try to prevent him or her
from getting it. Make the story compelling. The objective must be logical
and risky – in the sense that the character is risking something
by wanting it and trying to get it. [10 marks]
Step Five: Working with Large Groups of Characters
A large group of characters onstage creates a problem of FOCUS –
how do you include everyone in the conflict?
To solve the problem, experienced playwrights usually make use of a tool
called a CENTRAL REFLECTOR: one pivotal idea, person, object, place, or
event on which all the characters have an opinion. The clash of all the
different points of view creates conflict in the scene. [Called ‘reflector’
because what’s important is not the idea, person, object, place
or event being discussed, but how the discussion of that idea, person,
object, place or event REFLECTS the personalities and relationships of
the characters involved in the scene.] A good reflector will not only
generate discussion, debate, or conflict, but will also serve as an anchor,
giving the scene focus.
Some examples:
· The ghost in the opening scene of Hamlet and then Hamlet, himself,
in scene two.
· Biff for most of the scenes in Death of a Salesmen.
Think about the scenes you saw from Assignment 4. For each, ask yourself:
· What or who was the central reflector?
· Did the central reflector serve as a catalyst for the conflict?
· Did it focus the conflict throughout the scene?
· Did it allow us insights into all the characters and their relationships
with each other?
*ASSIGNMENT 5*
As required, add a central reflector the scenes from Assignment 4. Be
prepared to discuss how the ‘newly added focus’ changed the
scene.
Step Six: Understanding the Relationship of Ritual and Drama
Understanding the relationship between ritual and drama is the key to
successful playwriting. The dictionary defines ritual as “any detailed
method of procedure faithfully or regularly followed.” We like rituals
because they are familiar and comfortable. Rituals allow us to say, “This
is who I am. This is where I should be. And this is what I should be doing
at this particular time.” Consider the following examples of social,
family, and personal rituals:
· Holidays
· Reunions
· Blind Dates
· Morning Coffee
· Saturday night get togethers
Read any script, watch any production, and you’ll see that plays
always focus on DISRUPTED RITUALS. Whether major or minor, the disruption
CREATES CONFLICT; the characters are forced to deal with the disruption
in order to return to a state of equilibrium, either by trying to return
to the way things were or by creating new rituals to replace the disrupted
rituals.
To prepare yourself for using ritual in a scene, think back over the
disrupted rituals you have experienced or witnessed. What was the ritual?
Was it a social, family or personal ritual? What disrupted it? How did
the people react? What conflicts[s] did the disruption create? Was the
conflict resolved? How was it resolved? How did the disruption change
the people involved? The relationships?
Now begin to think of a scene you could write in which a ritual would
be disrupted.
*ASSIGNMENT 6*
Share some stories of’ disrupted’ rituals with a group of
4-6. Decide on one to create a scene from. Use all of the tools learned
so far – using the five senses to create detail, creating characters
with objectives, building conflict, and using a central reflector…all
of which is built around a scenario involving a ritual. GOOD LUCK! [p.s.
these are the components necessary for your play!] [20 marks]
Workshop #2 - Writing A One Act
Play
This workshop guides you through the process of writing a 50 minute One
Act Play. You will:
· Spend some time thinking about what is important to you and what
you feel a need to speak out about.
· Look back over your life for characters, relationships, and stories
that might serve as a basis for your play.
· Create several scenarios, so you can fully work out the plot
and fill in the details before actually writing any dialogue.
· Experiment with writing first and last scenes in order to get
a sense of where your play is going and where it will end up.
· Write the play, rewrite the play, and then polish the play.
Restrictions: The play cannot exceed 50 minutes or be less than 30 minutes.
Any scene changes must be done without curtains closing or lights going
down – in other words, scene changes must become part of the performance.
Step One: Defining Your Vision
Plays come from the playwright’s experience, nowhere else. Your
life’s experiences will give your play a depth, resonance, and vitality
that only you, having lived the life you have, can bring to the play.
Everything that touches your life becomes part of your imagination, part
of your play writing: the places you have visited, the events you have
witnessed, the people you have come in contact with, the ideas and prejudices
you have learned over the years. Your experience shapes the way you view
life. And everyone’s experience, no matter how similar it seems
on the outside, is very, very different.
