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Innovative works of live performance for multicultural audiences.
Shaping Ideas into theatrical events.
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Innovative works of live performance for multicultural audiences. Shaping Ideas into theatrical events.
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PLAYWRITING
Plays are made not written. I repeat plays are made not written. The art forum of theater is not words on a page, but a live performance before a living audience. The play script is a document from which a collection of collaborators will collectively tell a story before a live audience. It is a blue print for an event. And although many skills, talents and resources will be applied the principal medium of the theatrical art forum is the living actor on stage. Since plays are made and not written there are many ways to make them, the most common and most enduring however is to write them first and therein enters the playwright. A playwright is a creative artist, an initiator an originator, someone who shapes something out of a void, out of nothing and whose principle job is to imagine, to ask the great “what if”. The art forums of theater and playwriting are art forums of limitations. There are far more things one cannot do than one can. The playwright puts words in people’s mouths, first the characters and then the actors as the characters. The playwright’s basic limitation is that the story must told through dialogue only and be a reasonable representation of plausible human behavior. Unfortunately people never say what they mean and much of human conversation is filled with information that is implied or assumed by the conversationalists to be understood. For example we would never start a play by having a character say,
“Well, Martha it’s a wonderful morning here on the farm in Kansas in August 1898, even though your father’s upstairs dying of cancer, the mortgage is due and I hate you for bringing me into this life. Still, I love you Martha”.
People just don’t talk this way. It’s boring and the one thing we must never, never do in the theater is bore people. And so the playwright must proceed by implication and indirection. It is a trick and the playwright must make it into a tidy trick for as the old saying goes…
“If it ain’t on the page it ain’t on the stage”.
But first we must appreciate how and why the trick works.
The playwright begins alone in some room looking out of some solitarily window engaged in that mysterious process of creation waiting for the muse to seep through the cracks from the floor. In this stage there is very little typing or actual writing, but mostly thinking and imagining. Once, as I am sure many playwrights have experienced, I was reduced to living with my mother sleeping on a couch in the living room of her one bedroom apartment. I said to her one day,
“Mom, I’m going into the kitchen to write. Please don’t disturb me”.
“Fine”, she said.
A couple of hours later she came into the kitchen set down a bottle of vodka, sat down and started to talk to me.
“Mom” I said, “I’m writing”.
“I’m sorry son”, she said, “But it looked to me like you was just sitting there”.
It is strange how this thinking and imagining can take up so much time and require so much energy and concentration, yet even to yourself you seem to be doing nothing. It is a kind of necessary madness to be lost in that world of creating and one is very likely to lose one’s mind during the process. As one moves into the actual writing one becomes both an actor, or actors, and a clinical schizophrenic as you play all of your characters alone in your room.
“Martha I can’t take it anymore”, you say to yourself, “I’m leaving the farm”.
“No John don’t leave me”, you retort to yourself, “Father is upstairs dying of cancer”.
Meanwhile your wife or your husband or your partner comes to your room door and cries out,
“Darling are you all right? Is anyone in there with you? Are you in there alone?”
When we are finished with our working day, thinking, imagining and writing, we are amazed at how the world has gone on without us. Roads have been built, buildings have been constructed, industry evolved, civilization itself has moved up another notch without our having any awareness of it’s progress.
Finally, for the first of many times, the play is finished and then we have to turn it over to other people; directors, designers, dramaturges, actors, the people we need who will actually tell the story we have created in a live performance before a living audience. Naturally all of these people will have their own lives, their own ideas, their own experiences and will quite naturally have their own views and impact on the play. This is the most difficult part of the process for the playwright, because like the surrogate mother suddenly your baby isn’t your baby anymore. Your precious darling now belongs to everyone else, first the director and designers, then the actors and finally the audience. If you’re lucky and you’re good, your brilliant little play will belong to the world. As the French Playwright Jean Giraudoux says,
“In reality the only thing the playwright can call his own is his bad plays”.
