BIG DRAMA
DUE TONIGHT
•
•
•
•
Readings:
“Good Morning, Romeo”
“Executive Dance”
Drama (Burroway)
Writings:
• Journals due English 200
• Drama Assignment I:
English 200
• Revision or new work—201,
202
IN-CLASS JOURNAL ASSIGNMENT
People from the Past; Characters from the Future
Most of us have an unsettling memory of another child who loomed
larger than life as we were growing up. Someone we resented, feared,
hated, or envied. It might have been a sibling, a cousin, someone from
the neighborhood or school. Often, that child had the power to make us
take risks we would never have taken on our own or had the power to
make us miserable.
The Exercise:
• Think about your childhood between the ages of six and twelve
and try to recall someone whose memory, even now, has the
power to invoke strong, perhaps negative feelings in you. Write
down details that you remember about this person.—Physical
description, speech patterns, etc. Did you have personal
encounters or did you observe her from a distance?
• Next, if you haven’t seen this person for some years, imagine
what is he/she doing now, where she lives, etc. Be specific.
• If you had a long acquaintance with this person, or still know her,
imagine where she will be ten years from now (25 minutes.)
WRITING DRAMA
In stage drama
• Story is condensed and intensified
• Usually something has happened—inciting event—before the
curtain opens, e.g., Hamlet’s father has died and his mother has
remarried
• Play will present this situation through exposition, e.g., the
watchman report seeing the ghost of Hamlet’s father
• The next stage is the point of attack where the action begins,
e.g. the ghost speaks to Hamlet and demands revenge against
Claudius
WHAT DISTINGUISHES A PLAY
FROM FICTION
• A play is
• Short—it takes much longer to say the words aloud than to
silently read them
• Is an intense form—dialogue must be economical and focused
• Dependent on the appearance of naturalness in the character’s
speech
WHAT THE PLAYWRIGHT MUST
DO
• Provide the imaginative richness of character, situation, and
action on which other artists—directors, designers, and
actors—can build
• Remember that the genre is different from fiction—you lose
the ability to jump from place to place and from past to future;
you also lose the ability to go into the minds of characters.
• Remember that the tradeoff between fiction and drama
requires an act of faith. Your audience does not have the benefit
of reading your script. They, like you, must rely on the
interpretation as it is filtered through the directors, designers
and actors who may know less about your play than you do.
WHAT THE PLAYWRIGHT GAINS
•
•
•
•
Immediacy and expressiveness of live actors
Thrill of an organic collaboration
Stamina against the chance of failure
Ability to feel the emotions of the audience
around you as they laugh or cry with the work
of your imagination!
TERMS AND DEFINITIONS
1. Fourth-Wall Realism—the convention that the audience is “spying”
on what happens through the space where the fourth wall of the
room has been removed
2. Theatricalism-convention that acknowledges that a stage is a stage,
actors are actors, and the audience is audience.
3. Stage directions—scenery sets the tone; since human beings are
meaning-making creatures, we love to interpret and conclude. Thus,
when scenery, clothing, and objects appear onstage, we will read
significance at once. We take them for clues. Avoid stage directions
that use the words, normal, typical, and ordinary. As the playwright,
your stage directions must paint the picture in words (333).
Stage Lie--frequently, what the characters say is at odds with what they wear, handle, or
especially do. A stage lie can be revealed by action or by slips of the tongue,
stumbling, exaggeration—all those verbals clues by which we learn in life that people
are not telling the exact truth (334).
Diegetic Sound and Music—occurs realistically, e.g., someone practices the piano,
sounds of traffic come through the open window,
Nondiegetic Sound—highly stylized, not arising from the action but as an
accompaniment or background to it. For example, a jazz riff covers the blackout
between scenes.
Dramatic Irony—when the audience knows more that the characters do. (scene from
Death of a Salesman, 336).
Ad Lib—actors fill in at their discretion with, for example, greetings to each other or
background mumble.
