What Is The Play About? - An Invitation To Jeffrey Sweet
Eagle
suppose
it is if you look at the text. But that's not really what it's about.
It's about the theatre. It's about how to use music and and lyrics
and book to combine in a sort of new way. Not that we tried to do it
new, it's just that's the way it turned out. Because it seemed to be
a musical that was about movement."
I could accept this statement as valid had he not said "But that's not
REALLY what it's about," and said instead, "But it ALSO is about...".
So, my friends, what exactly do we mean when we say that a play is
"about" something? I would say it most often refers to plot and/or
theme (and for wiseasses, sometimes length). I invite Jeff Sweet to
share with us his ideas about the function of a theme. I remember an
article he had in Back Stage a few years ago about theme, in which he
made an analogy to a building. I don't remember the specifics, but I
do remember thinking something was odd about the analogy, and I'd like
to discuss it.
DgSWEET
>article he had in Back Stage a few years ago about theme, in which he
>made an analogy to a building. I don't remember the specifics, but I
>do remember thinking something was odd about the analogy, and I'd like
>to discuss it.
I wrote that I thought it was usually a bad idea to start a play with theme.
"I'm going to write a play about racism in real estate." Dreadful way to
start. All of the characters immediately are created in relationship to THE
ISSUE instead of being characters with dimension.
I find that when I write plays, I start with characters who intrigue me, or a
relationship I can't get out of my head. I write to find out what the story
must be, and along the way I find out what themes arise naturally out of
exploring the story. So the themes are a by-product of the storytelling, the
storytelling is not a by-product of thinking about themes. After I've finished
a first draft and I understand what thematic concerns have naturally accrued,
then I can reinforce the thematic ideas in revision -- hopefully without being
too obvious.
I think mostly when people ask what a show's about, though, they want a sense
of whether the story will engage them. I don't know too many people who are
attracted to a piece because of a theme.
I said that starting a play with a theme is like trying to build a skyscraper
from the top down -- I think you're likely to do best when you arrive at theme
at the end of the process, not try to start with it and then create elements
that support it.
The full article is in my book SOLVING YOUR SCRIPT, available in all bookstores
with taste (or run by my relatives).
Jeff
Bushwhacker
DgSWEET wrote:
>>I remember an
>>article he had in Back Stage a few years ago about theme, in which he
>>made an analogy to a building. I don't remember the specifics, but I
>>do remember thinking something was odd about the analogy, and I'd like
>>to discuss it.
>
>
> I wrote that I thought it was usually a bad idea to start a play with theme.
> "I'm going to write a play about racism in real estate." Dreadful way to
> start. All of the characters immediately are created in relationship to THE
> ISSUE instead of being characters with dimension.
>
And it shows. A perceptive audience quickly realizes that the people are
mouthpieces, not characters.
> I find that when I write plays, I start with characters who intrigue me, or a
> relationship I can't get out of my head. I write to find out what the story
> must be, and along the way I find out what themes arise naturally out of
> exploring the story. So the themes are a by-product of the storytelling, the
> storytelling is not a by-product of thinking about themes. After I've finished
> a first draft and I understand what thematic concerns have naturally accrued,
> then I can reinforce the thematic ideas in revision -- hopefully without being
> too obvious.
Yep. Most of the joy in seeing a play (or film) is involvement -- going
along with the plot and people and seeing what surprises unfold.
Afterwards, if it's good, you think about the various themes and maybe
realize some you missed.
>
> I think mostly when people ask what a show's about, though, they want a sense
> of whether the story will engage them. I don't know too many people who are
> attracted to a piece because of a theme.
>
> I said that starting a play with a theme is like trying to build a skyscraper
> from the top down -- I think you're likely to do best when you arrive at theme
> at the end of the process, not try to start with it and then create elements
> that support it.
>
> The full article is in my book SOLVING YOUR SCRIPT, available in all bookstores
> with taste (or run by my relatives).
>
Great plug...
Christopher Jahn
> I said that starting a play with a theme is like trying to
> build a skyscraper from the top down -- I think you're
> likely to do best when you arrive at theme at the end of
> the process, not try to start with it and then create
> elements that support it.
>
This reminds me of the admonition to actors about "playing
the mood". NEVER play the mood - stay in the moment and let
the mood sort itself out.
> The full article is in my book SOLVING YOUR SCRIPT,
> available in all bookstores with taste (or run by my
> relatives).
>
--
:-) Christopher Jahn
:-(
http://home.comcast.net/~xjahn/Main.html
Do not believe in miracles--rely on them.
Steve Newport
Re: What Is The Play About? - An Invitation To Jeffrey Sweet
From: xj...@netscape.net (Christopher Jahn) This reminds me of the
admonition to actors about "playing the mood". NEVER play the mood -
stay in the moment and let the mood sort itself out.
Yes. OTOH, too many "trained" actors now seem incapable of playing in
more than one style.
Eagle
> >I remember an
> >article he had in Back Stage a few years ago about theme, in which he
> >made an analogy to a building. I don't remember the specifics, but I
> >do remember thinking something was odd about the analogy, and I'd like
> >to discuss it.
>
> I wrote that I thought it was usually a bad idea to start a play with theme.
> "I'm going to write a play about racism in real estate." Dreadful way to
> start. All of the characters immediately are created in relationship to THE
> ISSUE instead of being characters with dimension.
Why does one preclude the other? It doesn't matter where an artist
starts in the process, so long as ultimately, the work is integrated.
What's to prevent the artist from creating characters with
relationships to a conscious theme AS WELL AS creating them with
"dimension" (I'm not sure precisely how you would define "dimension")?
Why isn't it equally as dreadful to start with characters pursuing
actions and revealing "dimensions" unrelated to a unifying theme?
What's really dreadful is a lack of integration, not where you start
in the process of creating a unifying work of art. I don't see why it
matters where one starts, so long as the end result is a unified
whole. Starting with theme may not work for you personally, but I
don't know that you can generalize from that. WHY is starting with
characters and their relationships more likely to lead to a successful
integration of plot and theme, rather than starting with theme? Why
can't the process be an ongoing interaction between thinking about
plot and character and theme? Why should it be attention to
character, plot and THEN theme -- if at all? I've been in too many
playwriting workshops where writers bring in their work, and then ask
others to tell them what their work is about. I find this a lazy
attitude, and the work showed in my opinion.
> I find that when I write plays, I start with characters who intrigue me, or a
> relationship I can't get out of my head. I write to find out what the story must be,
What the story "must be" is how the story fits your subconscious
premises about the theme. SOMETHING is guiding your choices in your
development of character and plot, even if you're not consciously
thinking about a theme. What else would make it a "must be" if not
your subconscious? Do you think there's something mystical about
writing? I don't. Possibly you might respond that what "must be" is
action that follows logically from the characters. But then what is
"logical" for characters that you are creating, who, because they are
being created by you, could conceivably take ANY action? What sets
the standard for what is logical for a character? If you were to
write a character who in the first scene is nasty, in the next scene
warm and affectionate, and in the third, stoic -- and if you then try
to find out what the story "must be," then SOME overriding idea must
be needed to connect the character's moods in order to create a
coherent character and a logical story, or the audience will just
become confused. If you're making choices about what a story "must
be" but can't or won't identify WHY it "must" until sometime later in
the proces (when, after the creation, you consciously identify a
theme), then it seems you're just creating blindly and hoping that
your subconscious -- all on its own without any prompting from your
conscious mind -- will make it all congeal. I don't know what that
has to do with craft. What if you create characters of "dimension,"
but no theme "naturally" arises? What then?
> and along the way I find out what themes arise naturally out of
> exploring the story. So the themes are a by-product of the storytelling, the
> storytelling is not a by-product of thinking about themes.
Why do you trust that a theme will "naturally" arise from the story,
but doubt that a story (with "dimensional" characters) can "naturally"
arise from a theme? Is it really so "natural" for a theme to arise,
or does it require mental effort? If it does require mental effort,
then what's wrong with expending mental effort by starting first with
theme and working the other way? I know in acting that sometimes a
gesture can evoke an emotion, and that an emotion can evoke a gesture.
I wouldn't make it a rule that it's best to work first on the
physical as opposed to the emotional or vice versa. It depends on the
actor. If the gesture isn't integrated with the emotion, it will just
look stagey, and an emotion without a physical way of communicating it
to an audience, will stay locked up inside the actor, no matter how
much depth of emotion ("dimension"?) the actor feels -- it will not
communicate across the footlights and the audience will remain
unmoved. The key is integration. I don't think it matters as a
general rule where you start from.
> I said that starting a play with a theme is like trying to build a skyscraper
> from the top down -- I think you're likely to do best when you arrive at theme
> at the end of the process, not try to start with it and then create elements
> that support it.
Yes, this is the analogy I remember, and I find it confusing. For
one, I don't think your point is that it's IMPOSSIBLE to start with
theme and create characters of dimension from it -- just that it's
very difficult -- while it IS (at least with current technology for
all practical purposes) impossible to build a skyscraper from the top
down. So the only point that can really be drawn from the analogy is
that starting with theme is impossible, which apparently is not your
point.
Second, a theme is the unifying idea of a work -- it's most akin to
the skeletal structure of a building -- it's neither the top of the
building nor the basement, but encompassing the whole and holding it
all together. So whether starting from the top down or the bottom up,
your analogy just doesn't seem to correlate very well with the actual
function of a theme. A good story doesn't rest on a theme (the
basement), nor is it topped off with a theme (the roof) -- it is
INTEGRATED with the theme throughout.
> The full article is in my book SOLVING YOUR SCRIPT, available in all bookstores
> with taste (or run by my relatives).
>
> Jeff
From Ayn Rand's THE ART OF FICTION (also available in bookstores with
taste, but probably not ones run by Jeff's relatives):
"You cannot create a character from philosophical abstractions alone;
you cannot approach characterization merely by telling yourself: 'My
hero will be independent, just, rational.' The process is indirect --
you must know how to use your subconscious. You must know how
consciously to prepare it so that it will make the right selections
for you.
Your characterizations will never be better than your power of
observation. A human mind does not first conceive of floating
abstractions and then, by means of them, recognize the concretes; in
order properly to grasp an abstraction, you must DERIVE it from
concretes. To prepare your subconscious for writing proper
characterization, therefore, you must be a good observer and
introspector..."
"...Plot action is not mere physical action, and it is not mere
spiritual or mental action. Some writers think that if a man takes a
trip and comes home, this constitutes plot action (he DID something!
), just as the writers of bad melodramas think it is plot action if
someone is chasing someone and there is five minutes of speeding cars
or horses galloping. The counterpart of this error is conflicts within
a man's mind which are not illustrated in physical action.
The arty, modern stream-of-consciousness novels, on the one hand, and
bad melodramas on the other, where characters run around hectically,
are two versions of the same error. (The latter is action -- so why is
it so dull? It is dull because it is MERE physical action.) Proper
plot action is neither spirit alone nor body alone, but the
integration of the two, with the physical action expressing the
spiritual action involved.
To construct a proper plot, you have to be (at least as a dramatist)
on the premise of mind-body integration. If to any extent you hold the
premise of a mind-body split, it will hamper your plot ability,
because it will lead you to consider dramatic the mere fact that a man
experiences something in his own mind, or that he moves around in some
mindless physical action.
A story is like a soul-body relationship. Whether you start with the
body (the action) or the soul (the abstract theme), you must be able
to integrate the two. And the proper integration of idea to action
requires a mind that is not confined to thinking merely in terms of
physical concretes, or merely in terms of floating abstractions."
DgSWEET
start. All of the characters immediately are created in relationship to THE
ISSUE instead of being characters with dimension.
>>>Why does one preclude the other?
It mostly really does. Starting from theme tends to start with the intended
MEANING of the piece, and so the characters end up debating different sides of
the issue and become mouthpieces for an intellectual game rather than having
individual souls. This is what people often find off-putting about the lesser
Shaw and Ibsen. (Mind you, I said "the lesser." Their best is pretty damn
good.)
>> It doesn't matter where an artist starts in the process, so long as
ultimately, the work is integrated.
If you made a survey of how the great works whose origins we know came to be, I
promise you very few of them started with theme.
>What's to prevent the artist from creating characters with relationships to a
conscious theme AS WELL AS creating them with "dimension" (I'm not sure
precisely how you would define "dimension")?
In the end, you hope and expect that your obsession with characters in a
situation relates to some theme your unconscious wishes to articulate. The
problem with starting with theme is that theme is abstract. One abstracts
something FROM something else. One doesn't start with an abstraction, by
definition.
Dimension? Characters with quirks and contradictions -- characters who don't
stand for just one thing but often are fighting psychic civil wars.
> Why isn't it equally as dreadful to start with characters pursuing actions
and revealing "dimensions" unrelated to a unifying theme?
