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).