Skip to main content

The Play's the Thing



I think I may have mentioned that I am involved in a playwriting project with my local community theater company. It has to be Christmas themed. As I was casting about for ideas, I came up with one that I believe will follow the guidelines for the project. The play is called “Elevator Time.” Though the title is simple, I like it. It is a nice double entendre. I don’t know yet if they are going to produce my play. Time will tell.

This is actually the fourth play I have written. The other three were all performed by the same theater company. The first two were a part of the Original Scripts project. And the third one was in a project called the 24 Hour Theater (no, the project lasted 24 hours, not the play).

Writing a play is different from writing a novel or a short story. Writing a play is all about dialogue. Playwrights do put some other stuff in there that is not dialogue. That stuff is called stage direction. The thing is, the director and actors are required to hold the dialogue as sacred; they don’t change it. But the stage direction is more like a suggestion. The director may choose to alter it, or come up with something entirely different. So if you are writing a play, the most important thing you put on the page is the dialogue. If you are not good at writing dialogue . . . maybe play writing isn’t for you.

Another way that plays are different is in the matter of control. When writing a novel, you are in complete control of the art that you are producing. Well, an editor may request/require changes. You could even avoid that if you self-published your novel (but you definitely should pay attention to what an editor says!) A play is a much more collaborative effort. The playwright does not (usually) get to be involved in staging, set, or casting decisions. That is the job of the director.  The director has a lot of leeway with regard to his/her interpretation of your play. I have seen a Shakespeare play done in traditional Elizabethan attire and setting, then I saw a different production of the same play that was set in what appeared to be the Viet Nam War. Nobody asked Shakespeare if they could set it in Viet Nam. Of course he is dead. But even living playwrights don’t get much say in how their work will be staged unless they have a lot of clout.

Then, each actor is going to put their own spin on the character. The actor may have limitations that change the way a character acts. The actor may not look even remotely like what the playwright had in mind for the part. Even individual lines can be said an infinite variety of ways.  The playwright was only thinking of one way when he/she wrote it.

So you have the playwright’s words filtered through the director, which are in turn filtered through the actors. A playwright has to accept that this is a collaborative art form. They have to accept the fact that what they are writing is a framework and the end product may be very different from what she/he envisioned. Some people can’t handle that. Some can. I personally find it exciting seeing what the theater company will do with my words.

(My novel Star Liner, is now available as an ebook through Copypastapublishing.com, or the other usual online sources. For those who like to turn physical pages, the paperback will be out in October).

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Iron Fist in a Velvet Glove

  Despite both of us having science backgrounds, my wife and I share a leaning toward the artistic, though we may express it in different ways. In her life, my wife has been a painter, a poet, a singer, an actor, and a fiction writer. Not to mention a mother. I don’t remember what precipitated this event, but my wife, my son, and I were at home in the front room. My wife was responding to something my son said. She said, “remember, you get half your brains from me. If it wasn’t for me, you’d be a complete idiot.” To which my son started howling with laughter and said to me,” I think you have just been insulted.” Sometimes I feel like Rodney Dangerfield. I get no respect. But that is not an uncommon state of affairs for fatherhood. When my son was going to middle school and high school, my wife was always the one to go in with him to get him registered for classes. One time she was unable to go and I had to be the one to get him registered. “Ugh,” he said. “why can’t Mama do i...
1 comment
Read more

Empathy

  Websters defines Empathy as: “the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another.” Empathy is what makes us human, though lord knows there are many humans who don’t seem to have any. A person without empathy is like a caveman, only concerned for himself. Selfish. It is a lack of community and by extension, a lack of the need for civilization. The person who lacks empathy can have a bit of community, but only with others exactly like himself. It seems like societies go through cycles of empathy and less empathy. Sometimes a single event can change the course of society. Prior to America’s involvement in WWII, the general feeling in America was not very empathetic. We had our own problems. We were still dealing with the lingering effects of the Great Depression, and had been for years. That kind of stress makes it hard to think of others. Hitler was slashing through Europe. He and his fol...
1 comment
Read more

A Deception

  I have a secret. I deceived my mother. Okay, it was like 50 years ago and she is gone now, but still . . .  I was generally a good boy. I did as I was told. My family lived a pretty strait-laced, middle-class, fairly conservative life. We were a G-rated family, well, until my older siblings broke the mold, but at this time, I was still in the mold. My friend Rich and I made a plan. Rich had asked me if I wanted to see Cabaret . He said he didn’t think much of Liza Minnelli, but he wouldn’t mind seeing her take her clothes off. We were like 13 years old and sex was ever-present on our minds as much as it was absent in our households. Cabaret was not rated R. It was rated PG. The ratings system has changed since that time. There was no PG-13; there was just the choice of G, PG, and R  (X was not an official rating).  Apparently the makers of Cabaret satisfied the ratings commission enough to escape an R rating, so it was PG.   There was therefore no law or ...
Post a Comment
Read more