Because one's obsession with a character almost always leads to that unifying
theme.
>What's really dreadful is a lack of integration, not where you start in the
process of creating a unifying work of art. I don't see why it matters where
one starts, so long as the end result is a unified
whole.
According to this logic, one could start writing a symphony without knowing key
signatures, harmonics, scales, etc. Of course it matters where you start ...
Just as you wouldn't start acareer in medicine by attempting a heart surgery
your first day.
> Starting with theme may not work for you personally, but I don't know that
you can generalize from that.
I'm not generalizing from my experience. I'm also reporting on the experiences
of writers as diverse as Pinter, Mamet, Williams, Lanford Wilson, Albee,
Gurney, etc. (a couple of whom I've actually discussed this with).
> WHY is starting with characters and their relationships more likely to lead
to a successful integration of plot and theme, rather than starting with theme?
Because, as I said, theme is abstract, and something that is abstract is
abstracted FROM something. You don't start with an abstraction.
> Why can't the process be an ongoing interaction between thinking about plot
and character and theme?
You may discover your theme pretty early in the process after beginning to
explore a character in a situation, but it still tends to be AFTER. Start with
an abstraction like, "Commercial real estate practices destroy a neighborhood,"
how would you proceed to develop this idea? Probably by going to the obvious
-- presenting a developer (villain) and local villagers (virtuous, except for
the one greedy trator among them). Already you're inviting simplistic notions
and stereotype.
> Why should it be attention to
>character, plot and THEN theme -- if at all? I've been in too many
>playwriting workshops where writers bring in their work, and then ask
>others to tell them what their work is about.
I don't suggest that this is the way to work. You have to be genuinely
self-critical and self-reclective. you can't just assume that anything you
blat out is going to be valuable.
>> I find that when I write plays, I start with characters who intrigue me, or
>a
>> relationship I can't get out of my head. I write to find out what the
>story must be,
>
>What the story "must be" is how the story fits your subconscious premises
about the theme. SOMETHING is guiding your choices in your development of
character and plot, even if you're not consciously thinking about a theme.
Bingo. I see you agree with me. Boy, that wasn't so hard after all ...
> Do you think there's something mystical about writing? I don't.
Not mystical, but often mysterious. We are mysteries to ourselves, so often we
will not entirely understand why we write what we do until it is objectified in
performance. Perhaps not even then.
>What sets
>the standard for what is logical for a character? If you were to
>write a character who in the first scene is nasty, in the next scene
>warm and affectionate, and in the third, stoic -- and if you then try
>to find out what the story "must be," then SOME overriding idea must
>be needed to connect the character's moods in order to create a
>coherent character and a logical story, or the audience will just
>become confused. If you're making choices about what a story "must
>be" but can't or won't identify WHY it "must" until sometime later in
>the proces (when, after the creation, you consciously identify a
>theme), then it seems you're just creating blindly and hoping that
>your subconscious -- all on its own without any prompting from your
>conscious mind -- will make it all congeal.
I wonder if you've studied much acting. The pursuit of objectives may very
will account for contradictory tones from scene to scene. If you were familiar
with my theory about "roles in conflict," a lot of these issues would be
addressed. But I'm not going to post my essay on that here. It's amply
articulated in THE DRAMATIST'S TOOLKIT.
> I don't know what that has to do with craft.
Everything.
>What if you create characters of "dimension," but no theme "naturally" arises?
What then?
Then you haven't placed the characters in the right context. Usually you can
parse this by asking the proper questions. For instance, what does this
character assume to be true? Then you put that character into a situation in
which his or her philosophy is challenged and see if theory is overwhelmed by
the immediate demands of reality. That's one way of doing it.
>So the themes are a by-product of the storytelling, the storytelling is not a
by-product of thinking about themes.
>Why do you trust that a theme will "naturally" arise from the story, but doubt
that a story (with "dimensional" characters) can "naturally" arise from a
theme? Is it really so "natural" for a theme to arise, or does it require
mental effort? If it does require mental effort, then what's wrong with
expending mental effort by starting first with theme and working the other way?
I've articulated my thoughts on this several times. If you don't buy what I
say, you have that right.
> I know in acting that sometimes a gesture can evoke an emotion, and that an
emotion can evoke a gesture. I wouldn't make it a rule that it's best to work
first on the physical as opposed to the emotional or vice versa.
In working on a pre-existent part, I would certainly look for emotion first,
otherwise you run the risk of indicating. The del Sarte school of acting was
all gesture, and it produced results we would laugh at today.
> I don't think it matters as a
>general rule where you start from.
Yes, you've said this. Repetition does not making something any more true.
>> I said that starting a play with a theme is like trying to build a
skyscraper from the top down -- I think you're likely to do best when you
arrive at theme at the end of the process, not try to start with it and then
create elements that support it.
>
>Yes, this is the analogy I remember, and I find it confusing. For one, I
don't think your point is that it's IMPOSSIBLE to start with theme and create
characters of dimension from it -- just that it's very difficult -- while it IS
(at least with current technology for all practical purposes) impossible to
build a skyscraper from the top down. So the only point that can really be
drawn from the analogy is that starting with theme is impossible, which
apparently is not your point.
Lord, all analogies break down at some point. And I suppose it is
technologically possible to start from the top down of a building. Suspend the
top from high tension wires and keep adding lightweight material from that till
you hit the ground and hope that you can provide supporting struts before the
structure collapses on you. As I say, theoretically possible, but not very
smart.
>Second, a theme is the unifying idea of a work -- it's most akin to the
skeletal structure of a building -- it's neither the top of the building nor
the basement, but encompassing the whole and holding it
all together.
That's your analogy. I don't think theme is structural. I think the structure
serves the theme -- supports the theme.
> So whether starting from the top down or the bottom up, your analogy just
doesn't seem to correlate very well with the actual
function of a theme.
By your lights. Well, keep writing plays the way you want, and I'll keep
writing plays according to my lights. Ultimately the judges will be the people
who choose to put up the plays and the audiences who choose to see them. My
stuff is getting done a lot these days. How you doing?
>>From Ayn Rand's THE ART OF FICTION (also available in bookstores with
>taste, but probably not ones run by Jeff's relatives):
>
>"You cannot create a character from philosophical abstractions alone;
you cannot approach characterization merely by telling yourself: 'My hero will
be independent, just, rational.' The process is indirect -- you must know how
to use your subconscious. You must know how consciously to prepare it so that
it will make the right selections for you.
What she says doesn't contradict a thing I've said.
>Your characterizations will never be better than your power of observation. A
human mind does not first conceive of floating abstractions and then, by means
of them, recognize the concretes; in
order properly to grasp an abstraction, you must DERIVE it from concretes.
Exactly what I said about abstractions being abstracted from something ... (see
above).
>To prepare your subconscious for writing proper characterization, therefore,
you must be a good observer and introspector..."
Still no contradiction.
>"...Plot action is not mere physical action, and it is not mere
>spiritual or mental action. Some writers think that if a man takes a
>trip and comes home, this constitutes plot action (he DID something!
>), just as the writers of bad melodramas think it is plot action if
>someone is chasing someone and there is five minutes of speeding cars
>or horses galloping. The counterpart of this error is conflicts within
>a man's mind which are not illustrated in physical action.
Still no contradiction ...
>The arty, modern stream-of-consciousness novels, on the one hand, and
>bad melodramas on the other, where characters run around hectically,
>are two versions of the same error. (The latter is action -- so why is
>it so dull? It is dull because it is MERE physical action.) Proper
>plot action is neither spirit alone nor body alone, but the
>integration of the two, with the physical action expressing the
>spiritual action involved.
Still no contradiction.
>To construct a proper plot, you have to be (at least as a dramatist)
>on the premise of mind-body integration. If to any extent you hold the
>premise of a mind-body split, it will hamper your plot ability,
>because it will lead you to consider dramatic the mere fact that a man
>experiences something in his own mind, or that he moves around in some
>mindless physical action.
>
>A story is like a soul-body relationship. Whether you start with the
>body (the action) or the soul (the abstract theme), you must be able
>to integrate the two. And the proper integration of idea to action
>requires a mind that is not confined to thinking merely in terms of
>physical concretes, or merely in terms of floating abstractions."
And this last is where I part company with her. I don't think starting with an
abstraction is very useful. But I've said that before.
Stephen Farrow
Eagle wrote:
>
> dgs...@aol.com (DgSWEET) wrote in message news:<20040826115209...@mb-m15.aol.com>...
> > >I remember an
> > >article he had in Back Stage a few years ago about theme, in which he
> > >made an analogy to a building. I don't remember the specifics, but I
> > >do remember thinking something was odd about the analogy, and I'd like
> > >to discuss it.
> >
> > I wrote that I thought it was usually a bad idea to start a play with theme.
> > "I'm going to write a play about racism in real estate." Dreadful way to
> > start. All of the characters immediately are created in relationship to THE
> > ISSUE instead of being characters with dimension.
>
> Why does one preclude the other?
Because, usually, a play that privileges theme over character just ends up being really, really
tedious to watch.
Now, of course, there are exceptions to this - I enjoyed all three plays in David Hare's
institutions trilogy ("Racing Demon", "Murmuring Judges" and "The Absence of War"; respectively,
examinations of the Church of England, the British legal system and the Labour Party - although
"Racing Demon" is by far the most compelling of the three, largely because its characters are more
interesting than those of the other two plays - and to find out why you're just going to have to go
and read them for yourself) - but generally speaking, characters created simply as embodiments of a
theme come across onstage as less than three-dimensional, however skilled the actor playing them
might be.
From musical theatre, a good example would be "Blood Brothers"; its central characters exist
essentially as emblems of their respective rungs on the class ladder, rather than as
three-dimensional human beings. There are some genuinely good, genuinely moving things in the play,
but overall it's a weak piece of work because the characters in the play are mouthpieces in a debate
about the class system, and nothing more. Willy Russell does better job in similar thematic
territory in "Educating Rita", simply because Frank and Rita are much more interesting *as people*
than Mrs. Johnstone, Mickey, Eddie, Linda or Mrs. Lyons. The social debate in "Educating Rita" is
secondary to the characters themselves, which oddly enough ultimately makes the plays examination of
social mobility far more compelling than that found in "Blood Brothers".
And, again, if you don't know "Educating Rita" and need more detail, you'll just have to go and read
it for yourself.
--
Stephen
Sunnydale's got too many demons and not enough retail outlets.
Steve Newport
sfa...@chass.utoronto.ca (Stephen Farrow) I enjoyed all three plays
in David Hare's institutions trilogy ("Racing Demon", "Murmuring Judges"
and "The Absence of War"; respectively, examinations of the Church of
England, the British legal system and the Labour Party - although
"Racing Demon" is by far the most compelling of the three, largely
because its characters are more interesting than those of the other two
emblems of their respective rungs on the class ladder, rather than as
thematic territory in "Educating Rita", simply because Frank and Rita
are much more interesting *as people* than Mrs. Johnstone, Mickey,
Eddie, Linda or Mrs. Lyons. The social debate in "Educating Rita" is
secondary to the characters themselves, which oddly enough ultimately
makes the plays examination of social mobility far more compelling than
that found in "Blood Brothers".
Good examples. I love RACING DEMON and EDUCATING RITA. Not thrilled with
BLOOD BROTHERS and some other Hare plays.
Rkg83604
what's wrong with how many of us teach. Paying attention to character is of
course important, but no more than is theme. I venture to say as many good
plays start with one as with the other, and as many bad plays neglect one as
the other.
I always tell students (whether writers, actors, directors or deigners) to
breathe in everyone's approach but not to forget to exhale. To announce that
one MUST begin with character is to foreclose thought, and a lack of thought is
the worst thing we can recommend.
I would be less annoyed with what I am reading here if the sense was "Here is
what I do; maybe it will help you" rather than a blanket prescription of some
"rule" that impressionable new writers think they must follow. Rules hamper
creativity; ideas shape it.
>Subject: Re: What Is The Play About? - An Invitation To Jeffrey Sweet
>From: dgs...@aol.com (DgSWEET)
>Date: 8/27/2004 2:51 PM Eastern Daylight Time
>Message-id: <20040827145145...@mb-m06.aol.com>
Christopher Jahn
>
> I would be less annoyed with what I am reading here if the
> sense was "Here is what I do; maybe it will help you"
> rather than a blanket prescription of some "rule" that
> impressionable new writers think they must follow. Rules
> hamper creativity; ideas shape it.
In fact, that is what Jeff was doing.
To call Jeff's guidelines "formulaic" only indicates that
you do not understand the word. He's not pushing formula,
he's pushing technique; it's not the same thing. Technique
is having a systematic approach to the work so that you can
accomplish a goal. A formula is a template into which you
plug variables.