And in reality the only reason a playwright truly writes a play is to give it away. You know when you’ve just about finished a play when you walk into the rehearsal hall and everyone stops what they’re doing, turns to you and stares with that vague expression that seem to say,
“What is he doing here?”
You’re no longer needed, consulted, appreciated or appraised. You’re just some useless ghost haunting in the wings. You might as well go and sit down in the audience and watch your play.
This act of watching, looking, listening, giving attention to is very important for the playwright to be conscious of in this moment, because this is how the whole theatrical event works. The moment of truth has finally arrived and whatever was unclear in the words on the page will for good or ill become crystal clear through the actions on stage. If we didn’t know before we now know for sure. That the play we wrote alone in our room was never meant to be read, but to be experienced by living, breathing human beings. What the playwright has to learn exists within that distance between what we have imagined in our solitarily room and what actually happens on the stage before a live audience. We have become the principal party in a contract that states that an assembly of individuals will gather at this particular place at this particular moment to watch another group of individuals on the stage doing something. And at this particular moment what they’re doing, God help you, is your play. Now it doesn’t matter how brilliant you are or the importance of the urgent message you must give to the world, the question now is will it work.
“Work for whom” you might ask.
Will it work for the audience, that assembly of individuals with whom you’ve made this contract.
“And what is the nature of this contract” you might ask.
The play is the contract and it has the author’s name on it. Certainly it will have some form of structure, plot, theme, action, characters, but most of all a play is a promise. It is a document filled with promises, but it’s principle promise as a whole is that it will provide for this assembly of individuals in this particular place, at this particular moment a satisfying and worthwhile experience.
“And what dose the audience bring to the table?” you say.
To really answer that question we must first consider when dose the theatrical event begin for the audience? Theatre is a bit of pain to go to. It’s expensive and inconvenient. You can rarely impulsively go to the theater the way you can to a movie or a museum, not to mention watching television or a video. You have to plan to go to the theater usually for some time in the future that causes you to structure your life around a particular evening and that comes with particular kinds of expectations. Babysitters, what to wear, travel, dinner, the expense and parking are but a few of the details one may have to consider. As the playwright watches the assembly of individuals entering the theater they seem distracted. Rustling their programs, fidgeting, chatting, looking up at the ceiling or down on their knees looking for the program that fell from their laps; seeming never to even glance at the stage, or have any interest or preparation for seeing the play whatsoever. They’re just a mob, just a collection of strangers just sitting there, waiting. Then something purely marvelous happens. By way of a sound or piece of music, or a change in light the assembly of individuals is signaled that now it is time to pay attention. And that is exactly what they do and that assembly of strangers instantly becomes an audience collectively focused on a single space giving their suspension of disbelief and willing empathy to the moments that are about to appear before them. This is a great gift, a covenant and contract that we playwrights must do all in our power never to violate. It’s a perfect moment, like the blank page or the empty canvas. All the playwright can do now is hope that when he or she was alone at home in their room they didn’t do anything to muck it up.
Let’s say for example that our playwright is William Shakespeare and he’s written a play about a Scottish nobleman who will stop at nothing to become king. He calls the play “MacBeth”. Now, poor Shakespeare hasn’t got any money and he can’t afford a throne. So he gets a plain chair and over the chair he mounts a sign that reads… The Throne of ScotlandLights up on the chair, that we have asked the audience to believe is a throne. A man enters and stands by the chair. And the audience silently in its mind thinks,
“He must be the king”.
Then the man sits down regally in the chair and the audience responds in its mind,
“Yes, he’s the king. I knew he was king. I just knew it”.
This is the game we are playing with the audience. It’s a game we are playing and it is the reason no doubt that we call them plays. The audience is not passive they are not just sitting there, but sharing in the game. The playwright poses the question, what we call a dramatic question,
“Can you guess who that man is standing by the chair that I want you to believe is a throne?”
