Playwriting

““I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage. A man walks across this empty space whilst someone else is watching him, and this is all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged” Peter Brook” I love a bare stage. There is something quite magical about walking onto a stage, looking out at the empty house. It is, for me, a place that can be anywhere, any time. It is a place that can ring with laughter or be so incredibly still. In my quite short stint as an actor, I really never had many experiences in “proper” theatres. I performed in barns, on gym floors, in make shift cobbled together spaces. I toured the fringe festival circuit for six years and I worked in every meaning of the phrase “empty space.” But I always felt the magic. An empty space can become a bare stage in an instant. Bring in an audience and you have a theatre. *Exercise: *Write a scene that takes place in an empty space. No props, no costumes, just the space. Where is it? What happens? Who enters, and who leaves? Revel in the empty space.

I was recently in Arizona and visited a most unique museum. It was out in the desert (I love its name – the Superstition Mountain Museum) and on the property there was a wedding chapel that had been moved there from a movie studio – Apacheland Movie Ranch. The Arizona desert was home to many a western back in the day and this wedding chapel (named the Elvis Presley Memorial Chapel, which had a huge life-sized Elvis statue where the alter should be, but that’s another story) had a number of movie posters from projects filmed at the Ranch. We’re not going to talk about the movies. Let’s say they don’t seem, at first glance, to be great works of cinematic art. (Lust for Gold anyone?) But, what did struck me were the taglines on the posters. They are pretty awesome. We just don’t describe movies the same way anymore. The first thing I thought of is that they would make vivid writing prompts. So have a look at the taglines below and use them as a jumping off point for a scene. Write whatever comes to mind when you read the tagline. It certainly doesn’t have to be western-themed. What characters do you visualize (some of the taglines mention a specific character) and what kind of conflict might they be in based on the tagline? Get writing! “• Only he knew it was “a time for dying” • On his neck he wore the brand of a killer. On his hip he wore vengeance. • Big Jim Cole had come to the rim of hell. • Flaming skies…. blasted earth… the touch of love. • Justice is not only blind, it’s deadly. • He rode in alone… a silent stranger… until the day his blazing guns did the talking.”

All of these pictures come from the Japan pavilion at Epcot in Disney World. The store at the pavilion is an experience, based on the Mitsukoshi Department Store. I adore wandering through and seeing products that are decidedly not Disney-fied. They are so lovingly weird. As a writing exercise, take each of these pictures and make them the focus of a monologue or scene. What is the product in the picture? Who is using them? What would the outcome be of using these products? A couple of the pictures have text on them – use the text as the jumping off point for your monologue. And one picture has no English at all – decide what the product is and have someone use it in a scene.

When I was in San Diego I found a lot of interesting plant life and a number of objects that just struck me as great inspiration for writing. So let’s get to it. Each picture contains a non-human thing – tree, flower, bike and so on. Look at the picture and decide, if this thing were human what kind of character would it be? How would it talk, move? What kind of personality would it have? What job would it have? Write a monologue in which this character is sharing something with their significant other. It can be in relation to what they may be doing in the picture, or take on the life outside the frame. The choice is yours!

