On Writing

“It’s just as hard to write a terrible play as it is to write a good one.” I’m paraphrasing, but that was a very wise comment from John Longenbaugh, a Seattle playwright who recently published Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Christmas Carol, as well as a collection of short plays, Arcana. It doesn't summarize everything we talked about, but it certainly offers a nice, shiny example of the level of discourse we enjoyed at our playwright's Q&A last night. Don't forget, we have an event with managing and artistic directors of Seattle theatre companies coming up in August, as well. Details are here. 

We covered a lot of ground, from dealing with writer’s block (or if it even exists) to where you write, how you write (although we didn’t get to WHY we write really), and just how much stage direction you should include and whether you can “director-proof” your plays. 

In summary, when we asked each writer for their words of wisdom, we got this:

Louise Penberthy, regarding submitting plays to theatres, said to do your homework. You get better results with research that results in a cover letter and blurb directed at the company and why your play would be ideal for them and their audience. She’s been told that one of the many “rules” of writing is that you have to capture your reader in the first ten minutes. But, she made sure to point out, “you don’t have to capture everyone, just the right one.”

Louise collects and distributes a lot of wisdom like this via her website, playwrightsmuse.com. 

John said, “Writing a play is not about the elements (dialogue, stage direction, etc) as much as it is about holding the audience for a set period of time. That’s the game you play with the audience. It’s the game they come to play with you. Bad plays are written by writers who don’t understand this.”

Beau said, “Everyone will tell you what works and what to do. Most creative writing books and classes are on what works for the writer or teacher, and therefore it will have to work for you. That’s completely inaccurate. Find what works for you and keep doing it and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. 

Secondly, you have to have confidence in what you’re doing. If you aren’t sitting down excited about what you’re doing and sure that you’re going to kick ass and take names, then why bother? Especially when you’re starting out, you’re going to have to be your own cheerleader.”

Scott Herman said that what works best is writing real characters and real situations that are relatable to an audience. He also said, “Praise is useless. I want to know what you hate.”

Looking Back and Choosing Scripts

First thing's first, join us for a free event next Wednesday. We'll be doing a panel discussion and Q&A with some local playwrights: https://www.facebook.com/events/469168343168988/

As our Seattle stand of Two Rooms wound down, and as we prepped our Lakewood performance, I couldn’t help but reflect on the show, mulling things over, what worked, what could have worked better, what I wanted that we didn’t get, and so on. 

There’s a truism that says a large percentage of the director’s work can be done with good casting. It seems I have a pretty good knack/gut/something for casting, and I can attest the truism is, in fact, true. Casting four people who wound up getting along as well as our cast did made things run very smoothly, and the actors also brought great instincts and openness and generally just made my job easier.

Beyond that, after talking with Two Rooms’ stage manager, and our regular board op, Taylor “Swoop” Buhrman, I realized that there were a couple decisions I made even before we started rehearsals that helped shape the show dramatically.

The script calls for Michael to only be on stage during his monologues. In the script, and in the original production, his entrances and exits are clearly indicated, which helps establish that the two rooms are not the same space. At the end of the show, there is an illusion that he passes out of the room, indicating his mortal state. 

We decided that instead of Michael being constantly represented by his mat, Michael would be represented by, well, Michael. Maybe it’s a bit of a cheat, but his presence on stage made things a lot more immediate for the other actors, and it felt like it raised the stakes. 

Speaking of raising the stakes, the script also calls for Michael to wear a blindfold and handcuffs. The original production was done for very big houses, not small ones like Eclectic Theater, so it makes sense that you wouldn’t want to cover the actor’s mouth, wouldn’t want to muffle his voice. We put Michael in a hood and shackles. The hood is so much more iconic, in my mind, more indicative and more powerful as an image of a hostage, it’s something that, post 9-11, seems more ingrained as the image we expect. The shackles, with a weight and heft to them, indicated via subconscious shorthand that let you know just how desperate Michael’s situation was. 