Your “unique and special way of seeing the world” is called
your VISION. No matter what you write about, your vision will be present.
Given an experience or event to write about, you’ll filter the raw
material through your vision, bringing to the raw material your ideas,
your point of view, and the distillation of all your experiences. Literally,
“you’ll see what you want to see.”
Before you get into any serious writing, it’s very helpful to have
a general sense of your vision, to know what you’re trying to say
when you sit down to write. Begin by trying the following:
· Think about your favorite playwright [director, screenwriter,
novelist]. Try to define his or her vision. Is it bleak? Positive? Ironic?
Political? Apolitical? Apocalyptic? Quixotic? Misanthropic? Humane? Ask
questions. Find common threads that run through all the playwright’s
works.
· Use this same approach to begin defining your vision. What common
threads run through your work? What words and phrases best describe your
vision? Jot down the major influences in your life: the people you have
known, the books you have read, the ideas that have been passed down to
you, the places you have lived. Look for patterns and try to distill that
definition down to a few lines.
*ASSIGNMENT 7*
Define your vision in a succinct statement. [5 marks]
Step Two: Narrowing Your Vision
Now brainstorm a list of rituals that come to mind without giving much
thought. Think about people you know…people you see in real life
or in the media.
*ASSIGNMENT 8*
For each ritual you listed, brainstorm the different ways it can be disrupted;
make notes on who is involved and why. [5 marks]
*ASSIGNMENT 9*
Working in groups, share the material you have brainstormed and choose
ONE to structure a scene around. Before you perform the scene, decide
on the opening line and the end line. Have a second choice at hand in
case we have time to see more scenes performed.
[10 marks]
Step Three: Making Decisions
Read through the following carefully. I will try to bring some of it
to light by reflecting on scenes we have seen performed so far.
Beats and Scenes – The Superobjective and Through-Line-of-Action
A play begins with the smallest units, the individual transactions between
characters, which we call moments. Moments work together to form larger
units called beats, and the beats work together to form scenes; the scenes
work together to form acts or sections of the play, and the acts flow
toward the main event of the play.
Moments … Beats … Scenes … Acts … Main Event
BEATS:
On every level, each of the elements has a central unifying focus. Just
as a sentence expresses one idea, one transaction contains one action
and reaction over a particular issue; just as a paragraph has a main idea,
so a beat has one main issue; as a chapter has a main topic, so a scene
contains one major development which furthers the plot of the play. Finally,
as we have seen, the play has a shape of its own which is created by the
funding of the parts to focus on one main event. Each of these levels
has the same basic shape of rise and fall, and each has its own min-crisis,
but they all fit together to form the single compound rhythm of the whole.
As we have said, a beat is comprised of several transactions between
characters. A beat is the smallest unit of action that has its own complete
shape, with a central conflict and mini-crisis. Stanislavski sometimes
referred to beats as being like ‘vertebrae’ in the spine of
the play’s unfolding event. Yet another way of thinking about beats
would be to think of your scene as a flow of energy [the through-line
of action] which flows to a point, then turns and flows in a new direction
until it finally reaches its main turning point, the crisis of the scene.
Each turning point is a ‘beat change’ – a point at which
one of the characters has made a choice which forms a new objective or
a radically new strategy. In this way, a beat can be defined as moments
at which a character chooses to change objectives or strategy in order
to move the action in a new direction.
To summarize, there are three main qualities of all beats:
1. A beat has a central conflict of its own, which drives the transactions
between the characters.
2. It has its own clear shape and specific moment of crisis.
3. The crisis is a choice made by one of the characters, which creates
a new objective or different strategies.
SCENES:
We will define a scene in the same way we defined a beat; each scene is
a major item in the ‘scenario’ of the entire play, each has
its own central conflict, and each has its own clear shape and scene crisis.
Though a scene can nearly stand on its own [although a beat cannot] it
must also propel us forward into the next scene, so it will rarely have
a strong climax. Another important quality of a scene is that is will
contain a change in the situation which causes the play to move in a somewhat
new direction. The change may be some new piece of information, a change
in relationship, or a new event. [You must keep your scene changes to
a minimum due to the restrictions of time and space – but keep the
above definition of a ‘scene’ in mind when structuring your
play. A set change is not a requirement for a ‘scene change.’