While no responsible party would expouse starting a writing
project with Theme, that is not the same as saying "NEVER"
do this. All Jeff said was that it was a bad place to
start. Because it is.
And BTW, you are also completely wrong when you state that
"rules hamper creativity". The fact is that rules enhance
creativity. And that is a fact, not an opinion.
Chuck Close, the artist, gives a wonderful lecture on his
work. In it, he addresses this matter directly.
He describes how difficult it was to create at first. It
wasn't until he "restricted" himself with rules that his
creativity was fully realized. "When I could paint whatever
and however I wanted to, I couldn't decide what to paint or
how to paint it. It was only when I set rules that I was
free to paint."
In his retrospective (now on a US tour), you can see the
results of imposing "rules". In one period, he only used
black paint and white paint, no shades of gray, to create
photo-realistic portraits. In another, he only used three
colors of paint. In another, every square inch of the
painting had the same amount of visual information as any
other square inch of the painting. And yet they all look
like giant photographs.
Frankly, you can't be much of a teacher if your post
accurately reflects your views on creativity.
--
:-) Christopher Jahn
:-(
http://home.comcast.net/~xjahn/Main.html
Blessed are they that run around in circles, for they shall
be known as wheels.
Bushwhacker
Rkg83604 wrote:
> The sort of formula-based approach to writing described here is, in my view,
> what's wrong with how many of us teach. Paying attention to character is of
> course important, but no more than is theme. I venture to say as many good
> plays start with one as with the other, and as many bad plays neglect one as
> the other.
>
> I always tell students (whether writers, actors, directors or deigners) to
> breathe in everyone's approach but not to forget to exhale. To announce that
> one MUST begin with character is to foreclose thought, and a lack of thought is
> the worst thing we can recommend.
>
> I would be less annoyed with what I am reading here if the sense was "Here is
> what I do; maybe it will help you" rather than a blanket prescription of some
> "rule" that impressionable new writers think they must follow.
Did you skip this part of Jeff's post:
"I've articulated my thoughts on this several times. If you don't buy
what I say, you have that right."
I saw nothing in his thoughtful posts -- nicely detailed responses to
Eagle's request -- that said "You *must* do it this way."
Bushwhacker
Christopher Jahn wrote:
> And it came to pass that Rkg83604 wrote:
>
>
>>I would be less annoyed with what I am reading here if the
>>sense was "Here is what I do; maybe it will help you"
>>rather than a blanket prescription of some "rule" that
>>impressionable new writers think they must follow. Rules
>>hamper creativity; ideas shape it.
>
>
> In fact, that is what Jeff was doing.
>
> To call Jeff's guidelines "formulaic" only indicates that
> you do not understand the word. He's not pushing formula,
> he's pushing technique; it's not the same thing. Technique
> is having a systematic approach to the work so that you can
> accomplish a goal. A formula is a template into which you
> plug variables.
>
> While no responsible party would expouse starting a writing
> project with Theme, that is not the same as saying "NEVER"
> do this. All Jeff said was that it was a bad place to
> start. Because it is.
>
> And BTW, you are also completely wrong when you state that
> "rules hamper creativity". The fact is that rules enhance
> creativity. And that is a fact, not an opinion.
>
I doubt if anything involving creativity fits the exact definition
of "fact," but, based on my experience and observation, I absolutely
believe you're correct. Once in a while, someone might accidentally
break the "rules" and create a phenomenon, but the most esteemed,
long-term creative persons know the "rules" to break, then break them
ingeniously. My expertise is the English language, and I'm certain my
writing is better because I have assiduously learned its rules -- such
as they are -- in order to know when it's effective to break them.
Come to think of it, if it weren't important to know the "rules,"
there'd be no point in having "creativity" classes or teachers.
Christopher Jahn
>>And BTW, you are also completely wrong when you state that
>>"rules hamper creativity". The fact is that rules enhance
>>creativity. And that is a fact, not an opinion.
>>
>
>
>I doubt if anything involving creativity fits the exact
>definition of "fact," but, based on my experience and
>observation, I absolutely believe you're correct. Once in a
>while, someone might accidentally break the "rules" and
>create a phenomenon, but the most esteemed, long-term
>creative persons know the "rules" to break, then break them
>ingeniously. My expertise is the English language, and I'm
>certain my writing is better because I have assiduously
>learned its rules -- such as they are -- in order to know
>when it's effective to break them.
>
>Come to think of it, if it weren't important to know the
>"rules," there'd be no point in having "creativity" classes
>or teachers.
And that's a fact ;-)
--
:-) Christopher Jahn
:-(
http://home.comcast.net/~xjahn/Main.html
There is no time like the pleasant.
DgSWEET
I loved). I keep feeling that he writes plays ABOUT topics rather than people,
and I see him checking off the ideas he wants to cover as if they were on a
checklist. Occasionally a real character arises suggesting a talent for
something more -- the Thatcherite sister in SECRET RAPTURE, for instance -- but
I think he's largely frittered away his early promise with pomposity.
DgSWEET
>plays start with one as with the other, and as many bad plays neglect one as
the other.
And I would disagree with you. Lots of bad plays are produced with either
approach, but fewer good plays come out of the theme-first method. To start
with character doesn't mean to ignore theme, but to realize that one has chosen
to explore certain characters at least partly because they provide a gateway to
exploring things that are important to you. One is intrigued by a character
often because of the contradictions in his/her soul, and those contradictions
will almost inevitably lead you to larger meanings. But I promise you that
Tennessee Williams did not start off by saying, "I'm going to write a play in
which the old self-deluded South falls before the new post-war South," and then
come up with Blanche and Stanley. The fact that this play indeed may be viewed
as exploring this conflict doesn't mean that he started with this conflict.
>To announce that one MUST begin with character is to foreclose thought, and a
lack of thought is the worst thing we can recommend.
This is itself not a thoughtful statement. Why is thinking about character not
thought? Why is starting with character and exploring the world and politics
around that character not an intellectual pursuit?
>I would be less annoyed with what I am reading here if the sense was "Here is
what I do; maybe it will help you" rather than a blanket prescription of some
"rule" that impressionable new writers think they must follow.
Nobody must follow anybody's advice. However, it is not wise not to pay
attention to how successful works work.
>> Rules hamper creativity; ideas shape it.
This is one of those lovely statements that explode when you think of things
like the rules inherent in the sonnet form, use of iambic pentameter, and
principles of harmony and counterpoint, all of which have elements of
compulsion implicit. As any good improviser will tell you, rules create
freedom. Total freedom creates indecision and confusion.
Stephen Farrow
Yes, that's the problem with "The Secret Rapture". Marion is a much more interesting character than
Isobel, but it's essentially Isobel's play. "Murmuring Judges" and "The Absence of War" are also
somewhat marred by Big Pronouncements; as I said elsewhere, I enjoyed both in their original RNt
productions ("Murmuring Judges" had a fine performance from Alphonsia Emmanuel, "The Absence of War"
had brilliant work from the late John Thaw), but neither is a perfect play. Of his recent work, I
think "Skylight" is the most impressive - it's very political, but its politics are explored through
its characters.
"The Secret Rapture" probably works better if you're British and lived through the Thatcher era -
though I've said before that I think the best satire of Thatcherism written for the stage is Alan
Ayckbourn's "A Small Family Business" - and again, it's more about character than theme, and it
makes its point quietly. I would be interested to see Hare's "The Permanent Way", about the railway
crisis in Britain - I *do* think that theatre can be used to explore current political issues, and
Hare's approach here (he, the director and the actors followed a process not unlike the one that
resulted in "The Laramie Project"), and it's certainly an area that has a huge amount of potential
for drama (I haven't yet had a chance to read it).
--
Stephen
Acting isn't about behaving, it's about hiding. The audience wants to find you,
strip you naked, and eat you alive, so hide.
DgSWEET
>interesting character than
>Isobel, but it's essentially Isobel's play.
Isobel is so bloody passive. She's just virtuous. In FORUM, Hero sings, "I'm
lovely, lovely is the one thing I can do." Isobel could sing, "I'm so good,
being good's the one thing Hare allows."
>Of his recent work, I
>think "Skylight" is the most impressive - it's very political, but its
>politics are explored through
>its characters.
I thought there was more room for performance in that one, but I still feel
it's a set-up job. Two people yammer at each other and then have sex when they
run out of things to say. There really is no reason why these two people can't
get together except that Hare just doesn't want them to. Not organic.
I like a lot of Ayckbourn, but I remember being disappointed by SMALL FAMILY
BUSINESS. I enjoyed (more) THE REVENGER'S COMEDIES adapted for BBC Radio.
Speaking of BBC Radio, they ran Hare's THE PERMANENT WAY and it was worthy and
earnest and completely subordinated character to polemic.
I'm not against documentary theatre, but I've seen it done well only a handful
of times.
Jeff
Stephen Farrow
DgSWEET wrote:
>
> >Yes, that's the problem with "The Secret Rapture". Marion is a much more
> >interesting character than
> >Isobel, but it's essentially Isobel's play.
>
> Isobel is so bloody passive. She's just virtuous. In FORUM, Hero sings, "I'm
> lovely, lovely is the one thing I can do." Isobel could sing, "I'm so good,
> being good's the one thing Hare allows."
Exactly.
I'd have liked to see the recent London revival (it was playing while I was in London in January,
but I didn't have time), mostly for Belinda Lang's Marion. Lang is a much, much better actress than
you'd guess from her awful long-running sitcom; she has a quietly acid way with a line that I
imagine worked very well with that character (she was quite brilliant in Terry Johnson's "Dead
Funny", a play which I would think would not travel outside Britain very well).
>
> >Of his recent work, I
> >think "Skylight" is the most impressive - it's very political, but its
> >politics are explored through
> >its characters.
>
> I thought there was more room for performance in that one, but I still feel
> it's a set-up job. Two people yammer at each other and then have sex when they
> run out of things to say. There really is no reason why these two people can't
> get together except that Hare just doesn't want them to. Not organic.
Yes - up to a point; it makes a little more sense, maybe, if you're British. They come from very
different places, socially and economically, and those boundaries can seem much more insurmountable
in Britain than they are in North America (particularly to someone in Kyra's position).
> I like a lot of Ayckbourn, but I remember being disappointed by SMALL FAMILY
> BUSINESS. I enjoyed (more) THE REVENGER'S COMEDIES adapted for BBC Radio.
On stage, "The Revenger's Comedies" was (very) lesser Ayckbourn; it was over-long, stretching over
two evenings, and it couldn't sustain its length. It had nice performances from Griff Rhys Jones and
Joanna Lumley, and a spectacular performance from Lia Williams, but that's about it.
"A Small Family Business" is a much cleverer, much funnier play - certainly one of Ayckbourn's best
- that, again, I suspect doesn't travel especially well outside Britain. It uses its examination of
the family to make some very sharp points about Thatcherite economics (it's actually cleverer on
that subject than anything Hare has written), but I suspect that you have to have lived through that
era *in Britain* to fully see what he's doing. Britain was undergoing enormous changes at the time
the play was written - some of them necessary, some of them not for the better - and "A Small Family
Business" is a *very* accurate reflection of that time (to the extent that if I were to direct it
now I'd set it in its period - 1987, I believe - rather than in the present day).
> Speaking of BBC Radio, they ran Hare's THE PERMANENT WAY and it was worthy and
> earnest and completely subordinated character to polemic.
That's disappointing. Hare's an interesting writer, and it's a subject that could easily be the
source of a compelling piece of theatre.
>
> I'm not against documentary theatre, but I've seen it done well only a handful
> of times.
Agreed.
--
Stephen
What's the fun of becoming an immortal demon if you're not regular, am I right?
Steve Newport
From: dgs...@aol.com (DgSWEET)
(which I loved).
I suffered through it (not the actors' fault) on Broadway-- and thought
the movie was slightly better. I enjoyed RACING DEMON much more.
Steve Newport
sfa...@chass.utoronto.ca (Stephen Farrow) Of his (David Hare's)
recent work, I think "Skylight" is the most impressive - it's very
the best satire of Thatcherism written for the stage is Alan Ayckbourn's
"A Small Family Business" - and again, it's more about character than
theme, and it makes its point quietly.
Agree on both. I was hoping they'd become films. But then, I'm still
waiting for a film of THE REAL THING.
DgSWEET
>the movie was slightly better. I enjoyed RACING DEMON much more.
Liked it very much both times I saw it onstage (partially due to the remarkable
Kate Nelligan). Even though the text was substantially the same, I thought the
movie was a botch.
RACING DEMON -- I remember one very good scene, and the rest was very
predictable to me. This was the most checklist of his plays for me -- each
topic taken care of with a neat little scene. He strikes me as a writer who
writes by outline.
DgSWEET
>waiting for a film of THE REAL THING.