These next two factors weren’t command decisions, they evolved from the casting process, but having Ellen, the State Department rep, played by an actress almost 20 years younger than the script calls for, and casting Walker as a woman, not a man, as the script calls for, both strongly affected the dynamics of the show. 

The combination of the above factors, Michael on stage, the hood and shackles, the casting, affected what Two Rooms would be before rehearsals really even started. 

This has turned into a different blog post, I was going to talk about some of the magic moments of the play (see this entry instead), but I’m going off on a different topic, apparently. 

The conversation with Taylor grew into me talking about flexibility in scripts. In case the above doesn’t make it very obvious, I take scripts very seriously, but I tend to take stage directions as suggestions rather than essential. One of the things I liked most about Proof was how little the writer, David Auburn, dictated what happened on stage. There were almost no examples of emphasis on dialogue, like putting (heatedly) before a line to indicate temperament, and so on. To me that’s what emphasis like italics and exclamation points are for, to say nothing of the context of the conversation. If the writer does his or her job, I shouldn’t need you to tell me the character is pissed if the line is “Go fuck yourself.”

One of the reasons why Shakespeare is adapted so much into different settings isn’t just because you don’t have to pay royalties, it’s because there’s precious little in the script other than entrances and exits, so you can hijack the script and do what you want with it. Different writers have different approaches to how much detail in addition to dialogue goes into scripts, and some of them resonate more strongly with me than others.

For example, as I understand it, Stephen King’s screenplays describe the exact shots and visuals that he wants on the screen. He wants to show you the picture in his head. He also usually works strongly in collaboration with whoever’s making the movie, so that communication may save time. Conversely, I find that directors who write their own material often do minimal scripts, as all the ideas are in their head anyway, so why waste time making it explicit?

When I direct a play, I set out to do my version of the play, I’m telling someone else’s story, but just like if I were reading a book aloud, I’d choose how to interpret what the characters sound like, how they talk, and so on, I direct plays to tell my version of that story, or at least show that story through my lens. Accordingly, the more a writer tries to force a director to do HIS version of that story, the less interested in it I am.

I have two simple rules of thumb when I sit down to read scripts at this stage of Confrontational’s existence. If I open a script, even if I’m excited to read it, and the cast is 10 people, let alone more, I’ll put it back. We don’t have the budget to rent a space that will hold that many actors, so why read a script that gets me really, really excited when I can’t logistically do it yet? It’s one reason why you probably won’t see us do Shakespeare any time soon. (Another reason is that there are plenty of other companies that do the ‘Speare very well already. In fact, I feel that way about musicals and comedies, too, there are lots of folks who do those exceptionally well.)

The other rule, the one that relates to all my talk of scripts and stage direction, is about dictation. If the first page of the script is nothing but description of how the stage should look (I’m pretty sure I’m thinking specifically of Pinter’s The Caretaker, but there are lots of examples), if you spend hundreds of words setting stuff up before you even get to the play itself...then I’m not likely to be excited to do your play. Your script and I will probably not get along. 

On the flip side of that, I do at least save myself the hypocrisy of writing scripts the way I want to see them. This is helped by the fact that I assume a lot of money isn’t going to be involved, so I keep things simple, and if someone wanted to do a really complicated version of one of my play scripts, they’d be welcome to, but they wouldn’t HAVE to. It’s fun to see other people’s interpretations anyway, as when Kerry Christianson directed my one act Two Stories, or when my dad suggested that the letters in our Veteran’s Day show could be read by people at home (parents, spouses, kids, so on) rather than the soldiers themselves. That really hit me in the gut, it had never occurred to me, and the potential for wildly different interpretations of some pieces by doing that seems outstanding. 

One of the things that comes from doing things like attending the Blood Ensemble theatre salon (ask me about it, it’s rad!), doing Q&As, evaluating other shows, and explaining what I’m looking for and why or why not, it helps crystallize things for me, helps clarify why I do this in the first place. And now you know some of what I’ve been able to solidify. Go team!