Intermission
a creative coffee break from writing the play

If you are looking for a seminar on "how to write a play," this blog is not the place.

There are other places you can go, like Richard Tuscan’s "The Playwriting Seminars."

There is no great book on playwriting, except maybe, Lojas Ejri’s The Art of Dramatic Writing.

And, of course, Aristotle’s Poetics.

Stuart Spencer’s The Playwright’s Guidebook is pretty good. Albee likes it.

Jeffrey Hatcher’s The Art and Craft of Playwriting is decent.

There are tons of ‘em. All you have to do is search Amazon books, or go to the library.

The best book on writing ten minute plays, if that’s your thing, is Gary Garrison’s The Perfect Ten.

For good measure, read Gary’s The New, Improved Playwright’s Survival Guide: Keeping the Drama In Your Work and Out of Your Life.

A lot of people think they can write a play. The best play you’ve written is not your first, or even your second. There just aren’t that many Margeret Edsons of you out there.

Take a class. Learn play structure. Yes, there’s a structure. You can’t throw it away until you know what it is.

The best advice I can give you, which most of you won’t take:  See as many plays as you can.

What kind of playwright never attends the theatre?

I took a foray into screenwriting that lasted about three years. Not unusual for playwrights to undertake film writing. A lot of us seem to be writing for television, too.

I didn’t plan it. It just came over me one evening. A story announced itself in the way that stories do. A story that clearly wanted to be a movie and not a play. And so I wrote it. It’s a strange story, and trust me, no one even wanted to talk to me about it. If I could figure out how to pick up a camera, making it myself is the only way it will get done. As my first film script, it’s highly flawed by the laws of filmmakers. And very ‘talkie’ of course. I wish I knew how to either adapt this to the stage, or how to re-write it as a film. There’s this cat that plays far too an important role in the story. I love the story as it is too much to change it. That is problematic in and of itself.

To someone accustomed to writing plays, screenwriting is something like a foreign language. After much study and humiliation, I’ve gotten I’m better at being more visual on the page. I still miss visual opportunities and talk, talk, talk. While I believe myself to be a highly visual theatre artist, that doesn’t translate into a screen experience. My stage visuals are stark, sparing, and fluid. Sometimes somewhat surreal.

My second film script felt, to me, more salable. Still very much not a story for stage. The story was dark and morose and ultimately an independent film in tone. I realized after some experiences with this script, I was not a writer looking for a job in screenwriting. I don’t want someone else telling me what to write. I mean, I can do that, sure. I like telling my own stories. I want to tell my own stories. To do that….well…I’m not sure I have it, yet, in me to pick up a camera myself. That’s what it will take, I know now.

After my third film script, I realized I had written something that ultimately would make a great play, and returned to my senses and put my energies back into playwriting. The Safe Group was happy to see me leave filmwriting behind, having tolerated this long extended vacation away from playwriting longer than they cared to.

Somehow learning a bit of screenwriting opened up my playwriting. It’s allowed me to be bigger in my stage choices, more complex in my theatrical visuals. And while I’m not exploring filmmaking at this juncture, MBH and I are working on an experiment for the smaller screen. Its slow going, in between all our other individual projects, and lots of fun. I’m not supposed to talk about it. We agreed. Hopefully he won’t kick me for saying even that much.

Act two of the play is not yet done. Almost, almost, almost, almost there.

Act one resculpted. Now, to see how it all tranforms Act two.

There is a complex conversation, or rather, argument, that takes place in my head, filled with a multitude of opposing voices. One voice freaks, “Oh no, you did WHAT? You cut that whole subplot? I’ll never be able to recover from that.” Another one, says, “Don’t worry. Don’t pay attention. Just keep moving.” Others leap up for attention, “Over here, over here! This way!” The first voice is me. The second voice is the story. The rest of the voices are all the characters living in the play.

Thank God I’m a writer and there’s some place for all those voices to go.

All of us, at one point or another, has met The Writer’s Editor. This is the ‘me’ voice, I’m sure. It’s the part of the Writer that tries to retain control over the material. The Writer’s Editor never finishes a play, a novel, a poem, a story. The Writer’s Editor is death to creativity.

In reality, The Writer’s Editor is good for tweaking dialogue, correcting spelling, following format. Remember that.

Tossing ‘me’ arguments aside, and diving back in. Today we finish the re-write of Act two.

Nothing stays the same.

Someone has approached us (AKA The Safe Group) about producing a series of script in hand performances. “Do it professionally, do it simply,” The Producer Man says. Thus far we’ve agreed to a limited test run, to see how well it comes together. This is not the first time someone has approached the SG. It is the first time we’ve said yes.

There is concern The PM may not understand or respect the Sanctity of the Workshop. Not understanding The Workshop is where our new plays come into being, and interference is not tolerated. The SG is inconoclastic by nature and will resist attempts to organize us too formally. Sounds crazy, yet is true. As individuals, we’ve all been badly burned by other producing theatre groups we’ve been in.

Of course, we write plays we want to see brought to life. Of course! That is a given. We are not, however, very good producers, collectively. Some playwrights are. We are not them.

We’re a mixed bag in any venture. We believe the only way The PM’s idea will work is if we have fun. If it’s not, we’ll fail.

I’m looking forward to fun.