I seem to be the grump at this party. I saw both Broadway productions of REAL
THING, admired the acting in both, and didn't give a damn about the characters
in either. They were all relentlessly selfish people, and I didn't think they
were capable of showing me a damn thing about the nature of love. My favorite
Stoppard was a TV play from many moons ago called PERSONAL FOUL -- some real
human feeling along with the usual cleverness. Stoppard's a wirter I've always
wanted to like more because I admire so much about him as a human being. of
the British writers, I favor Pinter, Alan Bennett and Caryl Churchill. I don't
love all of their stuff, but these are the folks who surprise me most
consistently and the ones I feel I've learned something from. Also much of
Ayckbourn -- particularly SEASON'S GREETINGS and NORMAN CONQUESTS. Was
disappointed in Ayckbourn's book on playwriting, though.
Steve Newport
From: dgs...@aol.com (DgSWEET)
both, and didn't give a damn about the characters in either. They were
all relentlessly selfish people, and I didn't think they were capable of
showing me a damn thing about the nature of love.
SN: I liked the Irons production and think the selfishness is an
interesting part of the portrait. I never bought the whole nature of
true love thing about this play. And the second production failed IMO
because it tried too hard to spin that.
----------------------------------
Stoppard's a writer I've always wanted to like more. NORMAN CONQUESTS..
-----------------------------------
SN: Hated it on Broadway. Loved it on TV.
DgSWEET
Didn't see it on Broadway. My familiarity is from the excellent TV version.
Think the first two plays are a good deal stronger than the third (GARDEN), but
would have been happy to have had any of it on my resume ...
Steve Newport
From: dgs...@aol.com (DgSWEET)
THE NORMAN CONQUESTS: Didn't see it on Broadway. My familiarity is from
the excellent TV version.
--------------------------------
The American-ness of the B'way cast really hurt.
Steve Newport
From: dgs...@aol.com (DgSWEET)
predictable to me. This was the most checklist of his plays for me --
each topic taken care of with a neat little scene. He strikes me as a
writer who writes by outline.
OTOH, I see/read plays that I feel are nothing but a collection of
scenes with no connecting purpose. Characters often are not enough. I
especially hate those character driven-plays that get by mostly by
withholding information from the audience.
Eagle
> > "I'm going to write a play about racism in real estate." Dreadful way to
> start. All of the characters immediately are created in relationship to THE
> ISSUE instead of being characters with dimension.
>
> >>>Why does one preclude the other?
>
> It mostly really does. Starting from theme tends to start with the intended
> MEANING of the piece, and so the characters end up debating different sides of
> the issue and become mouthpieces for an intellectual game rather than having
> individual souls.
Since a theme can be about anything -- an historical period, an
emotion, or a narrow "issue," I don't see, in a play whose author has
chosen a wider theme such as "the intoxication of first love," how the
problem you state would really manifest itself. Why would a theme
like that likely lead to characters becoming mouthpieces for an
intellectual game? Yes, you could wind up with characters sitting
around a cafe just talking about it -- but that's just bad writing --
it's not because one chose a theme. If one chooses a NARROW theme
like racism in real estate, I can see how a narrow theme COULD lead to
narrow or shallow characterizations. But the error is in choosing too
NARROW of a theme, not that SOME theme is chosen. What's wrong with
starting with a theme like "racism in real estate" and then, as one
continues in the creative process, expanding it to encompass a broader
theme of how easy it is for people to misunderstand one another and
talk past each other? If a character that you're conscious of can
evolve during the creative process, adding more and more "dimension,"
why can't a theme you're conscious of evolve as well?
> >> It doesn't matter where an artist starts in the process, so long as
> ultimately, the work is integrated.
>
> If you made a survey of how the great works whose origins we know came to be, I
> promise you very few of them started with theme.
I don't have my copy of the book PLAYWRIGHTS ON PLAYWRITING available
to me at present, but I'm curious to look at it again in light of your
comment. I'm not sure a truly reliable survey could ever be made,
since, though we have a book like PLAYWRIGHTS ON PLAYWRIGHTING, and
you've spoken personally to some playwrights, I don't know that there
are that many sources where writers of the "great works" have
explicitly let us in on their creative process.
> In the end, you hope and expect that your obsession with characters in a
> situation relates to some theme your unconscious wishes to articulate. The
> problem with starting with theme is that theme is abstract. One abstracts
> something FROM something else. One doesn't start with an abstraction, by
> definition.
No? How does one build a building? Does a builder first gather
materials and tools and workmen and then "hope and expect" that it
will take some kind of form, or does he hire an architect to first
create an "abstraction" called a design? An abstract idea DOES come
from something -- it comes from life observations.
> Dimension? Characters with quirks and contradictions -- characters who don't
> stand for just one thing but often are fighting psychic civil wars.
By consciously keeping theme out of one's consciousness until sometime
later on in the creative process, and only concentrating on character
and plot, then it will encourage the creation of works whose common
basic theme is the psychic civil wars of human beings. That's
perfectly fine and valid, but it narrows the possibilities for what a
work of art can be about.
> > Why isn't it equally as dreadful to start with characters pursuing actions
> and revealing "dimensions" unrelated to a unifying theme?
>
> Because one's obsession with a character almost always leads to that unifying
> theme.
If only that were true. There are countless plays and films that
explore character, but in the end the audience doesn't know what to
make of it all.
>
> >What's really dreadful is a lack of integration, not where you start in the
> process of creating a unifying work of art. I don't see why it matters where
> one starts, so long as the end result is a unified
> whole.
>
> According to this logic, one could start writing a symphony without knowing key
> signatures, harmonics, scales, etc.
Weak analogy. I didn't say one should start writing without having an
understanding of the function of plot, characterization, language,
etc. Of course one does. To my knowledge, a composer (a classical
one at least) usually starts with a theme, and then, by means of
variations on the theme, develops the whole work from it. Doesn't
mean they didn't need to know about key signatures, harmonics, scales,
etc. I doubt Beethoven or Mozart just experimented with random sounds
they found interesting and then went back over their ramblings to see
if they could find a discernable theme in it. It also seems to me
that as an individual playwright, one can get away with being more
vague about a theme from the start, but in a musical collaboration, if
the bookwriter and composer and lyricist aren't all on the same page
thematically, then it seems like one is just asking for trouble.
> > Why can't the process be an ongoing interaction between thinking about plot
> and character and theme?
>
> You may discover your theme pretty early in the process after beginning to
> explore a character in a situation, but it still tends to be AFTER. Start with
> an abstraction like, "Commercial real estate practices destroy a neighborhood,"
> how would you proceed to develop this idea? Probably by going to the obvious
> -- presenting a developer (villain) and local villagers (virtuous, except for
> the one greedy trator among them).
But if one is a good writer, one knows NOT to go for the obvious,
regardless of how one starts. One looks for opposites (just as a good
actor doesn't MERELY play the literal text -- it may be truthful, but
it's boring). Michael Shurtleff's AUDITION book, with his emphasis on
finding opposites, taught me a lot about both acting and writing.
> >What sets
> >the standard for what is logical for a character? If you were to
> >write a character who in the first scene is nasty, in the next scene
> >warm and affectionate, and in the third, stoic -- and if you then try
> >to find out what the story "must be," then SOME overriding idea must
> >be needed to connect the character's moods in order to create a
> >coherent character and a logical story, or the audience will just
> >become confused. If you're making choices about what a story "must
> >be" but can't or won't identify WHY it "must" until sometime later in
> >the proces (when, after the creation, you consciously identify a
> >theme), then it seems you're just creating blindly and hoping that
> >your subconscious -- all on its own without any prompting from your
> >conscious mind -- will make it all congeal.
>
> I wonder if you've studied much acting.
Condescension is so often lurking in your posts. What makes you
question the extent of my acting training? If you want to know, in
addition to a teenage stint at Berghoff Studios, and my undergraduate
BA in theatre, I have an MFA in acting from Rutgers, where I was a
scholarship student -- a fabulous program by the way.
> > I know in acting that sometimes a gesture can evoke an emotion, and that an
> emotion can evoke a gesture. I wouldn't make it a rule that it's best to work
> first on the physical as opposed to the emotional or vice versa.
>
> In working on a pre-existent part, I would certainly look for emotion first,
> otherwise you run the risk of indicating. The del Sarte school of acting was
> all gesture, and it produced results we would laugh at today.
Who said anything about "all gesture?" If you think Bill Esper at
Rutgers didn't make us supremely aware about the danger of indicating,
then you don't know the Rutgers program, and you don't know how we
were taught the importance of physicality and how it relates to
communicating our emotional life in acting.
> >Second, a theme is the unifying idea of a work -- it's most akin to the
> skeletal structure of a building -- it's neither the top of the building nor
> the basement, but encompassing the whole and holding it
> all together.
>
> That's your analogy. I don't think theme is structural. I think the structure
> serves the theme -- supports the theme.
>
But what then, is the function of the theme? I'll amend my analogy.
Maybe the theme is most akin to the blueprint for the building. What
function does a blueprint serve?
> > So whether starting from the top down or the bottom up, your analogy just
> doesn't seem to correlate very well with the actual
> function of a theme.
>
> By your lights. Well, keep writing plays the way you want, and I'll keep
> writing plays according to my lights. Ultimately the judges will be the people
> who choose to put up the plays and the audiences who choose to see them. My
> stuff is getting done a lot these days. How you doing?
Unnecessarily condescending of you. But if you insist on playing that
game, I can play too. May I remind you that starting with theme is
the way Ayn Rand often started, and she was so "un-smart" that despite
all the obstacles, despite all the so-called experts who said her work
would never sell -- it did sell, and sold like mad, and her books are
still bestsellers many years after her death, inspiring countless
readers. Do you think your work is ever going to have the impact on
people's lives the way hers has and continues to be (whether or not
you agree with her ideas)? ATLAS SHRUGGED was ranked only second to
the Bible in a Book of the Month Club/Library of Congress survey in
the early 90s, as the work that had the most impact on people's lives.
Meanwhile, you have productions of your plays, like your recent one,
that threaten to close because you can't fill the house. Is anyone
going to be talking about your work decades after you're dead?
From THE LETTERS OF AYN RAND:
"I did not write The Fountainhead to sell individualism or
architecture. It is a dreadful fallacy to think that fiction can be
written to sell anything. If that were my purpose, I would have
written a nonfiction treatise on individualism, and another one on
architecture. It is true that fiction is a much more powerful weapon
to sell ideas than nonfiction. But why? Precisely because it is not
a sales weapon. It tells a story -- the story has the reality of
life and so abstract ideas acquire reality. Abstract ideas are a
part of real life - and so we can grasp them better, more closely,
when we meet them in the living background of fiction. But abstract
ideas are proper in fiction only when they are subordinated to the
story. Not when the story is artificially devised to expound some
thesis. That is why propaganda writers fail. That is why propaganda
stories are always so false and dull. That is why I am the only
writer of ideas in fiction that I know of at the present time. I
mean, the only one who does it properly and gets away with it.
Forgive me for this little boast -- I think I've earned it.
I cannot help thinking that just before The Fountainhead came out,
there were two long, big novels published on themes selling Communism.
They both got glowing, raving reviews. They both had a tremendous
publicity campaign and a nationwide, organized, enthusiastic support
of a beautifully trained pink click that controls our press and has
succeeded in putting over many pieces of Red junk in the nonfiction
field. And they both flopped miserably. No amount of pushing could
sell them to the public -- and what expert pushing! And this, when
our whole intellectual atmosphere is collectivistic and right in line
with what those authors were preaching. Well, The Fountainhead came
out with as vicious a campaign of opposition against it as any book
ever had. You may not know the details -- take my word for it. The
Fountainhead came out against every odd possible. Well look at it.
Ask some bookseller. It is the only novel of an intellectual
character that has been a bestseller for many, many years. The only
novel with an abstract or "propaganda" idea in the serious sense. So
I think I know how to sell ideas in fiction."
DgSWEET
>scenes with no connecting purpose. Characters often are not enough. I
>especially hate those character driven-plays that get by mostly by
>withholding information from the audience.
Hey, I agree with you. I think characters without story makes for artsy
tedium. It's the kind of thing that makes a lot of the NEW YORKER fiction a
trial to read -- all this craft and effort leading up to an epiphany the size
of the head of a tack. not enough. But it's not either-or. You can have
rich, surprising characters inhabiting strong, coherent story-telling. But you
have to work harder.
DgSWEET
>chosen a wider theme such as "the intoxication of first love," how the
>problem you state would really manifest itself.
I don't know any playwright who would start off with that as a theme. A
playwright might remember the intoxication of his/her first love, but right
there the playwright is thinking of the character of that first lover or
situations he/she got into during the first intoxication so the situation is
not approached as an abstraction but out of the concreteness of experience.