And the audience answers,
“That man by the chair that is a throne is the king”.
And as the man sits regally down in the chair that we have asked the audience to believe is a throne we are telling the audience that their answer to the question was correct,
“Yes, you’re right, that man who is now sitting on the chair that is the throne is the king”.
And so this is how the play and the theatrical event proceeds along, from questions asked to questions answered, promises made and promises kept and things that are hidden eventually revealed, back and forth between the actors in our story on stage and the audience. If the suspension of disbelief is strong enough and properly reinforced by the play then another ingredient freely given by the audience will emerge and that is the very human quality of empathy. This is why when Charles Dickens wrote “Christmas Carol” he didn’t just make Tiny Tim a little child, which draws on human empathy plain enough, he made him into a little tiny, cheery and courageous cripple child who is going to die if somebody doesn’t do something about it and in a hurry. And if the audience is at all expressive individuals within it’s body will make audible sounds of their sense of empathy, or laughter for their humor or moans from their sadness. This will reinforce to other members of the audience that they are in agreement and the collectivity of the audience will visibly grow. And who is it that gets to see that collectivity visibly grow? The actors on stage who are in turn affected by its presence and are inspired to give more as they receive more from the audience. Now we are cooking. This is what is unique about live performance. Everybody’s breathing, everybody’s human, experiencing the same thing in a room together. This is the moment when the art forum finally and actually comes into existence. Where the script is transformed into a living theatrical event with the audience giving much, much more than just their time and their money. And what makes this moment into such a singular event is that it is time-based and temporal. After it’s done that moment of the art forum’s existence will trickle out of the theater’s doors and vanish along with the audience. In the words of legendary Jazz Saxophonist Eric Dolphy,
“It’s like music, after it’s over it’s gone in the air we can never catch it again”.
It will never happen in quite the same way again, because each time the event is brought to life it is before an assembly of completely different individuals.
Now that we know what it is and how it works the question as playwrights is what do we do with it all. First we must consider one other piece of important baggage that the audience brings with them when they come to the theater, and that is their collective condition and that is the human condition. My own personal, fantastical mythology about the creation is that at the moment when God created humans, God realized right away that it was a mistake.
“These creatures are self determining, intelligent and imaginative, with ambitions and desires and are certain to think that they were made in my own image and may try to take over even heaven itself. These creatures could be dangerous”.
But the genie had already been let out of the bottle. What was God to do?
“I know” God said, “I’ll give them bodies and make them self involved.”
Whether it was evolution or forged by some divine hammer, the fact is that we are completely dominated by our needs, which is not necessarily what we want. It is the existential condition of every living thing made more acute in human beings because of the endless and unceasing secession of thoughts with which God has chained us to a quantity and variety of needs and desires unprecedented in nature in order to keep us from destroying the universe. We are tortured creatures always wanting, forever thinking, needing, seeking, finding, losing, looking, remembering, forgetting, we just can’t stop, just can’t turn it off. Most common among our many needs is our need to know. And most of our most important social and spiritual institutions are built upon the pursuit of knowing what we will never know…
Who are we? Where did we come from? What will become of us?
The playwright who will not take stock of this reality dose so at their peril, because it relates to what is generally referred to in the theater as, “truth”. What people really mean when they say “truth” in the theater is that it is like life, believable and true to life. We know it because we recognize it from the experiences and observations in our own lives. It is when we nod our heads and say to ourselves,
“I’ve been there”.
It is with this raw material of human needs, human relations, and human behavior that we make our plays. The expression of our dramatic ideas and perspective on the human condition is conveyed through the medium of a person who is the actor who will portray the human being we have imagined. Since this person, the actor, is the principal medium through which the play is to be expressed it’s not a bad idea for playwrights to have some idea of what an actor dose.
“An actor acts”, you say.
And that’s exactly right, the actor acts or is in the act of doing.
“And what is the actor doing?” you ask.
