Writing for the Stage

The Playwright's Handbook

Anthony Clark

• Verlag: The Crowood Press
• Jahr: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781785009037
• Thema: Media & Performing Arts
• Thema: Theatre Playwriting

The theatre is an essential art form that is forever evolving. A well-written play can make us laugh, cry, cringe, or reflect. It can confirm what we already know, or it can introduce us to new worlds. It can relax us, or incite us to action. Writing for the Stage – A Playwright's Handbook is a step-by-step guide to dramatic writing. Drawing on proven methods and professional insights, this book explores the mechanics of playwriting and the skills needed to create a compelling story. It aims to help readers understand the art and craft of writing for the stage and avoid some of the pitfalls.Topics covered include defining a play; starting points; the importance of structure; the first draft and rewrites; placing the work and negotiating rehearsals and, finally, the playwright in a devising context.

1

WHAT IS A PLAY?

I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being.

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)

Ever since humankind evolved to communicate, we have been using storytelling to pass on knowledge, and rituals to connect with others and help us come to terms with, and control, the unknown. Plays happened, when storytelling combined with ritual.

Caroline Faber and David Kennedy in Abi Morgan’s Tender.

It is impossible to be definitive about what a play is. Suffice to say that at an impressive performance of a play, the participants, both the actors and the audience, will experience consciously and subconsciously, the purpose and power of art.

The purpose of art being to confirm or better our understanding of the world. The power of art being to ravish our senses and stimulate our intellect.

A play is a distillation of actions, thoughts and feelings derived from real life, expressed in dialogue and stage directions, by a playwright or group of theatre-makers, for the entertainment of an audience or readers. A play can make us laugh or cry or both. It can confirm what we already know or it can introduce us to new worlds. It can relax us or incite us to action. It can, of course, do a combination of all or any of these at the same time.

The form and content of a play is determined by its historical context. A theatre-maker’s initial response to the world may be an emotional one. Then, with a learnt or instinctive curiosity, some will want to investigate why they feel the way they do and share their discoveries with an audience, whilst others will be more concerned to find a way to generate a comparable emotional response in the audience and leave them to derive meaning from it. If they are interested in cause and effect drama, then the chances are that the playwright will construct a linear narrative. If not, they may choose a more expressionistic, non-linear form. Both approaches invite the audience or reader to reflect on their own experience.

More often than not, a play, like any work of fiction, is an inventive construction of an imaginary world inspired by the real world. It needs to be sufficiently informed by your own experience for us to empathize with the plight of the characters, to follow the narrative and be challenged or reassured by the ideas contained therein. At some level, the audience will always need to recognize something of the world of the play to make sense of it.

For centuries people talked about ‘hearing’ plays and then they talked about ‘seeing’ them, as the theatre strove, using whatever means it could, to make the action more visible and the spectacle more impressive. The descriptive panorama of Elizabethan action, conjured in the imagination through language, gradually gave way to representation of reality that would fit the ‘picture-frame stage’. As an aesthetic, realism still dominates theatrical presentation, because it is the easiest to relate to. In the first half of the twenty-first century, with the popularity of ‘site-specific’ and ‘immersive’ theatre, and the blurring of the lines between ‘drama’ and ‘performance art’, people have started to talk about going to ‘experience’ a play. Plays are often performed in non-traditional, flexible venues. There is even a theatre for the ‘connected generation’ in virtual space, which incorporates various social networks into the production and presentation of shows.

Tripti Tripuraneni, Rani Fantania, Asif Khan and Skye Hallam in rehearsal for Paradise of the Assassins (2016) by Anthony Clark based on the book by Abdul Halim Sharar.

For many years, plays in UK theatres have been patronized by the people who have the time and the money to spend on them. As a result, the stories presented have tended to reflect the concerns of a particular demographic – the prosperous middle-class. There are theatre companies, however, led by artists who are not driven by the commercial imperative to make a profit but by a strong belief that theatre can play a vital role in the integration of society and contribute to the well-being of the individual, who have striven for years, and are still striving, for a more inclusive theatre. By choosing a wider range of stories and presenting them in less familiar forms at affordable prices, these companies do what they can to ensure access to under-privileged, minority groups of artists and audiences. Supported by public funding, a number of trusts and foundations, and contributions from philanthropic donors, they are targeting new audiences and extending the boundaries of the art form.

