Choose Life. Choose the Drama of Life. part 3 about writing for the Drama

The Stage

This is a stage…

It is about two people long

and one-and-a-half people deep.

This is also a stage

This is about three people long

And two-and-a half-people wide

And so is this

This accommodates about a dozen people around it.

Stages can be all sizes, but once you get to 6 people wide then you have got an arena.  Arenas are for spectacles.  We are not interested in chariot races or The Last Night of the Proms here.

Some stages are high

Farm wagons have provided stages since time immemorial

And some are low down.

Gardens have always made ideal stages

And stages come in different shapes. I will come to those later.

The crucial thing is that a stage needs to be human being size.

A stage is a place for people to act.  But it also belongs to an audience.  The audience watch and listen whilst the actors act. The audience owns the stage fifty/fifty with the actors. The business of the stage becomes a compact between actors and audience. An understanding between them.

The stage, the actors and the audience together, amount to one of the oldest art forms.  And probably originates with a story recounted in the very earliest days of our ancestors, perhaps when fire had first been tamed and they could sit around in the circle of warmth listening to a warrior back from a hunt or a shaman who had journeyed far into the land of dreams.

Sometimes it is the audience who create the stage themselves.

You can see it when a little group forms round a performer in a street or shopping centre.

Sometimes an audience gathers when some public event occurs such as a road accident.  In this case the audience will assemble across the street. They will be more than 6 people-lengths away. So this becomes a spectacle.  An audience does not participate in a spectacle. They merely watch from afar.

If someone collapses with a heart attack, people with gather closely around.  This is because they believe they may be able to help. They are participating.  This is drama.

Whilst sharing our stage, the audience needs to be close enough to the actor to hear and see clearly. Actors need to be able to share with the people in the audience without microphones and headsets. These are designed to keep people apart by signalling that the actor is more important than the audience. Actors need to speak up if they can’t be heard.

In performing spaces it is best to allow a good arms length between audience and the stage because people sometimes come with bags of shopping and umbrellas with which they encroach on the acting area.

However, the crucial thing is that the audience can see beads of sweat on the actors brow, feel the warmth of their bodies and experience the less than pleasant odour that surrounds them. They feel emotion through the strong empathy humans have for one another. The performance is always visceral. The dream always in the here and now.

How the Stage Works for the Actor

I once shared a stage with a very famous and venerable actor called Michael Mac Liammoir.  His stage was an old carpet with a few pieces of furniture on it.  He walked about this small area entirely at ease with his material.  Few people in the audience could tell that Michael was, by then, completely blind.  His stage was so familiar to him that he had it pictured exactly in his mind’s eye and could come and go with confidence, picking up props and sitting in the big chair. This is how familiar a stage should be for an actor.

Because the stage belongs to so many people, it needs to be treated with reverence.  When the actor steps onto the stage they cease to be themselves.  They become something else, an animal, a bird, a god, Hedda Gabler or Othello.

The stage is the home to these things and the actor should take a deep breath or say a prayer before committing themselves to becoming one of their number.

The actor should experience the transition that occurs at the edge of the stage with the force of an electric shock.  They walk though a waterfall of change and are the Other Thing as soon as they step beyond.  They know the words and movements of the Other without consciously having to think in their previous incarnation.  They have literally transformed and they are no longer who they once were.

Many thinkers consider the drama equates to a religious experience. This may or may not be true but I think drama does fulfill a similar need to explore the Other. In any case, religious events are more akin to spectacle with their reliance on costume and ritual.

The stage is not a holy space but it should be treated with respect and once the audience have taken possession of it, no mortal should enter upon it without becoming the thing they are inhabiting.

I have known quite well known actors who were gibbering wrecks in anticipation of their roles but for whom all their fears dropped away as soon as they crossed the edge of the stage.  Sir Laurence Olivier was prone to stage fright and was sick every time he had to go on.  It is not for nothing that actors sometimes refer to “Doctor Theatre” as many have got through performances oblivious to quite serious illnesses and even broken bones.

The Drama

A drama is the interplay of two or more characters shown through words and actions.

The action on stage ensues because of a discrepency in power or status leading, ultimately, to change in the characters.

Natural human empathy means the audience become immersed in the emotional to and fro of drama so, they too, feel some transformation in themselves. This is called Catharsis.

I may explain that more fully in another blog.

A writer writes the words to guide the actor in what to say.

A director will suggest where to go on the stage. And maybe contribute advice on when to say the words.

The actor will decide how to say them to fit in with the character they are inhabiting.

The audience will decide why they are saying them.

The writer mediates between the actor and the audience.

The director represents the audience to the actor.

Writers are at their best when they write dialogue which implies time and space.

Sometimes there is a need for a chair or table or a gun or an umbrella but generally these things just clutter up the space on the stage.  Besides Actors can fall over things and break them.

A clever designer will know how to contribute the precise things that are needed in the décor for the interplay of the action without creating a distraction.

