Play Writying 1 Where does the playwright begin a What story is being told Content What story is being told o What characters are involved o What is the plot Form how is the story being told o Chronologically Nonlinear o Musically o Psychological realism b How is the story being told form 2 How does creativity strike a Autobiography Tennessee Williams focuses on autobiography o The Glass Menagerie focuses on his experiences and his childhood where his sister had mental issues Eugene O Neil o A Long Day s Journey Into Night o Shows his experience with his family traumatized him to write it b Social and Political Issues Waiting For Lefty o Original text shows that its riddled with O Neil s tears because it o Dramatizes politics and became a rally cry Jessica Blank o The Exonerated o Focuses on issues that surround the death penalty two writers interviewed people on death row and focused on 6 indviduals on death row and were found innocent of the crimes and showed that their perspectives to fit back ito the world o Began after she heard someone talking at a dinner party c Overhead Conversation The Clean House d Evocative Images Sounds Etc Sam Shepard Neil Simon o The Odd Couple o Has to sit down and make a clear visual picture of every character o And if he doesn t it turns out terribly Nilo Cruz o Lyricism and music I his plays is based on what he heard as a child o Says that he writes in images and challenges directors Paula Vogel e Adaptations o Writes to a soundtrack for every play she writes Wicked The Color Purple Adapted form the stage for nevels Beauty and the Beast Shrek Mary poppins etc f Research Researching history Caryl Churchill o Top Girls o Uses historic women characters o A number goes into issues of cloning and genetic modifications Homebody Kabul o Dramatizes the issues that arise in Afghanistan o And wrote this play prior to September 11th o Suspended play after NY theatres had recovered from 9 11 g Imagination 3 Tools of the playwright a World of the play A play s own unique society morality psychology and aesthetic reality You have a play set in ancient Greece has an anti war theme bunch of male characters with big penises a lot of owmen who don t like it that s the world of the play Contrast In Pittsburgh 1904 you may have an individual who shows up on another characters doorstep and travels to a mythological city Consistency is key Different theatrical conventions willing suspension of disbelief will be challanged if it doesn t hold true the entire play b Characters Often drives plot today Revealed through o What they say o What they do character Character Types o Instantly recognizable o Villains look like villains o Heroes look like heroes another c Conflict Person Vs Person o Death of a Salesman dad vs son Person Vs Self o How they relate to others and what do those characters say about the o But you can flip characters so theylook like one thing but become o Death of a salesman dad having talk with himself Willy Person Vs Nature Person Vs Society o Death of a salesman Willy is representing a larger conflict between working class and unatanabilty of the human dream d Structure and Plot The way the playwright reveals information to the audience Three major types o Aristotelian Climatic a Circulating around conflict b All about conflict being revealed and being resolved c Vocab usually Exposition Background information beginning of the play Inciting incident Moment the conflict begins Rising action Conflict intensifies Climax Crisis that resolves conflict Denouement harmony restored d Oedipus Rex Conflict Oedipus Rex Who Killed Laius Exposition Plague king died queen remarried Inciting incident murder must be solved Rising action Their investigation Climax Oedipus realizes he killed his father and married his mother Denouement Oedipus gouging eyes Jocasta hanging herself etc e Orgasm Metaphor i Aristotelian climatic ii Plot structure Male Episodic Female orgasm o Popular on TV series o Multiple scenelets with climaxes o Disrupt chronology Cyclic o Ends where it begins o Entire genre of absurdist genre o Ex The lesson Eugene Ionesco a Professor and maid cleaning up mess in opening b Maid does most of the work doorbell rings and a beautiful feamale student enters c She s there for a lesson from the professor d The professor is starting to become young and strong and the young student is getting less energetic and tired e The professor stabs and murders the student f And the maid yells at the professor for making a mess and then they start cleaning up the mess g The doorbell rings again the 41st time it happened e Language Syntax o Ex Diction o Sentence structure o How to say the same thing differently a Alright now you need to concentrate b CONCENRATE o Same message different syntax and way to approach it o Word choice to convey the same meaning o Yeah vs Yes ma am o Same thing but different in way they chose words o Capitalization dashes periods question marks quotation marks etc Punctuation o Convey meaning o Ex Die vs Die o Changes meaning again Good at conveying subtext o Play Betrayl in script o Harold Pinter writes almost completely in subtext o Write vague scripts so actors can really make it their own with blanks f Theme Central message or idea that runs through the whole play Every interaction may change from scene to scene but the core idea should be the same 4 How does this translate into analyzing a production a What is the relationship between the text and the performance b What is the director s production concept c How is it manifesting in the show d How does the playing space work with the show Where is the audience e How are the actors portraying the characters f How do movements and choreography create pictures g How do the design elements convey meaning