Choose Life. Choose Drama. part 2: More gentle advice on a life in Arts.
Drama is the Living Art Form
Do you fancy having a go at writing plays? Well, why not? If I can write a play, anybody can.
Just a few things that you may want to think about first, though.
Let’s deal with one important aspect first: A play is NOT a work of literature. It is a complicated series of hints and instructions to actors as to how the create and progress character through a series of situations. It is a living art form. It involves heavy breathing and sweat only metres away from where your audience is sitting or standing.
Plays are quite technical and you do need to pick up a bit of knowledge about the process of performing plays if you want to get across your inspiration at the same time as the perspiration to an audience. But I learnt it so you can, too. Let me offer you some steps that might help.
The best way (I think) to learn about theatre is from the inside. When I got thrown out of school I hitch hiked to London and spent some time sleeping in bus shelters and going from stage door to stage door asking if there were any jobs to be had. Ignorance is the best teacher and, eventually, I found one where there was need for stage hands. I then spent one of the most fruitful periods of my life leaning on a broom at the side of the stage and watching some of the greats of British Theatre plying their trade. Probably best if you don’t do the bus shelter bit but I would strongly recommend observing and absorbing how other folks have spoken to their audiences. The important thing is the relationship of the actor with the audience. See how even a straight, serious drama is mediated by the actor so that each audience perceives a slightly different version of the play. That is the beauty of theatre for me. Every audience gets their own play and, for each audience, every performance has the excitement of a first night. Not only that, each individual audience member will have their own view of the piece (literally) as they will choose where to look, which character to follow and so on. The playwright cannot, and should not, influence all these factors. The technical term is that you should leave space for the play to Breathe. And that is pretty well the literal meaning. Actors and audiences are living beings – they can only concentrate for so long and there needs to be spaces between the little climaxes to allow time for ideas to be absorbed. Listen to how the audience breathes to understand how to structure your dialogue. The outcome of a play is down to as much as a third to the audience, a third for the production and only a third to the playwright. This is the great joy of theatre over film and TV. The audience is free to watch how they want to without being corralled by particular camera shots or clever editing or music. It generates a particular social imaginative cooperative event for everyone in the room. The more you reduce the stage effects that form a barrier between us and them, the more alive this relationship becomes. The actor draws the audience in so that they become at one with the characters portrayed and your story told.
But your third, in which you create the characters and the situations they operate in, is closely guarded and respected. Don’t waste it. Leave as much room as possible for the others to operate.
Students of Bournemouth Arts University giving total commitment in my production of Alan Ayckbourn’s “Chorus of Disapproval”.
Should you want to learn more about how drama works from the inside try:
“The Empty Space” by Peter Brook
“Towards a Poor Theatre” by Jerzy Grotowski
“Theatre et son Double” par Antonin Artaud.
Artaud, talks about getting rid of the literary aspects of theatre while Peter Brook talks about “Deadly” theatre which relies on outmoded conventions. Here is your opportunity to write something innovative and new. You, as a playwright have more right to individual recognition than in literary forms because you are working alongside a team who need your contribution.
For me, I think of the script I deliver as a recipe or as a book of cookery hints for the actors and production team to concoct. The skill of the playwright is to know some of the spices that can be included in the recipe that will produce the strange and delicious confection that they will cook up. In any case, I am not there to direct the actor. If I’ve done my work right, they will follow the path I have set out because it will be obvious from the reactions of the characters I have written. By which I mean, you leave out as much as you can in terms of direct instructions to the actors in the way of movements, or how to say lines. As a playwright you do not want to intrude on the skills of the actors and director. Let them bring their abilities to help your script along. They will respect your contribution and not try to change your words if you respect what they bring and don’t tell them their job. Stage directions will be crossed out anyway. They are only for a reading audience and we do not want our piece of living throbbing life merely to be read after all.
A drama is a series of interactions between characters shown mostly through dialogue.
When I started out, I was lucky enough to form a partnership with another writer who did all the dialogue whilst I did the clever situations and funny bits. Frankly I was rubbish at dialogue. It came out all stilted and uncomfortable for the actors to say. It took me years of sitting in cafes and bars to learn how dialogue works in real life and I think I’ve begun to get the hang of it now. So, after you’ve stood and listened to actors working, be prepared to spend at least some of your time drinking coffee to pick up the nuances of speech you need.
What I learnt is that dialogue is dependent on the character you create as much as the character is formed from the dialogue you provide for them. I have written elsewhere about the way in which in everyday conversation our whole code of language changes according to who we are talking to, and where and what we are talking about.
Most fascinating of all, is the fact that quite often, the spoken words make no actual sense on the surface. Most meaning is conveyed through subtext, the unspoken dialogue where we refer obliquely to emotional ideas without speaking about them openly. This means that in writing the script it is important to understand both the surface and the subsurface context that the character is inhabiting at any one particular moment.
After my last post (Choose Life. Choose Art) in which I suggested that artists may want to feel more valued as the actual producers of the materials the Arts Industry relies on, I would say that the theatre is one of the few art forms that puts the writer in direct contact with their audience. Remember, this is a living art form. The actors are there interacting directly with the audience. And they are speaking on your behalf.
Choose Art. Choose Drama