Music and effects can generally be avoided because these tend to turn the drama into spectacle. The audience are being forced into a certain emotional response. They form a barrier between actor and audience.

Light effects and music are generally used because directors have watched too many films and believe the audience will insist on car chases and musical scores as they are easily bored.  This director believes the people in the audience are not bright enough to make up their own minds as to how to watch the drama. It is true that many people will be unfamiliar with the dramatic art but that doesn’t mean they cannot understand drama or appreciate something different.

This is like a restauranteur only serving chips smothered in ketchup because they believe the audience only like chips and that is all they eat at home.  This might be true but sometimes people enjoy a different type of food when out. What’s more good food doesn’t need ketchup.  Disclaimer: I like chips.

There is something deeply satisfying when the lights dim on the audience and brighten on the stage.  But this because it enables us watchers to shift their focus onto the matter in hand.  They enter into the same dream world as the actors and allow their imaginations to run wild. Audiences can otherwise survive without lots of flashes and bangs.

The process whereby actors and audiences are willingly transported to other imaginary realms is called Suspension of Disbelief. It is a natural phenomenon in human beings. The phrase was coined by the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1817 but has been undersood since the origins of drama. Shakespeare called it “imaginary puissance”.

Suspension of Disbelief means that an audience do not need to be told what is going on. They enjoy contributing by their natural ability to work it out for themselves. Devices such as narrators and subtitles are unnecessary in drama.   Narrators are there because writers have not worked hard enough to let the characters inhabit the space and time of the events that have been created on the stage.  I once watched a play in which a scene was acted out.  A narrator then came on and told us what we had just seen.  And to crown it all, the actors then performed the same scene in expressive dance. One way or another, we had not only got the point but felt it hammered home deep into our aching brains. Audiences are naturally better equipped for watching drama than we take them for.

“As you read a book word by word and page by page, you participate in its creation, just as a cellist playing a Bach suite participates, note by note, in the creation, the coming-to-be, the existence, of the music. And, as you read and re-read, the book of course participates in the creation of you, your thoughts and feelings, the size and temper of your soul.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin

If the playwright really can’t think of how to write a drama without telling us about it as we go along, then the narrator should not step onto the stage because they are not inhabiting the world of the drama in the way the actors are. Any writer writing a narrator should ask who the narrator is talking to and why.  The same applies to choruses.  Although I saw a very spooky version of “The Cocktail Party” in Manchester where the chorus inhabited the space of the audience and added to the interplay between audience and characters on stage.

This is where I return to other shapes of stages.

I say the audience owns the stage because, unlike in films, they are free to look where they like and pay attention to whatever thread of the drama interests them. The actor at the front of the stage may be working hard but some of the audience will be following the reactions of that couple at the back.  Audiences should be free to choose how to interpret what is going on without being emotionally coerced by the use of music or clever camera work or editing.

Sometimes, it is difficult for directors and writers to leave enough room for the audience to contribute to the drama. If the stage is owned fifty fifty by actors and audience, then the drama itself should be divided equally between the writer, the  actor and the audience.  At the end of the performance there should be as many interpretations of what has been going on as there are audience members.

It can be interesting to use different stage shapes provided they are still within people proportions. As a director I enjoy working in Traverse mode.  Here the stage runs through the centre of the audience with the audience facing inwards.  So that, wherever the director places the actors, the audience have to choose which way to look.  The effect can be rather like a deconstructed tennis match.  But good fun.

More good fun can be had with theatre-in-the-round.  Whilst watching any one actor, the audience cannot help but also frame the audience sitting directly behind. This adds a sort of feed back loop to their excitement. Audience and actors are clearly aware of each other. At the same time, there is no front and back to the action. Actors have to expose their characters to the full glare of the audience. There is nowhere to hide. The actor and audience are joined in some fusion of intent.

Really, I have been talking about audience-in-the-round all the way through this essay because that is my favourite way of working.  It seems to be the most fitting for drama.  The most human.

Theatre is in a bit of a Pickle

None of this is new or startling but we all know that theatre has lost its way. For most people, if they can afford it at all, a trip to the theatre has become a once a year luxury. Young people find it difficult to find their way in to the art without huge amounts of money to back them. In a future Blog I may write how thinking like this might help return the Drama closer to being part of warp and woof of daily discussion.

First, let’s get rid of all that reliance on stuff like extensive, expensive lighting and stage effects. Let’s narrow the focus of theatre down to concentrate on the little magic area which is the stage, right in the heart of the audience in which every bead of sweat and breath and nuance of voice is right there to be shared . Let’s dispense with the rigidity of structure and pre determined emotional responses that characterise the electronic media and commercial stage shows.  This magic place does not recognise the difference of the actor, only their ability to show difference.  It requires huge intensity of emotion to draw the audience in so that the audience becomes one with the actor who has joined with them in this tiny space.