““One of the most consistent challenges of being a practising dramaturg is convincing other artists of the usefulness of my being in the room.” Dramaturgy in Action, _Beccy Smith, _” It is a funny word with more than one spelling and more than one pronunciation (_turg or turge?) _and a pretty unhelpful definition in the dictionary. I like the list that the LMDA provides. The act of dramaturgy and the job of dramaturg is something that has made a surge in recent years, many companies have a dramaturg on their payroll, you can even get a degree in dramaturgy. But what is it? What does it mean to the playwright and the play? Depending on the situation, a dramaturg can take on a number of roles. • In a production capacity, they often take on a research and advisory role. They become an expert and advocate for the play. • As a member of a company they may be the person who reads and responds to new submissions. • They may also work with playwrights developing a new script. It’s a job that is sometimes maligned, there is a notion that dramaturgs have too much of a thumb on a playwright’s work. That they try to hone in, re-write, take over. Playwrights didn’t used to work with dramaturges, they used to write their plays and that was that. What do we need them for? I have had the opportunity to sit on both sides of the table. I have worked with dramaturges on my scripts and I have been the dramaturg. Most recently I worked with a group of begininng writers who were writing plays for an historical house tour. I love it. The job really satisfies the analysis side to my nature – when I was an an actor my favourite part of the process was the script analysis – more so than being on stage! I once worked with dramatug whose description of his job has always stuck with me, to the point that it’s what I’ve adapted into my practice as a dramaturg. He said: “I want to know what your intention is with the work, and then my job is to make sure the play meets your intention.” I love this because it states, rather efficiently and effectively, that the job of the dramaturg is to help you clarify what you want out of the play. To help you be your best. Not to be the writer. Not to re-write. To honour the quality of the work. I like to picture the dramaturg as a coach. Everyone believes that teams or individual athletes need coaches, right? No one thinks that coaches try to be the athlete – they are there to make the athlete be the best they can be. Why can’t a writer have the same experience? Certainly there are good dramaturges and bad ones, just as there are good coaches and bad. But we can all use a hand in helping us perform at our best. The dramaturg is an often discussed job in the theatre with many advocates and many detractors. Sometimes dramaturgs themselves aren’t exactly clear on what the paramaters of the job are. What are your experiences with dramaturgy?

I came across this most vivid sentence this week: ““They want you to fail so they won’t be alone.”” Who are they? Doesn’t matter. It’s anyone who beats you down. It’s anyone who sneers at you. Anyone who prays for you to trip so they can laugh when you fall. And what a delicious twist – “so they won’t be alone.” Write a two person scene between a Teenager and their best friend. A confrontation right before the teen leaves for New York to go to school. The best friend verbalizes their doubt that the teen will ever succeed. And at some point, throw in that twist. So they won’t be alone. Does the best friend deny? Does the teen express empathy? Who is alone at the end? Happy writing!

Naming characters. It’s something that I take very seriously as a playwright. Some might say a little too seriously, as I spend an hour on a baby name website instead of actually, you know, writing. But I can’t help it. If the name’s not right, then the character doesn’t start talking and if the character doesn’t start talking how on earth can I write for them? I like my character names to mean something. Even if it’s just a private inside meaning for me. I like looking at the core of the character or a defined character trait and basing the name off of that. I like giving characters cultural names. I like giving names to ensemble/group characters so that the actor isn’t just playing “Number Three” they have a place. They have a home base. Names are a big part of my process, part of how I learn about the characters, how I move them through out the play. A example of this is in Sweep Under Rug. The two girls in the play have specifically chosen names from Shakespeare’s The Tempest: Miranda and Ariel. This is their mother’s favourite play. Their mother, who we never meet, is not in a good state. It is suggested that she is a complete failure, a mess. It is also suggested that because she’s poor she is unable to rise about her situation, she can only learn so much. But I wanted to show (in a very subtle way, and perhaps only known to me) that indeed the mother is more than what she is assumed to be by what she named her daughters. So as I said, baby name websites are the bomb. Here’s one.And another. And a third. These have every name you could ever possibly think of. And they often tell you what the name means, a great bonus. Further to that, say you have a character of a certain nationality, you can look up the top ten names from that country. Want a French name? Here you go. If you want a character with a very popular trendy name, you can look that up too. You can look up cultural surnames. Last names are important. They can add another layer to the onion that is your character. In Floating On a Don’t Care CloudI knew I wanted the over-achieving Mya to come from a historically immigrant family and thus not have a standard North American or English name. She ended up as Mya Savakis. Creating a name that goes with theme of your play can be a way into the naming process. In Censorbleep, there are five girls who represent the idea of being clean, and pretty and perfect to the point of being robots. So all their names are all simple, they sound the same and rhyme in a robotic fashion: Mandy, Tandy, Randy, Sandy, Candy. The most fun plays to create names for are those that exist a little left to reality. You don’t need to be bound by that reality. But where do you start? I often look at the primary drive/trait of the character and either look up that word in another language (Google Translate is awesome for that). For example: let’s say I have a character who is brave and I plunk that word into Google translate to change “brave” from English to Spanish. The Spanish word for brave is Valiente which is ok, BUT, in the adjective list there is also Esforzado. When I look at that word, I see the end part “Zado” which I think is an awesome name. I like it so much I might have to come up with a character with that name. Hmmm. Another thing I might do is simply take the word in question and pick out a section in the middle of that word. InLook Me In the Eye, all of the character sames are plucked from the words that make up their core: • VIO comes from Violence • FEA comes from Fear • RUL comes from Rules • REA comes from Reality • TOR comes from History In _Beauty and the Bee _there is a chorus of 10 life-sized bees. They represent the “buzzing” in different characters’ brains. So instead of numbering the bees, they each have a name that has been fragmented from words that mean to think and things that happen in the brain: • COGI – first part of cogitate (means to think) • REVE – french word for dream • MARE – tail end of nightmare • RUMI – first part of Rumination, to ponder • BEAN – is another word for brain And then sometimes it’s as simple as finding the name that sounds the best. I want this character to have a three syllable first name and a hyphenated last name. I want this character to have a quick, blunt name. I want this character to have a funky sounding nickname. I want there to be some alliteration – the main character in Jealousy Jane was easy to come up with because there are only so many one syllable names that begin with J. And I also wanted something a little plain so that she could be jealous of her sister with the “pretty” name.