>What's wrong with
>starting with a theme like "racism in real estate" and then, as one
>continues in the creative process, expanding it to encompass a broader
>theme of how easy it is for people to misunderstand one another and
>talk past each other?
Because, as I've said before, theme is abstracted FROM a work. You don't start
from an abstraction and build to the concrete.
>If a character that you're conscious of can
>evolve during the creative process, adding more and more "dimension,"
>why can't a theme you're conscious of evolve as well?
I will repeat -- a theme is an abstraction. An abstraction is not a very
fertile place to start.
>I don't know that there
>are that many sources where writers of the "great works" have
>explicitly let us in on their creative process.
Well, I've talked to an awful lot of my contemporaries -- both as an
interviewer and as a colleague. Mostly writers talk about real estate and
agents and warn each other about bad directors, but we sometimes do talk about
craft, and I've NEVER heard any of them advocate starting from theme first.
Not Albee, not Lanford Wilson, not Donald Margulies, not Mamet, not Gurney.
Really, I've never heard any of them say, "I wanted to write about how easily
democracy may be corrupted."
>or does he hire an architect to first
>create an "abstraction" called a design?
The abstraction of the design is simply rendering into concrete terms something
the architect has first imagined as an image. It is a tool for building,
filled with precise measurements and annotations.
>By consciously keeping theme out of one's consciousness until sometime
>later on in the creative process, and only concentrating on character
>and plot, then it will encourage the creation of works whose common
>basic theme is the psychic civil wars of human beings. That's
>perfectly fine and valid, but it narrows the possibilities for what a
>work of art can be about.
It's swell when you mis-restate what I say and then challenge your own
mis-statement. I didn't say that you consciously keep theme out of your
consciousness until sometime later on in the creative process. Theme may very
well occur to you a MINUTE after you've found characters or a situation that
intrigues you. I didn't say how LONG into the process theme may occur to you
in working on something promising, just that I don't find it useful to START
with theme. I'm talking about the order, the progression of development, not a
timetable.
A friend told me a story about a high school reunion he went to. He ended up
running into the bully who used to beat him. The bully made a big show of
apologizing and bought my friend drinks. (Let's call the bully Ted and my
friend Oliver.) Oliver got bombed with this guy, passed out and, when he woke
up, found himself in bed with a naked woman with Ted hovering over him with a
camera taking pictures. Oliver asked him what was on his mind. Ted told him
he would send the photos to Oliver's wife unless Oliver wrote a check and it
cleared. Oliver laughed and told him to send the pictures; his wife had dumped
him a few weeks before which was really the only reason he came to the reunion,
to get out of town and try to figure out how he got where he was from where he
started. Ted beat the crap out of him for old times' sake ...
The play I wrote based on this story is called FLYOVERS. The critics correctly
realized that the theme was about the division between the red and the blue
states. How? Well, that's what I found out as I was figuring out what was
making these guys act the way they did. It ended up being a very political
play. But it started with my being intrigued by a nasty true story.
So the piece didn't remain about psychic civil wars at all -- it became a piece
which mirrors much of the contemporary social landscape. (And yes, the play
was a hit. William Petersen played Ted and the show won the Jefferson Award
for script.)
>> Because one's obsession with a character almost always leads to that
unifying theme.
>
>If only that were true. There are countless plays and films that
>explore character, but in the end the audience doesn't know what to
>make of it all.
All right, I'll grant you that any number of people with insufficient talent
can run promising characters into the ground. No method will protect a good
idea from being ruined by the insufficiently talented. And even talented
people can screw up good ideas.
>To my knowledge, a composer (a classical
>one at least) usually starts with a theme, and then, by means of
>variations on the theme, develops the whole work from it.
A theme in composition is not the same as a theme in a play. A theme in a
composition is a concrete unit of music, the opposite of an abstraction.
>I doubt Beethoven or Mozart just experimented with random sounds
>they found interesting and then went back over their ramblings to see
>if they could find a discernable theme in it.
Your doubts are misplaced. No, they didn't do COMPLETELY random noodling, but
then I'm not advocating random noodling in playwriting either. I'm advocating
the equivalence of improvisation, and Mozart certainly was famous as an
improviser. You are using analogies that I don't believe serve your case. My
opinion.
>It also seems to me
>that as an individual playwright, one can get away with being more
>vague about a theme from the start, but in a musical collaboration, if
>the bookwriter and composer and lyricist aren't all on the same page
>thematically, then it seems like one is just asking for trouble.
Agreed. But, for instance, take GYPSY. They didn't start with the theme
there. They started with Laurents's fascination with the outsized character of
Rose and her delusions and drive. Then they found the themes that her
character led them to.
The closest thing to a theme-based show I know is WEST SIDE STORY. They didn't
start with characters. They decided to trasnfer ROMEO AND JULIET to a
contenmporary setting. And the result is that the two lead characters are
bland, generic lead characters with as much dimension as Ken and Barbie. As
Sondheim has said, WSS isn't so much a show about the characters as it is a
show about a new way of putting together a show. And STILL they started with
story, although you can sense that Bernstein was interested in doing a show
about the need for BROTHERHOOD.
Bernstein started with theme with his MASS, which is one of the reasons why it
is such a delicious mess. Some wonderful stuff in it, but it's bloodless from
a dramatic point of view, all high sentiments and posing ... set to some
gorgeous music.
>Condescension is so often lurking in your posts. What makes you
>question the extent of my acting training? If you want to know, in
>addition to a teenage stint at Berghoff Studios, and my undergraduate
>BA in theatre, I have an MFA in acting from Rutgers, where I was a
>scholarship student -- a fabulous program by the way.
I've taught at both HB and Rutgers, thank you.
I say what I say because actors don't usually work from theme -- that is they
don't start with "this is how I want the audience to interpret my character."
That way is an invitation to indicating. Most actors I know try to go for what
is concrete -- what does the character want, what are the character's physical
attributes, what are the character's social circumstances, etc. They don't
want to distract themselves with how the audience will intepret what they do,
or how the characters will be received. They want to play the characters
truthfully and leave the meaning to the director and the audience.
>Who said anything about "all gesture?" If you think Bill Esper at
>Rutgers didn't make us supremely aware about the danger of indicating,
>then you don't know the Rutgers program, and you don't know how we
>were taught the importance of physicality and how it relates to
>communicating our emotional life in acting.
As I say, I've taught in the Rutgers program. The physicality arises OUT of
the understanding of the character, yes? One doesn't start with a gesture and
then twist the character to justify the gesture. (Unless, of course, you're
playing a theatre game. But that's a different kind of work entirely.)
>But what then, is the function of the theme? I'll amend my analogy.
>Maybe the theme is most akin to the blueprint for the building. What
>function does a blueprint serve?
And I don't think that's the appropriate analogy. A blueprint is not a
statement of what a building MEANS. A blueprint is a concrete method for
addressing the problems of constructing a thing of specific dimensions and
attributes. What a building means is not in the measurements and dimensions.
>My
>> stuff is getting done a lot these days. How you doing?
>
>Unnecessarily condescending of you
One way of supporting a theory of composition is to see how well it works for
those subscribing to that theory. I can honestly report that my approach seems
to be resulting in constant production, and many people who claim to subscribe
to my ideas have done pretty well, too. I'm not familiar with your plays, but
I may not have been in the same cities where your stuff has been done, so I
claim to have no opinion about their quality.
>May I remind you that starting with theme is
>the way Ayn Rand often started, and she was so "un-smart" that despite
>all the obstacles, despite all the so-called experts who said her work
>would never sell -- it did sell, and sold like mad, and her books are
>still bestsellers many years after her death, inspiring countless
>readers.
You are never going to win me with the Ayn Rand argument. Her plays have not
established themselves as part of the ongoing world repertoire.
>Meanwhile, you have productions of your plays, like your recent one,
>that threaten to close because you can't fill the house.
Uh no, actually my most recent one -- THE ACTION AGAINST SOL SCHUMANN -- got a
rave from the TIMES and we filled every bloody seat, having to pull out
additional folding chairs for most of the performances. The TIMES called it "a
great emotional and intellectual journey." We closed because we were being
produced under a showcase code and Equity limited the number of performances.
This was the fourth production of that play, by the way, and the reviews all
along the way have been strong and it won the American Theatre Critics
Association prize for playwriting, coming in second after a Horton Foote play.
If you want to take shots at me, you should get your facts right.
>Is anyone
>going to be talking about your work decades after you're dead?
Hard to say, but plays I wrote decades ago are still alive. PORCH was written
thirty years ago and it keeps getting done. THE VALUE OF NAMES was written 25
years ago and Jack Klugman and Louis Zorich are taking it on tour next spring.
Sorry if my being alive messes things up.
Much of my stuff (not all) has seemed to last. My book on Second City has been
in print since its first publication in 1978, and my other two books are in
multiple printings. Yes, I can point to plays that haven't been done in a
while, but that's true of almost every writer you can name, except Chekhov.
>From THE LETTERS OF AYN RAND:
>It is true that fiction is a much more powerful weapon
>to sell ideas than nonfiction. But why? Precisely because it is not
>a sales weapon. It tells a story -- the story has the reality of
>life and so abstract ideas acquire reality. Abstract ideas are a
>part of real life - and so we can grasp them better, more closely,
>when we meet them in the living background of fiction. But abstract
>ideas are proper in fiction only when they are subordinated to the
>story. Not when the story is artificially devised to expound some
>thesis. That is why propaganda writers fail. That is why propaganda
>stories are always so false and dull. That is why I am the only
>writer of ideas in fiction that I know of at the present time. I
>mean, the only one who does it properly and gets away with it.
>Forgive me for this little boast -- I think I've earned it.
I almost agree with most of this, but then she's saying what I'm saying -- the
story comes first. Now, given what she was interested in, the story that would
come to her would obviously be consistent with her world view. But that is not
the same as starting with a theme. Not at all. To say that anything you write
is inevitably going to be an expression of how you see the world isn't the same
as saying that one says, "OK, I believe this -- how do I give it dramatic
expression?" They are two different things ...
I do disagree with her claim that, "I am the only writer of ideas in fiction
that I know of at the present time." Orwell was a contemporary, and 1984 and
ANIMAL FARM are still read. Certainly Steinbeck had larger ideas in mind
writing GRAPES OF WRATH, and THE GREAT GATSBY is not just a story about a
gangster pretending to be something he isn't.
You must stop answering your own distortions of my argument. I don't claim
that theme isn't part of the creative process. I simply suggest that stuff
mostly (and most effectively) begins with something concrete -- an attraction
to a character or a situation and that you discover the thematic pull of
character and/or situation as explore this material. I think that what often
happens is that you discover why you're attracted to this material as you begin
to explore it.
Tim Gowen
> I would be interested to see Hare's "The Permanent Way", about the
> railway crisis in Britain - I *do* think that theatre can be used to
> explore current political issues, and Hare's approach here (he, the
> director and the actors followed a process not unlike the one that
> resulted in "The Laramie Project"), and it's certainly an area that has a
> huge amount of potential for drama (I haven't yet had a chance to read
> it).
It was amazing. I've never seen an audience so fired up with the satire
and then pushed into the personal tragedy. And although satire
sometimes seems too easy - with people getting informed by the satire
itself rather than laughing at the obsurdity of what's actually going on
- it was great to see it done on stage and not on TV.
If you want the Faber script, the ISBN is 0-571-22094-0. It's worth
reading.
Tim
--
Tim Gowen
Eagle
> I don't know any playwright who would start off with that as a theme. A
> playwright might remember the intoxication of his/her first love, but right
> there the playwright is thinking of the character of that first lover or
> situations he/she got into during the first intoxication so the situation is
> not approached as an abstraction but out of the concreteness of experience.
* * *
> Because, as I've said before, theme is abstracted FROM a work. You don't start
> from an abstraction and build to the concrete.
>
* * * *
> I will repeat -- a theme is an abstraction. An abstraction is not a very
> fertile place to start.
* * *
> Well, I've talked to an awful lot of my contemporaries -- both as an
> interviewer and as a colleague. Mostly writers talk about real estate and
> agents and warn each other about bad directors, but we sometimes do talk about
> craft, and I've NEVER heard any of them advocate starting from theme first.
> Not Albee, not Lanford Wilson, not Donald Margulies, not Mamet, not Gurney.
> Really, I've never heard any of them say, "I wanted to write about how easily democracy may be corrupted."
* * *
> It's swell when you mis-restate what I say and then challenge your own
> mis-statement. I didn't say that you consciously keep theme out of your
> consciousness until sometime later on in the creative process. Theme may very
> well occur to you a MINUTE after you've found characters or a situation that
> intrigues you. I didn't say how LONG into the process theme may occur to you
> in working on something promising, just that I don't find it useful to START
> with theme. I'm talking about the order, the progression of development, not a
> timetable.