Getting what the character wants. The actor’s role is about more than just saying the playwrights words, that’s why we call them actors and not readers. The actor is there to be doing something and that something is getting what the character wants. So the first order of business in writing a play is putting some human characters together who all want something, and most of them want it badly. The most fruitful need and want to give your character is something your character must obtain from another character that doesn’t want your character to have it. And if what both characters want are things that they must get from each other, all the better. In the scenario that follows, entitled The Monster Ham and based on the Frankenstein story, the character of the Scientist wants the Monster to behave like a monster, but the character of the Monster wants to be an actor…
LIGHTS UP ON THE SCIENTIST
SCIENTIST Good evening ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls. I am a Scientist, a Scientist who has discovered the mystery of life a Scientist who has from death created life. From the bodies of the dead in a graveyard called Potter’s Field, a place where they bury dead actors, I have made me a monster. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, I give you the monster.
ENTER THE MONSTER HAM
MONSTER For goodness sake, you call that a reception? Where is the thunderous applause? Why am I not bathing in a warm glow? Now, come on let’s try again, once more with feeling.
SCIENTIST You’re not supposed to be talking.
MONSTER I’m not supposed to be talking?
SCIENTIST All you’re supposed to do is growl.
MONSTER Growl? Growl how?
SCIENTIST Grrrrr!
MONSTER Grrrrr?
SCIENTIST Yes. Grrrrr!
MONSTER Grrrrr! But, what’s my motivation?
SCIENTIST You don’t have any motivation. You’re the monster you just do as I say.
MONSTER Oh, well if that’s the way you want it. Usually the monster has the lead you know.
SCIENTIST You are not the lead. This isn’t even about you. This is my show, my lecture about how I made you from the dead body parts of dead actors. All you have to do is either be quiet or go Grrrrr!
MONSTER Grrrr!
SCIENTIST Now, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, as I was saying…
MONSTER Well, can you at least tell me what my cue line is?
SCIENTIST Be quiet!
MONSTER Grrrr!
SCIENTIST Now as I was saying I made this monster from the body parts of famous actors in Potter’s Field.
MONSTER I think you’re mistaken. The actors in Potter’s Field are all poor and unknown.
SCIENTIST Be quiet I said.
MONSTER Grrrr!
SCIENTIST He has the feet of Boris Karloff, the knees of Charlie Chaplin, the eyes of Bela Lugosi, and the face of Lon Chaney. He’s a real monster.
MONSTER Yeah, I’m bad. I’m bad. And by the way I do print work and voice-overs too.
SCIENTIST Will you be quiet?
MONSTER Grrrrr!
SCIENTIST You’re supposed to be dangerous.
MONSTER Dangerous? I can do dangerous. All the great actors were a little bit dangerous. How’s this…”Now is the winter of our discontent, made glorious summer by this sun of York…”
SCIENTIST No, no, no, no.
MONSTER Too much hey? How about this one…”To be or not to be, that is the question. Whether it is nobler in the mind…”
SCIENTIST No. No acting. I really want you to be a really dangerous monster.
MONSTER Oh, the method. That’s what you want, physical and psychological reality. Please, let me use you as my scene partner. Grrrr!
(The Monster begins to choke the Scientist)
SCIENTIST Not me! You’re not supposed to be dangerous to me. I’m your master you fool I made you. You’re supposed to listen to me.
MONSTER Yes I know, but what I don’t understand is whom I’m supposed to be dangerous to?
SCIENTIST To them…
MONSTER The audience?
SCIENTIST Yes, the audience.
MONSTER Oh my. Oh dear. I haven’t prepared. I had no idea. I didn’t know what a brilliant director… I mean master that you are. Reality Theater here we go. (To the audience) Grrrr! Grrrrr!
SCIENTIST You call that scary? That’s not scary at all.
MONSTER But you said dangerous.
SCIENTIST Yeah, you’re supposed to be scary dangerous.