As our understanding and appreciation of global diversity increases, so does recognition of our common concerns; for example, the effects of climate change, the inequities of capitalism, religious fundamentalism, racism, identity, gender, the role of the individual in society and so on. Our plays need to address these concerns across constituencies within our communities, and globally. Our future and the future of the planet will be determined by what unites us, not what divides us. This approach over time will inform what is popular and commercial.

WHY ARE PLAYS CALLED PLAYS?

It is no accident that plays are called plays. To be able to play is essential to our development from childhood to adulthood and to our evolution as a species. To play is instinctive. It is the means whereby we reflect on our own experience to make sense of it, and on the experiences of others. It is also how we experiment with what ‘might be’.

Poster for Playing by the Rules (1994) by Rod Dungate, a first play commissioned and produced in the Door at Birmingham Rep.

Our individual survival is dependent on our ability to integrate with others, and our route to integration is to acknowledge what we do and don’t share with them. Witnessing a play can offer us the opportunity to explore known and imagined circumstances. It allows us to rehearse life experience in a safe place – a place where we can test, objectively, certain truths; a place where different constituencies within the community can explore their differences, or have their identities reaffirmed. We are a species that needs to understand each other and who we are.

WRITING FOR LIVE PERFORMANCE

There are many similarities between writing a play for live performance and other media, but there are also some significant differences. Across all media, if you are interested in narrative, you have to have a story that is plotted to reveal your themes. Interest in your story will be maintained, primarily, through your ability to generate tension. Tension is generated by you charting carefully when to reveal what happens to your characters and why it happens.

Characters reveal themselves through their ability to initiate and respond to what is going on. What is going on, where and when, establishes a play’s atmosphere. Tension is maintained by a play’s atmosphere.

It is assumed that characters on screen can be presented more subtly than those on stage and, therefore, if you want to write ‘big’, ‘loud’, ‘demonstrative’ characters, then write for the stage. It is also assumed that if your story requires many different locations, this could present an insurmountable challenge to a theatre production team. Again, not necessarily the case.

In film, you tell your story primarily through action and visuals.

In TV, like writing for the stage, your story and themes unravel primarily through dialogue, although action and visuals are, of course, important.

For audio, radio and podcasts, your story is told entirely through sounds and the spoken word.

Going to see a live performance, like going to see a film, is a collective experience, but it differs in one crucial way: the relationship between the audience and the performer is an interactive one. It relies on two-way communication. Essentially, the audience are crucial collaborators in the event. The event requires them to participate, albeit to different degrees, depending on the type of performance. At one end of the spectrum, they may be required to respond by sitting silently in rapt attention occasionally laughing, gasping and crying, and at the other, to actively call out, to vote or even to get up and participate in the action.

Audience response can affect significantly what happens on stage and vice versa. This is what makes live performance so thrilling and so different from night to night. It is why some audiences feel they have to see a show more than once, and why actors love working in the theatre. Performing live is a risk. Actors get a ‘buzz’ from it. It is why they talk about having ‘good’ and ‘bad’ nights.

A writer who is frustrated and made anxious by the variables in live performance should not write for the stage; they should write novels instead.

When you go to the theatre, a contract is made between the audience and the actors. The deal is that the actors give to the audience and the audience show their appreciation. The more audience appreciation, the more actors will play it. Have you ever noticed, at the beginning of a show, how quickly an audience wants to announce its presence to the performers? It is often prepared to laugh at the most unfunny line or piece of ‘stage business’, just to let the performers know they’re there.

Without audience response, the performance is nothing more than a rehearsal.

An audience may be made up of many different constituencies, but the ambition is that they are brought together as one to witness an event in the same ever-changing world as the actors. The lasting impact of the occasion is assured when audience and performers appear to be feeding off each other.

It is for this reason that people who love the theatre talk about the impact of great productions lasting far longer than that of any film.

People say that one of the most significant contributory factors to the force of the impact, is that the event is at a human scale, inclusive and intimate.

THE AUDIENCE

What people are looking for, consciously or not, when they go to a play, is a shared emotional and intellectual experience. Have you ever noticed how, at the start of a performance, the audience is disparate and nervous, and then, as the play progresses, they evolve into a psychol...