I read an article about the 25 most used passwords. I looked at the title and had one of those mac truck moments – there’s something there. Something. What? A play? Who knows. Most definitely an idea. Most definitely a scene. Here’s are the 25 things that came to mind when I looked at those 15 most used passwords. I pass them on to you – write a scene, write a monologue, just write. 1. Write a scene the title of which is QWERTY. 2. Write a monologue in which a character deals with being named QWERTY. 3. Write a monologue in which a character talks on the phone to tech support. He’s trying to get help getting into his computer but has forgotten his password. He’s convinced it’s something out of the ordinary, because he is out of the ordinary. Turns out it’s very ordinary. 4. Write a scene in which a character is berated for not using a common password. 5. Write a scene in which a hacker berates a character for using an overly common password. 6. Write a monologue in which a character explains why the computer password is the most important password of all. It reveals everything about a person. This character’s password? Monkey. 7. Write a scene between a couple who have just started dating. Her password? Michael. His? Trustno1. What happens when they find out the others password? 8. Write a scene between two best friends, the girl has been snooping and found out her boyfriends password: Trustno1. How does she react? Especially since she was snooping? 9. Write a scene that only exists of passwords. 10. Write a monologue in which a man wants to change his password to reflect a big change in his life. 11. A new addition to the most popular list is shadow. What type of character would use the word shadow as a password. 12. Write a monologue in which a very sour character has a very uplifting password: Sunshine. Why did he choose this password? 13. The scenario is a workplace. Two disgruntled cubicle workers have come across a master list of passwords for the entire company. What do they do with it? 14. A girl wants to break up with a boy because she doesn’t like his password. 15. Write a scene between a character and their talking computer. The computer has changed the character’s password… for their own good. Happy writing!

If you’re in the middle of a draft and you’re stuck. If you want to work on character development. If you want to work on the relationship between two characters. Time to sit right down and write yourself a letter. Letter writing is an excellent exercise. It’s one of those exercises that exists outside the world of the play, and yet can directly affect your knowledge and understanding of what’s going on inside a character. The instructions are simple: take a character and write a letter from their perspective. Perhaps the character is writing to one of their parents, or to a loved one, or a best friend trying to explain something they’ve done. It can have something directly to do with the story, or maybe an event that happened in the past, or maybe it’s a secret that the character is revealing for the first time. Or you could write a set of letters between two characters that show the development of their relationship. Or you could write a letter for a character to someone who’s not in the play, someone who left the character, or who’s recently died. The possibilities are endless. And of course, this should never be an exercise in futility. Get into the process and write a proper letter not just a punctuation-less text. Think about what paper the character might use. Stationary? A napkin? What does the letter says about the character. Is it filled with lies? Is it neatly printed or scrawled? What gets scratched out? Does the character like or dislike the person they’re writing to? Is that clear or hidden? Not only will you learn a lot about the character from the content of the letter, pinpointing the structural aspects will go a long way to help you write dialogue with a specific and unique voice. What’s the style of the letter? Is it poorly written? A lot of spelling mistakes? What is the character’s grammar like? Their vocabulary? Their language? It’s amazing what a little letter can do….