MONSTER Scary dangerous? Oh, that’s another thing altogether. I can be scary and I can be dangerous, but scary dangerous? As an actor, I mean as a monster that’s a very difficult thing to do.
SCIENTIST No it isn’t. Look, like this… Grrrrr!
MONSTER Grrrr!
SCIENTIST No, no, no. More like this… Grrrr!!
MONSTER Grrrr!!!
SCIENTIST That’s better.
MONSTER Really?
SCIENTIST Really.
MONSTER You’re not just saying that to make me feel better are you?
SCIENTIST No, really it’s much better.
MONSTER Grrrr!
SCIENTIST Yes, that’s it.
MONSTER It is?
SCIENTIST Yes, it is.
MONSTER …But I don’t feel it. I mean as an actor, or should I say as a monster, I have needs, aspirations, dreams, and hopes. …Why, I’m just a monster and I don’t even have a name.
SCIENTIST Yes you do.
MONSTER I do?
SCIENTIST Yes. Your name is Ham.
MONSTER Ham?
SCIENTIST Yes, you’re my monster Ham.
MONSTER Monster Ham. Oh master that’s so lovely. …Master?
SCIENTIST Yes, Monster Ham?
MONSTER I love you master.
SCIENTIST I love you too Ham.
(The Monster begins to cry)
SCIENTIST There, there now, Monster Ham, don’t cry. Be quiet now.
MONSTER Grrrr!
Black Out
End of Play
We must again remember that reading a play is not the way the art forum is meant to be experienced. A play’s time-based temporal nature, it’s qualities of presence, personality, movement; the dynamic energy of people in space cannot be experienced alone in our living rooms. Therefore let’s read The Monster Ham again using our imaginations to supply all the elements of the theatrical event that the play wants to be. Taking that into consideration let’s read Monster Ham twice again, each time taking the point of view that you are the actor who will play these characters, first the Scientist and then the Monster Ham. Reading a play as an actor the words on the page emerge as strategies used by the character for achieving what the character wants. As the actor reads he or she is thinking about what to do and how to do it when showing the audience who the character really is. A process for the actor in the rehearsal hall not unlike what the Monster Ham himself is experiencing with the Scientist as his reluctant director.
“No, no, no. More like this… Grrrr!!”
Now that we’ve got our wants and needs and people running around doing whatever they can to get what they want we have to smash it all down into dialogue. Every time the word “dialogue” comes up I hear the voices of the many multitudes of beginning playwrights crying out in the wilderness.
“How do I write good dialogue?”
The answer is you don’t. What you write are good, believable, empathy ridden characters. Dialogue is character. Dialogue is the character in the act of achieving what the character wants. Dialogue is how the character gets the job done. What the character is willing to do or not do, by what means and manner the character goes about in achieving that want is an expression of the character’s personality and the writer’s job is to insure that this is reflected in how and what the character speaks. Dialogue.
This is very important for very practical reasons. If you have seen almost any amount of theater you have surely witnessed that one very real moment on the stage when art truly becomes life. That is the moment when an actor loses their lines. It is a moment where no amount of remembering will save you. Fear and panic reign. No one says it out loud but it whispers through the air like a lethal vapor,
“He’s forgot his lines”
What is one to do? What hopefully the actor can do is return to the world of the play, and if the playwright has done a decent job there will be something for the actor to do in that world. What Monster Ham is asking when he says to the Scientist, “What’s my motivation?” is really “Why am I saying this and what am I trying to do by saying it?” In the parlance of playwriting this is the unity of “dialogue” and “action”. In a live performance it’s where the rubber hits the road. Here is where the playwright and the actor stand hand in hand together the Alpha and Omega of the theatrical event.