I still don't think you're being very clear as to why STARTING with
theme is "dreadful." You've merely described the way you and others
like to work, and then claim that starting with theme leads to bad
writing. Why? Because abstractions come out of "the concreteness of
experience?" Yes they do. And...? You still haven't explained why
themes (i.e., abstractions) need to come out of -- not the
"concreteness of experience" -- but the concreteness of the CHARACTERS
you're exploring. (If I am mis-restating what you are saying, I
apologize, but I don't think you're being very clear and I'm just
trying to understand what exactly you're getting at). Aren't
characters really little mini-abstractions in themselves? There is no
such concrete "thing" as a character in reality, even when an actor
performs the part. There are concrete words and actions assigned to
"characters," and actors perform them, but a "character" is not an
actual human being. A character REPRESENTS a human being (unless the
character is an animal, I suppose). It seems to me to be the wedding
of character and abstract idea that, for someone with a serious
interest in big ideas like Ayn Rand, is the spark of creativity. It's
not either/or. Maybe starting with theme is just very ambitious and
difficult (and the higher they aim the harder they fall). I think one
shouldn't rule out aiming high just because it may be very difficult.
Sometimes the most rewarding things in life are the ones that take the
most effort and carry the most risk.
Like her or not, Rand's work has influenced many people to a degree
rarely achieved by other writers, and it partly had to do with her
aiming "high." Many books have been written about her, pro and con,
many claim her work has changed their lives profoundly, a number of
organizations have sprung up over the years to discuss and debate her
work, and of course her books were and still are bestsellers. Rand
picked huge themes, part of why her work has such resonance and
staying power, and I doubt that exploring character first would have
led her to those kinds of themes. The way I got into Ayn Rand in the
first place was because I was discussing my admiration for Thornton
Wilder with a good friend of mine many years ago, and I made a comment
that I always particularly liked works, such as THE SKIN OF OUR TEETH,
that had some philosophical message. He asked, "Have you ever read
Ayn Rand?" (For all intents and purposes, I hadn't.) I'm not sure
how Wilder developed his play (outside of the inspiration from
FINNEGAN'S WAKE), but it seems unlikely that he started just by
exploring the character of Mr. Antrobus and figuring out why he acts
as he does -- possible, but unlikely in my opinion.
> The play I wrote based on this story is called FLYOVERS. The critics correctly
> realized that the theme was about the division between the red and the blue
> states. How? Well, that's what I found out as I was figuring out what was
> making these guys act the way they did. It ended up being a very political
> play. But it started with my being intrigued by a nasty true story.
But I bet you had some thoughts about the division between the red and
the blue states sometime before you heard the story or started working
on the play, no? Why can't themes suggest characters the way
characters suggest themes (other than that's not the way you and
others you know like to work)? How did you go about "figuring out
what was making these guys act the way they did" -- how do you proceed
to make choices -- based on what considerations -- what guidelines --
what standard of selection do you use -- if you aren't conscious of
your theme?
I don't think theme alone or character alone will lead to inspiration
one more than the other. You might carry around memories of an
intoxicating first love, for instance, but without a compelling point
of view about it, other than it happened to YOU, what is going to
inspire a play? If one day a writer says, "Gee, I feel moved to write
about the intoxication of first love" (for reasons not consciously
identified -- or because he or she was hired to write on the subject)
and the memories flood back, and the memories are used to write the
play, why would that be a "dreadful" way of working? Would such a
situation really be thinking about character FIRST? The memories have
been there all the time, but it took an abstract thematic idea to
inspire the writing and bring the memories into play. At what point
could you say the clock starts ticking in the process? Are you really
quibbling about the order of thoughts that might occur during a MINUTE
of time -- as you say -- when the typical writing process normally
spans days, weeks, months or years? If a character and theme occur to
you within a minute of each other, isn't that really saying that they
pretty much came to you together, not one after the other?
> I'm advocating
> the equivalence of improvisation, and Mozart certainly was famous as an
> improviser.
I agree that writing is a kind of improvisation. Having taught at
Rutgers yourself, you must know how we were schooled in improvisation
as actors. Before Rutgers, I used to hate improvisation. I'm not
good at thinking on my feet, and the usual kind of improvisation I had
experienced up till then was always an impromptu on-your-feet
story-telling competition, and had little to do with training one's
acting instrument and sensitivity to stimuli. I was never very good
at it. What was different at Rutgers was that it was a very
STRUCTURED improvisation, not based on story-telling, but on
truthfully responding (by "getting out of one's head") to the stimuli
one got from one's acting partner. However, an awful lot of THOUGHT
had to go into properly preparing for the improvisation beforehand --
coming up with imaginary circumstances that REALLY meant something to
you -- though that preparation had to be left "at the door" when
improvising (as Esper said one day, "Trying to get through your scene
on your preparation alone is like tying a Waring blender to your ass
and trying to cross the English Channel").
> As I say, I've taught in the Rutgers program. The physicality arises OUT of
> the understanding of the character, yes? One doesn't start with a gesture and
> then twist the character to justify the gesture.
Agreed, generally. But if one is trying to play a proud and corseted
16th Century queen, while assuming the casual 21st Century slump of a
grocery clerk, one is twisting the character to accommodate one's
contemporary physicality, and it's going to come off as untruthful,
regardless of how well one thinks they understand the inner emotional
life of the character. The physicality is PART of the full
understanding of the character, and the character's emotional life is,
to a degree, determined by the physicality demanded by the part.
> You are never going to win me with the Ayn Rand argument. Her plays have not
> established themselves as part of the ongoing world repertoire.
No, but the basic principles of drama still pertain to novels, and she
was very successful as a novelist (in addition to being a playwright
and screenwriter).
> >Meanwhile, you have productions of your plays, like your recent one,
> >that threaten to close because you can't fill the house.
>
> Uh no, actually my most recent one -- THE ACTION AGAINST SOL SCHUMANN -- got a
> rave from the TIMES and we filled every bloody seat, having to pull out
> additional folding chairs for most of the performances.
I stand corrected. I checked the comment you had made a few weeks ago
and I did misinterpret. I had remembered you saying that you were
hoping for someone with cash to appear soon or the show would have to
close in a few days. Didn't realize it was a showcase. But why the
digs to me first about wondering how much acting I must have studied,
and how many plays I'm getting produced? I don't know your work,
except for a production of PORCH I saw a long time ago, which I
vaguely remember liking, and I have enjoyed your columns in BACK
STAGE. Your observation that scenes are often about negotiating is
useful, and though I haven't gotten around to it yet, I am interested
in reading THE DRAMATIST'S TOOLKIT. I think you have some very
valuable ideas to offer, but in regard to your ideas about the
function of theme in the writing process, I think you could be a lot
clearer (at least by what you have written in these posts -- maybe you
say it better in a book).
DgSWEET
>theme is "dreadful." You've merely described the way you and others
>like to work, and then claim that starting with theme leads to bad
>writing. Why? Because abstractions come out of "the concreteness of
>experience?" Yes they do. And...? You still haven't explained why
>themes (i.e., abstractions) need to come out of -- not the
>"concreteness of experience" -- but the concreteness of the CHARACTERS
>you're exploring. (If I am mis-restating what you are saying, I
>apologize, but I don't think you're being very clear and I'm just
>trying to understand what exactly you're getting at).
To start with a theme means you're starting with what you intend the work to
MEAN. That means you will then try to come up with characters and incidents to
support a meaning. In my experience -- and this includes doing a hell of a lot
of teaching over the years -- the resulting works tend to be either didactic
("I'm going to prove my theme") or bloodless ("This argument needs to be
articulated; what character would best give my speech in support of a national
health plan?"). I think that meaning is best extrapolated from a work than
used as its basis. Trust that this desire to explore these characters or this
situation comes out of your dramatic instinct for seizing on something that
will have larger reverberations. If you're a thoughtful person, your
thoughtfulness cannot be help find its way into the work as you explore
character and situation. You can't change your own nature, after all.
>Aren't characters really little mini-abstractions in themselves?
Not to my mind. The brother of a friend of mine in the middle of a messy
divorce flipped out and robbed the local branch of his bank with a starter
pistol. That guy is not an abstraction. He's a real person who slipped out of
the normal, rational life he otherwise lived to do something silly and sad.
But I get "silly and sad" out of the story of what he did. I don't start by
saying, "Gee, I want to make up something silly and sad."
>There is no such concrete "thing" as a character in reality, even when an
actor performs the part.
Still, there are specific characteristics that any persona playing a given part
must embrace or else be untrue to the part. What I keep saying is essentially:
start with specifics and let them lead you to the generalities. Don't start
with generalities in the hope of finding intriguing specifics -- this is
choosing to do something the absolute hardest way possible.
>It seems to me to be the wedding of character and abstract idea that, for
someone with a serious interest in big ideas like Ayn Rand, is the spark of
creativity.
I know you have high respect for Ayn Rand as a creative artist, but she is not
the exemplar of dramatist to me. If you supported your case with references to
Williams, Sondheim, O'Neill, Wilson (Lanford or August), Chekhov or
Shakespeare, we might have a real discussion.
>Maybe starting with theme is just very ambitious and
>difficult (and the higher they aim the harder they fall).
It is indeed very hard and very ambitious, but just because something is hard
and ambitious doesn't mean it is wise. I might want to build a boat in the
middle of an ocean. This would be borth hard and ambitious. But wisdom and
practice suggests that it would make more sense for me to build the boat on
land and then launch it into the ocean.
>I think one
>shouldn't rule out aiming high just because it may be very difficult.
I don't. Anyone attempting to write something of substance is aiming high, and
I honor even those who fail in the attempt. But ambition and wisdom, as I say,
do not always keep company. And believe me, it's hard enough to start with
characters or a situation. Themes will arise organically. Shakespeare knew it
would be good box office to write plays about Richard
II-HenryIV-HenryV-HenryVI-RIchard III. He had the characters at hand, courtesy
of history. He had situations at hand, too. As he told the story, it turned
out he was writing on the theme of what makes someone a fit and just ruler --
is it just pedigree? Or do people earn leadership by dint of character? This
theme was the inevitable by-product of engaging these characters and their
stories. But this is what I have been saying all aong -- theme is most often
and usefully the by-product of exploration, not a starting point. You haven't
presented to me any compelling reason why starting from theme would result in
better work or make the process any more felicitous.
>Like her or not, Rand's work has influenced many people to a degree
>rarely achieved by other writers, and it partly had to do with her
>aiming "high."
Aiming high is not the same as starting with theme. I aim high when I wrote my
plays.
>But I bet you had some thoughts about the division between the red and the
blue states sometime before you heard the story or started working on the play,
no?
Actually no. I had been carrying that story since it was told to me almost
thirty years ago. Suddenly I was moved to write it.
>How did you go about "figuring out
>what was making these guys act the way they did" -- how do you proceed
>to make choices -- based on what considerations -- what guidelines --
>what standard of selection do you use -- if you aren't conscious of
>your theme?
I didn't say I wasn't conscious of my theme. (You're mis-stating my argument
again.) I said that theme came to me AFTER I determined I would write this
story. I have never said that I write without being conscious of theme, only
that I don't START with theme. Sometime, as I have said, I realize what themes
I'll likely be dealing with fifteen minutes into my first explorations of the
characters or situation. But I still start with characters and situation
first.
Part of what was useful in writing FLYOVERS was that, at the time, the NY TIMES
was running a terrific series called "The Downsizing of America," and I
realized that the story I was telling might indeed be representative of the
trend the series described. But I didn't start off thinking, "I want to write
about the downsizing of America." I started off remembering this story my
friend told me about his horrendous encounter at a reunion, and then I
discovered why the story grabbed me as I began to write it. Because I was
excited to figure stuff out, the piece had life in it from the start, rather
than coming across as a pat answer or diagnosis.
>Are you really
>quibbling about the order of thoughts that might occur during a MINUTE
>of time -- as you say -- when the typical writing process normally
>spans days, weeks, months or years?
Yes. Because I have been teaching for years and have found that students can't
get off the dime writing if they're asked to write to a pre-set theme, but if
you get them started talking about the characters they know (I often ask them
who their most annoying relative is -- I always get a vivid response), it's
pretty easy for them to begin creating.
>If a character and theme occur to
>you within a minute of each other, isn't that really saying that they
>pretty much came to you together, not one after the other?
No. I have never had a show start because I wanted to address a theme. I have
always been attracted to a character or a situation first. This one of the
reasons why a lot of the current attempts at polisitcal cabaret are so deadling
-- they start off knowing they want to be provocative and say critical things,
and then they search for something to be critical of. This is nowhere near as
effective as being offended by a polisy or an action and then being moved to
respond to it. Again -- it's a specific that starts the engine.