It’s a new scene when your character has a new objective or a new
obstacle as a result of a new piece of information, a change in relationship,
or a new event.]
Now you’ve learned that a play is structured on levels:
· Individual transactions make up beats.
· Beats make up scenes.
· Scenes form the overall shape of rising and falling action, which
give unity to the whole.
OBJECTIVES & THROUGH-LINE OF ACTION:
Your characters have objectives which correspond to each of these levels:
· In each individual transaction you will have an immediate objective.
· The flow of immediate objectives leads towards a beat objective.
· The objectives of each beat in sequence lead toward a scene objective.
· The scene objectives can be seen as springing from a deep, overall
objective which is the character’s “life-goal” or, as
it is usually called, their super-objective.
For example, consider the scene from Death of a Salesman in which Willy
tries to get a job in the home office. Willy finds his boss engrossed
in a new recorder, and is told, “I’ll be with you in a minute.”
Willy tries to get his foot in the door by engaging Howard in conversation
and asks, “What’s that, Howard?”
· Willy’s immediate objective is to get Howard to talk to
him by asking about the recorder.
· Once he accomplishes this, he hopes he can move on toward his
beat objective, which is to bring up the subject of his assignment in
a friendly way.
· He would then hope to persuade Howard to give him a spot in town
since he’d “rather not travel anymore” and that is his
scene objective.
· His objective in this scene is connected directly to his super-objective;
since he can no longer drive, he must get a spot in town in order to go
on selling, and selling is the only way he knows how to pursue his life
goal…which is to prove himself worthy by earning money and respect.
If we were to follow each of Willy’s immediate objectives through
the play, we could see how he is led from objective to objective in pursuit
of his super-objective. The logic of this sequence of objectives striving
toward the super-objective is called the through-line of the character’s
action.
It is possible for the super-objective of a character to change in the
course of the play under the pressure of extraordinary circumstances.
King Lear begins his play intent upon retiring from the responsibilities
of kingship so that he can enjoy his last days “unburdened”
and basking in the love of his family and subjects. In the course of his
suffering, however, he learns that he has been ignorant of true love,
and he surrenders his self-centered super objective in favour of a desire
for universal justice and the simple, personal love he feels for Cordelia
at the end.
ACTANTIAL MODEL [see handout in class]
To understand your character, you must first understand what your character
wants and how he or she is going to get it. This model provides you with
a framework from which to understand your characters motivations.
Objective: What the character wants throughout the whole play. It is
one goal that drives everything he or she says or does.
Sender: The force or forces that create the desire [or objective] within
the character.
Receiver: The force or forces that benefit from the character achieving
his or her goal.
Helper: The people [or things] that help the character achieve his or
her goal.
Opponent: The people [or things] that the character must overcome in
order to achieve his or her goal.
Note: Within each scene, the character has a min-goal he or she is trying
to achieve. This mini-goal takes him or her one step closer to reaching
the final objective.
USING THIS MATERIAL:
*ASSIGNMENT 10*
1. Decide on a disrupted ritual that you will base your play on.
2. Make a list of the characters involved.
3. For each character write one sentence that begins with “S/he
wants to…..” This will be your ‘beginning’ idea
for their super-objectives. Even a character with one line should have
a super-objective. [10 marks]
4. Decide on who will be your main character and complete an Actantial
Model for their super-objective.
[10 marks]
5. Write the opening scene of your play. Be prepared to share the opening
line.
*ASSIGNMENT 11*
1. On the paper provided, write down the opening line from your opening
scene [Assignment 4] – then find a partner.
2. Pick an opening line out of the hat and take 2 minutes to prepare a
scene.
3. Be prepared to discuss what opening lines worked the best and why AS
WELL AS the similarities/differences between the scene you see versus
the scene you wrote.
[10 marks]
The next few classes will involve writing and sharing. Once I see that
most of you have a solid beginning, we can move on to Workshop #3 –
Compressing Material and Fine Tuning.
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