The worst advice ever given to writers is that tired hackneyed phrase,
“Write what you know”
What if you don’t know anything? Given the strange, conflicting proclivities of the human mind if you do know, how do you know if you really do? And why should anyone care what you know? Will they read it, watch it pay for it? If you’re the only one that knows it how is anybody else going to understand it and if everybody already knows it, who needs it? A character in a play that knows has nothing to do, because he already knows. All he can do is talk about what he knows. He may indeed have beautiful things to say, but he won’t be doing anything. The only thing that this can possibly accomplish is to take all the fun out of the game. Watching a performance we are looking at a series of discoveries. The character makes a stupid mistake, suffers for it and finally figures out how not to do it again. Curtin. Black Out. End of play. The journey from unknowing to knowing is what we are experiencing watching the play. The first words of the play are the beginning of a journey into the unknown. In the horror movies for example we see the hero turn the knob on the door, slowly opens it and discovers a horrible monster on the other side. The audience knows what the hero knows and discovers as the hero discovers. Now, suppose that the audience knows what the hero doesn’t know, that there is a horrible monster on the other side of the door. This time when the hero slowly turns the knob on the door the audience is thinking,
“I wouldn’t open that door if I were you”
This is what is known as “point of view” and in the spirit of the game we might call it, “who’s in the know?” the characters or the audience. The playwright not only has to decide who knows what and when, but also how they know it and why. That’s a lot to know. Thinking about who you are seems to be just a loss of focus. Writing a play like the life of its characters is a journey of discoveries for the writer as well. It is through the characters’ discoveries that we come to know who the characters are. When we’re writing the play we think about how we’re going to show and reveal our characters and when we get an idea we write it down in dialogue. This isn’t “writing what you know” it’s “writing what you discover”. And it helps to know on that long journey from the first words on the page to the theatrical event itself that if discoveries are happening for the writer they just might happen for the audience too and keep the game alive.
Back in our lonely room looking out of it’s solitarily window waiting for the muse to seep through the cracks from the floor the playwright reminisces on the theater’s great gifts while laboring with it’s many limitations the most physical of which is space. No matter how big a theater is it’s a small place in which to represent the world. There simply isn’t enough room. Say for example we write a play where the action takes place while our characters are walking in the woods. What we’ve created here is a problem. Just how much walking can they actually do in this little space? Where are they going to go? And the set designer will have to decide just how many trees we’re going to need for the audience to believe that it’s a forest. And let us suppose that our dramatic climax is the entrance of a dangerous, man-eating bear. The only thing we can possibly deliver is an actor in a bear costume, which looks exactly like an actor in a bear costume and unless we mean it to be an actor in a bear costume it is sure to violate the audience’s willing suspension of disbelief. And if the audience isn’t playing we don’t have a play. Therefore the playwright has to think theatrically which means that the play must be of such form and substance that its story’s telling will be enhanced by all the limitations of telling it on a stage with live actors before a live audience. Time too is a factor. A play takes place in the present and in moment to the moment time. We can jump back and forth in time and move from place to place, but the movement through time and from place to place cannot be accomplished through any means other than in real time. We have surely been to plays where a great portion of the experience has been watching stagehands moving furniture in a dim light on stage while waiting for the next scene to begin. I like to call them the Acme Moving Company’s production of “Between the Scenes.” The poor stagehands have no other humanly choice but to move the furniture in real time, but stuck between any two particular scenes of our play may not be the kind of real time we want. Thanks to the cinema plays are no longer confined to those realistic one-room sets of long ago. We see much more film, television and video than we ever see theater and this has resulted in audiences coming to the theater with a rich visual vocabulary and along with their empathy and suspension of disbelief they bring it willingly allowing plays to move through time and space with the change of light. Like the actor the playwright must have something to do. What playwrights do is write. What they write are blue prints for theatrical events. Compelling documents of the human experience written for live actors on a living stage before a live audience. After awhile while writing the limitations begin to seem more and more like possibilities and opportunities. All art is problem solving, and the practical application of resolving those problems is the actual process of creating and of making the art. And so I say again plays are made not written.
Carlyle Brown |
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