>However, an awful lot of THOUGHT
>had to go into properly preparing for the improvisation beforehand --
There are different scholls of improvisation. I tend to prefer some kind of
preparation myself. I like to give students two specific characters, a
setting, three or four items of shared history or experience, and two
unarticulated objectives to get them started. Having the comfort of specifics,
they can almost always get started. But a lot of improvisational purists think
that the real stuff comes absolutely in the moment, taking whatever anyone
offers and instantly justifying and extending it. I won't argue with this --
I've seen some swell stuff at, for instance, I/O in Chicago. But it's not the
way I'm comfortable working, andonly very sophsticated and experienced
improvisers can hit warp speed from a standstill in a quarter of a second.
>Agreed, generally. But if one is trying to play a proud and corseted
>16th Century queen, while assuming the casual 21st Century slump of a
>grocery clerk, one is twisting the character to accommodate one's
>contemporary physicality, and it's going to come off as untruthful,
>regardless of how well one thinks they understand the inner emotional
>life of the character.
You bet. Which is why you'd best have some grasp of the specifics of the queen
and her world before you start acting. (One of the reasons I disagree with
much of Mamet's book on acting. He says, "Just be truthful," to which I reply,
"There are many different possible operative truths. Which one do you want?")
>No, but the basic principles of drama still pertain to novels, and she
>was very successful as a novelist (in addition to being a playwright
>and screenwriter).
>
Actually, novelists rarely write good plays. The best source for playwrights
are actors and journalists. Novelists are so used to doing everything with
verbiage that they tend to write characters who talk to much but take few
compelling actions. Name most of the significant American novelists, and from
them you'll cull maybe three or four decent plays. Updike, Mailer, Bellow,
Henry James, Dctorow, Heller, Hemingway, Faulkner, Fitzgerald -- all attempted
plays, none of these plays lives. (I do like on Joyce Carol Oates play though
-- an underestimated one called THE PERFICTIONIST, one of the best American
comedies I know.)
>But why the
>digs to me first about wondering how much acting I must have studied,
>and how many plays I'm getting produced?
I asked simply because I think playwriting is an extension of acting and people
who understanding the acting process tend to bring that understanding to
writing.
Re: PORCH. I wrote that when I was 23 and I'm still pleased with it. But I'm
54 now, and I think my later stuff is more accomplished.
My thoughts on theme are in my secon book on playwriting, SOLVING YOUR SCRIPT.
(Some people who read the first book asked me why I hadn't proposed writing
exercises, so I wrote SOLVING to do that, as well as to write analyses of
scenes some of my students had written. SOLVING also has thoughts that have
occurred to me since I wrote DRAMATIST'S, including the stuff about why I don't
think it's advisable to begin with theme.
Since you evidently know acting, maybe I can put it this way: to me, writing
from theme is like an actor embracing indicating. The indicator starts with
how he/she wants the performance to be interpreted by the audience, and the
result is mostly artificial. A general concensus has built up to support the
idea that the best acting is done by people pursuing the truth of the specifics
of the characters they play and leaving the meaning to be parsed by the
audience.
Stephen Farrow
I'll look out for it. I think there's a library copy in the system here (I'm trying not to buy books
at the moment).
--
Stephen
This is a time of celebration. So sit still and be quiet. Spit out that gum.
Tim Gowen
You can borrow mine if you want; it's slim and eminently postable.
Tim
--
Tim Gowen
Eagle
>
> To start with a theme means you're starting with what you intend the work to
> MEAN. That means you will then try to come up with characters and incidents to
> support a meaning. In my experience -- and this includes doing a hell of a lot
> of teaching over the years -- the resulting works tend to be either didactic
> ("I'm going to prove my theme") or bloodless ("This argument needs to be
> articulated; what character would best give my speech in support of a national
> health plan?").
If I started with the theme of "the intoxication of first love," why
is that necessarily starting with what I intend the work to MEAN?
Couldn't I start with this theme, but be unsure as to what exactly my
point of view is about it? Is the intoxication wonderful? Is it the
curse of existence? -- I could go with it in a number of ways as to
what its MEANING is. What would I be setting out to prove about such
a theme in itself, or why would this lead me to look for a character
to make speeches about it? I don't think the meaning of a work and
its theme are necessarily the same thing, and I don't think theme is
necessarily about any particular "issue" that needs proving or
argument -- some themes might be, but not as a general rule.
> >Aren't characters really little mini-abstractions in themselves?
>
> Not to my mind. The brother of a friend of mine in the middle of a messy
> divorce flipped out and robbed the local branch of his bank with a starter
> pistol. That guy is not an abstraction.
No of course he's not. But a character in a play based on a real life
guy IS an abstraction, as is every single word you write.
> I know you have high respect for Ayn Rand as a creative artist, but she is not
> the exemplar of dramatist to me. If you supported your case with references to
> Williams, Sondheim, O'Neill, Wilson (Lanford or August), Chekhov or
> Shakespeare, we might have a real discussion.
Oh, we've been in a FAKE discussion so far?
For some reason, you failed to note that I DID refer to Thornton
Wilder and THE SKIN OF OUR TEETH, and, as I mentioned, it was the play
I was talking about when my friend suggested that I read Ayn Rand.
From what I see on the net, apparently Wilder said the inspiration for
THE SKIN OF OUR TEETH came from a rubber chicken flying into his lap
during a production of "HELLZAPOPPIN." If this is true, then this
suggests to me that he didn't start with some character or situation
that intrigued him, but some kind of abstract idea (SKIN OF OUR TEETH
doesn't explore the character of a rubber chicken, nor does it rest on
the situation of one flying into someone's lap), and I don't see how
he could have ever come up with such a play by simply exploring the
character of Mr. Antrobus, or putting Mammoths in a home in
contemporary New Jersey, and THEN trusting in his "dramatic instinct
for seizing on something that will have larger reverberations," as you
say.
> You haven't
> presented to me any compelling reason why starting from theme would result in
> better work or make the process any more felicitous.
My argument is not that it is "better" or "more felicitous," but just
another way of working that needn't be severely discouraged -- so long
as theme is subservient to story, as character and situation should
also be.
> Actually no. I had been carrying that story since it was told to me almost
> thirty years ago. Suddenly I was moved to write it.
You say you knew the story for thirty years, and in all that time it
didn't move you to write something about it. What finally moved you?
Do you consider the "start" of the writing process of the play
something that began thirty years ago, or when you were "moved" to
write the play?
> >How did you go about "figuring out
> >what was making these guys act the way they did" -- how do you proceed
> >to make choices -- based on what considerations -- what guidelines --
> >what standard of selection do you use -- if you aren't conscious of
> >your theme?
>
> I didn't say I wasn't conscious of my theme. (You're mis-stating my argument
> again.)
I suppose I should have said "if you aren't conscious of your theme
BEFOREHAND." I still don't understand why you're so insistent about
the proper sequence of thoughts, which previously you said could occur
during a mere MINUTE of time in the process of writing. I'm not sure
most writers could even identify what thought came before what other
thought during the course of ONE MINUTE.
> I said that theme came to me AFTER I determined I would write this
> story. I have never said that I write without being conscious of theme, only
> that I don't START with theme. Sometime, as I have said, I realize what themes
> I'll likely be dealing with fifteen minutes into my first explorations of the
> characters or situation. But I still start with characters and situation
> first.
I see you've moved your argument about sequence up to FIFTEEN MINUTES
here.
> >Are you really
> >quibbling about the order of thoughts that might occur during a MINUTE
> >of time -- as you say -- when the typical writing process normally
> >spans days, weeks, months or years?
>
> Yes. Because I have been teaching for years and have found that students can't
> get off the dime writing if they're asked to write to a pre-set theme, but if
> you get them started talking about the characters they know (I often ask them
> who their most annoying relative is -- I always get a vivid response), it's
> pretty easy for them to begin creating.
Have you repeatedly asked your students over the years to try writing
to a pre-set theme, noting the poor results and demonstrating to the
students the folly of it, or did you try it once or twice in the first
year or two of teaching, got bad results, and then taught the rest of
those years without asking the students to do it, confident that it's
a bad way to work, but possibly missing some students over the years
who might turn in something good by starting with theme? Personally,
I've always found it helpful to be given some theme to write on.
> >If a character and theme occur to
> >you within a minute of each other, isn't that really saying that they
> >pretty much came to you together, not one after the other?
>
> No. I have never had a show start because I wanted to address a theme. I have
> always been attracted to a character or a situation first. This one of the
> reasons why a lot of the current attempts at polisitcal cabaret are so deadling
> -- they start off knowing they want to be provocative and say critical things,
> and then they search for something to be critical of. This is nowhere near as
> effective as being offended by a polisy or an action and then being moved to
> respond to it. Again -- it's a specific that starts the engine.
>
Jeff, we all have time limits, and we all make mistakes in
punctuation, spelling and grammar from time to time, but don't you
spend thirty seconds looking over what you wrote? I mean in the span
of one paragraph we get "polisitcal" "deadling" and "polisy".
> You bet. Which is why you'd best have some grasp of the specifics of the queen
> and her world before you start acting. (One of the reasons I disagree with
> much of Mamet's book on acting. He says, "Just be truthful," to which I reply,
> "There are many different possible operative truths. Which one do you want?")
My first day in acting class at Rutgers, Esper said acting was
"truthful doing under imaginary circumstances." I raised my hand and
asked "What is truthful?" He responded, "You're being too
metaphysical -- shut up!" I have to say, after three years in the
program, I'm still not sure what the answer is. "Truth" in acting is
somewhat subjective. There were times when Esper would commend an
actor, and I and others in the class thought it was all bullshit. He
seemed to be particularly swayed by actresses who were good at crying
real tears on cue.
> are actors and journalists. Novelists are so used to doing everything with
> verbiage that they tend to write characters who talk to much but take few
> compelling actions. Name most of the significant American novelists, and from
> them you'll cull maybe three or four decent plays. Updike, Mailer, Bellow,
> Henry James, Dctorow, Heller, Hemingway, Faulkner, Fitzgerald -- all attempted
> plays, none of these plays lives. (I do like on Joyce Carol Oates play though
> -- an underestimated one called THE PERFICTIONIST, one of the best American
> comedies I know.)
And then there's Thornton Wilder, who succeeded both as a novelist and
as a playwright.
> Since you evidently know acting, maybe I can put it this way: to me, writing
> from theme is like an actor embracing indicating. The indicator starts with
> how he/she wants the performance to be interpreted by the audience, and the
> result is mostly artificial. A general concensus has built up to support the
> idea that the best acting is done by people pursuing the truth of the specifics
> of the characters they play and leaving the meaning to be parsed by the
> audience.
An interesting analogy that seems to make sense on its surface, but I
want to think about it some more.
DgSWEET
>point of view is about it?
Truth to tell, I think I used a lousy example. Almost everyone hearing the
phrase "first love" will flash back to their first love (or an early one) and
pretty instantly arrive at specifics from their own experiences.
How about "malls are destroying small-town life" as a theme. Let's assume
we're starting with that. That's what you want to get across in your play.
How would you proceed from there?
>No of course he's not. But a character in a play based on a real life
>guy IS an abstraction, as is every single word you write.
Well, we define "abstraction" differently. I've made the character based on
him as concrete and specific as I can.
>Oh, we've been in a FAKE discussion so far?
We'd at least be discussing some people I consider to be solid dramatists.
>From what I see on the net, apparently Wilder said the inspiration for
THE SKIN OF OUR TEETH came from a rubber chicken flying into his lap during a
production of "HELLZAPOPPIN." If this is true, then this
suggests to me that he didn't start with some character or situation
that intrigued him, but some kind of abstract idea
Actually, it started with the image of a rubber chicken in his lap, pretty damn
concrete. The fact that the rubber chicken isn't in SKIN doesn't mean that it
wasn't a specific catalyst.
>and I don't see how
>he could have ever come up with such a play by simply exploring the
>character of Mr. Antrobus, or putting Mammoths in a home in
>contemporary New Jersey
Starting with a situation is one of the specifics I was talking about. The
play well may have started with the idea of having a typical American father
dealing in a typical American way with biblical-style challenges. (I must say,
though, that this is my least favorite Wilder play.)
>You say you knew the story for thirty years, and in all that time it
>didn't move you to write something about it. What finally moved you?
I was sitting in rehearsal on my previous play and thought, "Time to write
another play." And suddenly I could see the shape of the Victory Garden's
stage playing host to the bully's patio. That was a connect.
>I still don't understand why you're so insistent about
>the proper sequence of thoughts, which previously you said could occur
>during a mere MINUTE of time in the process of writing.
Because what comes second is in support of what comes first. And I find that
it does indeed matter what comes first.
>I'm not sure
>most writers could even identify what thought came before what other
>thought during the course of ONE MINUTE.
Most of the playwrights I know can indeed identify the first conscious thought
behind any given play. I know that I can.
>I see you've moved your argument about sequence up to FIFTEEN MINUTES here.
It doesn't particularly matter to me how long after theme begins to occur to
me, as long as it is after.
>Have you repeatedly asked your students over the years to try writing
>to a pre-set theme, noting the poor results and demonstrating to the
>students the folly of it, or did you try it once or twice in the first
>year or two of teaching, got bad results, and then taught the rest of
>those years without asking the students to do it, confident that it's
>a bad way to work, but possibly missing some students over the years
>who might turn in something good by starting with theme?
I spent the first several years experimenting with different ways to prime the
pump. I find that getting them to come up with character or situation first
most consistently got specific, vivid results.
>Personally,
>I've always found it helpful to be given some theme to write on.
Well, then, that works for you. It's deadening for me.
>Jeff, we all have time limits, and we all make mistakes in
>punctuation, spelling and grammar from time to time, but don't you
>spend thirty seconds looking over what you wrote? I mean in the span
>of one paragraph we get "polisitcal" "deadling" and "polisy".
Guilty. I should have proofread. Sorry. I do tend to pound away on my way to
the next damn thing I have to do.
>He seemed to be particularly swayed by actresses who were good at crying real
tears on cue.
Lots of people think that crying is acting. I've neer been much impressed by
showy displays of emotion onstage. I see four-year-olds do showy displays of
emotion in order to get ice cream, and I don't call the drama.
>And then there's Thornton Wilder, who succeeded both as a novelist and as a
playwright.
He's the great exception, being the only one who won Pulitzers in both
disciplines. He also wrote the single best essay on playwriting I've read, in
which he makes distinctions between how fiction and plays work.
take care - J
Steve Newport
From: dgs...@aol.com (DgSWEET)
with no connecting purpose. Characters often are not enough. I
especially hate those character driven-plays that get by mostly by
withholding information from the audience.>>>
tedium. It's the kind of thing that makes a lot of the NEW YORKER
fiction a trial to read -- all this craft and effort leading up to an
epiphany the size of the head of a tack. not enough. But it's not
either-or. You can have rich, surprising characters inhabiting strong,
coherent story-telling. But you have to work harder.
No doubt. But I find it rarer these days.
Eagle
Newsgroups: rec.arts.theatre.musicals
Subject: Re: What Is The Play About? - An Invitation To Jeffrey Sweet
References: <b01e3e9b.04090...@posting.google.com>
<20040903142726...@mb-m03.aol.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: 67.192.228.248
dgs...@aol.com (DgSWEET) wrote in message news:<20040901172656...@mb-m06.aol.com>...
>
> To start with a theme means you're starting with what you intend the work to
> MEAN. That means you will then try to come up with characters and incidents to
> support a meaning. In my experience -- and this includes doing a hell of a lot
> of teaching over the years -- the resulting works tend to be either didactic
> ("I'm going to prove my theme") or bloodless ("This argument needs to be
> articulated; what character would best give my speech in support of a national
> health plan?").
* * *
> Since you evidently know acting, maybe I can put it this way: to me, writing
> from theme is like an actor embracing indicating. The indicator starts with
> how he/she wants the performance to be interpreted by the audience, and the
> result is mostly artificial. A general concensus has built up to support the
> idea that the best acting is done by people pursuing the truth of the specifics
> of the characters they play and leaving the meaning to be parsed by the
> audience.
EAGLE: An interesting analogy that seems to make sense on its surface,
but I want to think about it some more.
* * *
Now that I've thought about it some more, what seemed to make sense on
its surface really doesn't. What IS "indicating" (in acting terms)?
-- It's when an actor is NOT REALLY DOING an action. In other words,
to indicate is to fail to be consistent with what one is doing and the
intention behind it -- it is a failure of INTEGRATION -- the actor
hasn't truly internalized the MEANING of the action for him or her.
An actor is constantly looking for meaning in every word and action
and in his/her relationship to the other characters -- but meaning is
what you think of as akin to theme, so the analogy gets muddy. I
think a closer analogy would be to say that starting with theme is
like "working from the outside-in" as Olivier is reported to have used
as his process for creating a character, and which has also been
described -- accurately or not -- as the British approach to acting --
but since that is the process used by someone considered to be one of
the greatest actors of all time, it doesn't help your case. Would you
say Olivier "embraced indicating," since by starting with a pair of
glasses and thinking first about the externals, he was starting with
"how he/she wants the performance to be interpreted by the audience?"
Will you respond that the glasses and externals are "concretes" and so
it proves your point that abstractions come from concretes? If so, I
will again agree with you about that, but still say that what your
basic argument seems to be is not that abstractions come from
concretes, but that the abstraction (theme) should only come from an
exploration of character and situation -- a different argument that I
don't agree with. The rubber chicken in Thornton Wilder's lap
inspiring THE SKIN OF OUR TEETH was indeed a concrete, but it's the
MEANING of that rubber chicken in his lap, and not the rubber chicken
itself, that sparked the idea for the play. The rubber chicken MEANT
something specific to him, where it might not to someone else, and
that's why it was able to spark his creativity. The MEANING of it to
him was the abstract idea that started the play. A rubber chicken in
one's lap without a meaning attached to it would remain merely a
rubber chicken in one's lap.
I don't see why one couldn't start with finding the right pair of
glasses for a character (I seem to remember some story about Olivier
in this regard), and work from there, but that's not the same as
intentionally "embracing indicating" as a starting point, except
possibly in a Brecht play or some other presentational style piece
where the effect is intended to be artificial. One can also start
with a theme and fail to integrate it into the action of the play --
TELLING (by making up speeches, etc.) rather than SHOWING the theme
THROUGH the action. Telling rather than showing the theme would be an
example of a PLAYWRIGHT "indicating."
In my view, Dorothy Fields was right: "It's not where you start, it's
where you finish."
DgSWEET
>and in his/her relationship to the other characters -- but meaning is
>what you think of as akin to theme, so the analogy gets muddy.
No, I don't think meaning in a concrete sense between character is the same as
theme, which tends to be abstract and general.
> I
>think a closer analogy would be to say that starting with theme is
>like "working from the outside-in" as Olivier is reported to have used
>as his process for creating a character, and which has also been
>described -- accurately or not -- as the British approach to acting --
>but since that is the process used by someone considered to be one of
>the greatest actors of all time, it doesn't help your case.
No, because Olivier started with something concrete. Reportedly, he kept
working on noses until he found one that he thought WAS the character. Then
gestalt theory kicks in -- he found one thing he could believe in that was a
microcosm for the rest of the character. Theme isn't microcosm.
Also, Olivier's quality varied wildly. If you saw his Big Daddy in CAT ON A
HOT TIN ROOF, you'd cringe. Sometimes he was brilliant, sometimes he was
showy.
>Would you
>say Olivier "embraced indicating," since by starting with a pair of
>glasses and thinking first about the externals, he was starting with
>"how he/she wants the performance to be interpreted by the audience?"
No, I'd say he was looking for something concrete to believe in. Besides he
wasn't showing the nose or the glasses to the audience before he completed the
process. Finding that one thing is akin to finding a concrete image that one
wants to explore in writing.
>Will you respond that the glasses and externals are "concretes" and so
>it proves your point that abstractions come from concretes?
Yes.
>If so, I
>will again agree with you about that, but still say that what your
>basic argument seems to be is not that abstractions come from
>concretes, but that the abstraction (theme) should only come from an
>exploration of character and situation -- a different argument that I
>don't agree with.
Well, I will add concrete images to the list of characters and situations.
What do they all have in common? They are specifics, not generalizations.
Sondheim once said that if some asked him to write a song, he wouldn't know
where to begin. But if someone asked him to write a song for the lady in the
red dress sitting at the end of the bar drinking her third martini, he'd know
what to do.
>The rubber chicken in Thornton Wilder's lap
>inspiring THE SKIN OF OUR TEETH was indeed a concrete, but it's the
>MEANING of that rubber chicken in his lap, and not the rubber chicken
>itself, that sparked the idea for the play.
No, he found his meaning from the concrete. It started with the concrete thing
-- the rubbert chicken. (Good it wasn't a concrete chicken, it would have
broken his lap.)
>The rubber chicken MEANT
>something specific to him, where it might not to someone else, and
>that's why it was able to spark his creativity.
Of course, every specific means something different to everybody, which is why
we can come up with different works of art in reesponse to the same stimulus.
>I don't see why one couldn't start with finding the right pair of
>glasses for a character (I seem to remember some story about Olivier
>in this regard), and work from there, but that's not the same as
>intentionally "embracing indicating" as a starting point,
Of course one could. Chekhov famous told a friend he got start a story from
almost any object. He referred to a slightly chipped tea pot and proved his
case by making up a story about that tea pot and how it got chipped.
>In my view, Dorothy Fields was right: "It's not where you start, it's
>where you finish."
In my view, it's easier to finish if you start in the right place. I'd rather
sail for Europe from New York than San Francisco.
Christopher Jahn
>>I don't see why one couldn't start with finding the right
>>pair of glasses for a character (I seem to remember some
>>story about Olivier in this regard), and work from there,
>>but that's not the same as intentionally "embracing
>>indicating" as a starting point,
>
> Of course one could. Chekhov famous told a friend he got
> start a story from almost any object. He referred to a
> slightly chipped tea pot and proved his case by making up a
> story about that tea pot and how it got chipped.
As a Method actor who studied at Strasberg no less, I can tell
you that I usually work from the inside out. But a number of
years ago I was playing Bellamy in The Fantasticks, and I was
floundering.
So I went back through all my books on technique, and decided
to try Checkov's Outside-In approach: I created a Creature,
and then I filled it. And deciding what the character looked
like helped me to find out who he was. It worked gangbusters.
But I don't use that approach for every roll; yes, it works,
but it's actually easier in most cases, and more fullfillng,
to figure out what's going on inside, and then bring that
forth into the visible world.
I have a friend who works from the feet up: once he knows what
kind of shoes the character wears, everything falls into
place. And that's great when the character is period, or has
an extreme costume. But if the character's shoes are simply
his own, or identical to them, he flounders along for weeks
trying to figure out what he should be.
>
>>In my view, Dorothy Fields was right: "It's not where you
>>start, it's where you finish."
>
> In my view, it's easier to finish if you start in the right
> place. I'd rather sail for Europe from New York than San
> Francisco.
Exactly: yes, the finished product is what counts, but why
work harder to get there than you have to? One can start with
a prop or a costume and build character around it, but what if
you choose poorly? "That's the third time I've tripped on
it!!" Starting from character, you can find the prop or
costume accessory organically, and wind up with a better fit
to it: "I carry it specifically to do THIS, and do it to YOU,
and to do it NOW."
You don't start building a house at the roof.
--
:-) Christopher Jahn
:-(
http://home.comcast.net/~xjahn/Main.html
It would seem that no matter how you slice it, it still comes
up
Velveeta.
Steve Newport
From: xj...@netscape.net (Christopher Jahn) As a Method actor who
studied at Strasberg no less, I can tell you that I usually work from
the inside out. But a number of years ago I was playing Bellamy in The
I have a friend who works from the feet up: once he knows what kind of
shoes the character wears, everything falls into place. And that's great
when the character is period, or has an extreme costume. But if the
character's shoes are simply his own, or identical to them, he flounders
along for weeks trying to figure out what he should be.
Bellomy, no? Role not roll. (I'm seeing this as often as "definately.")
Gielgud to Liza: "My dear, why don't you just try ACTING."
John W. Kennedy
everything outside in. Raise the voice to high tenor, gesticulate
excessively, overEMphasize SYLlables, and hey-PRESto, THERE was the
CHARacter and I hadn't even learned my LINES yet!
Then Alonso dropped out, and I moved up. Completely different
experience. Find the despair. Feel the other characters' nattering
driving my temper to the shattering point. Near the end, acceptance --
and then eucatastrophic shock.
Same production, but I might as well have been two different actors.
--
John W. Kennedy
"Only an idiot fights a war on two fronts. Only the heir to the throne
of the kingdom of idiots would fight a war on twelve fronts"
-- J. Michael Straczynski. "Babylon 5", "Ceremonies of Light and Dark"
Steve Newport
dgs...@aol.com (DgSWEET)
OUR TEETH doesn't mean that it wasn't a specific catalyst.
--------------------------
That play could use a rubber chicken. Maybe nose and glasses as well. Or
some Kander and Ebb songs?
Stephen Farrow
But not, apparently, Bebe Neuwirth.
--
Stephen
It has to be stopped. It's like we're being watched. Like there was a
wall missing in our apartment. Like there were only three walls and
not a fourth wall.
Steve Newport
sfa...@chass.utoronto.ca (Stephen Farrow) <<< SKIN OF OUR TEETH could
use a rubber chicken. Maybe nose and glasses as well. Or some Kander and
Ebb songs?>>>
Maybe in nose and glasses?