Soliloquy—the character simply talks to himself, e.g., “To be or Not to be”
Aside—character says one line to another character and another to the air or audience;
the latter usually speaks the character’s true feelings
Voiceover—thoughts are recorded and play over the live scene. Use sparingly, especially
if your basic mode is realistic.
WRITING THEATRICAL
DIALOGUE
• All dialogue is direct– no indirect or summary dialogue
• Exposition is often the most difficult dialogue to write; it’s where you give
the audience the necessary information about what has gone on before the
curtain rise and what the situation is now.
• Most common tradition is to have one character who knows explain it to
another who doesn’t know
• The dialogue between these characters must sound natural so concentrate
on how they feel about it, or disagree about it, so that the information
comes out sideways (incidentally). (See examples on 337.)
• You can also use the theatricalist approach, a highly stylized format where
you have the character come forward and speak directly to the audience.
• Refer to page 338 for recommendations for writing dialogue
CREATING A SCENE
• As with fiction, drama relies on the scene, but for drama, the
focus is on “now”!
• Remember that like your fictional characters, dramatically
drawn characters are motivated; they want something usually
desperately so.
• “ Know what your characters want in life and you will have a
better understanding of what your story is about.” Will Dunne,
playwright
• Each time your characters interact, somebody wants something, and
that is the basis for a dramatic scene.
DUE 26 NOVEMBER
T h e Te n - M i n u t e P l a y : E n g l i s h
200
•
•
•
As you begin, think somewhere in
the middle of a short, short story
and a short story in length and
timing
Write a ten-minute play in which
two characters must somehow
divide up a quantity of goods. Is it
an inheritance? A Divorce? A
charity or garage sale? Belongings
from a newly deceased relative?
Re-read 340-341
Jo u r n a l A s s i g n m e n t s ( A l l )
•
•
Complete 11.4, “Try This,” 335
Naming your Characters: When you name a
baby, there is a risk because you don’t know
how that person will turn out if the name “fits”
he/she-; when you name a fictional character,
there is no excuse if you get it wrong. The
names you choose for fictional characters
should suggest certain traits, social and ethnic
backgrounds, geography and even things that
have yet to occur in your story. Think
Nabokov’s Hubert Humbert and Dickens’
Uriah Heep and Ebenezer Scrooge. The names
you choose have a strong and subtle influence
on how your readers will respond to your
characters.
JOURNALS CONT.
• More examples of Notable Names for Fictional Characters:
• Blanche Dubois (delusional, fragile woman who lives in the past) and
Stanley Kowalski (tough, brutish, working man) from T. Williams’ Streetcar
Named Desire
• The miserable daughter in O’Connor’s “Good Country People” changes
her name from Joy to Hulga.
• In Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees, the three sisters are named May, June, and
August (July is conspicuously missing.)
• The main character in Snow Crash is Hiro Protagonist
• The Exercise:
• Name the following characters, keeping in mind that you can plant, within
a name, a clue to their role in your fiction.
JOURNAL CONT.
• A petty, white-collar thief who robs his boss over several years.
• An envious, bitter woman who makes her sister miserable by systematically
trying to undercut her pleasure and self-confidence, e.g., from the film
Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? The crazy sister and abuser of the invalid
sister is referred to as “Baby Jane,” even though she is an adult; the abused
sister is called Blanche.
• A sweet young man too shy to speak to an attractive man or woman that
he sees every day at work.
• The owner of a fast-food restaurant who comes on to his young female
employees.
• A grandmother who has just won the lottery.
• In addition to naming each character, explain your choice.
DUE 3 DECEMBER
• 1. ten-minute play (English 200)
• 2. New Journal entries—I expect the class to share the naming assignment
(all)
• 3. New readings, “The Lottery” (Handout) and Chekhov’s The Proposal,
342-352 (all)
• Newly revised or hot-off-the-press works (English 201 and 202)
• 4. If 201 and 202 students are conferencing with me on 26 November
(optional), they may turn in their journals; otherwise, I expect them on
12/3.
• 5. English 200 students may pick up their journals on Wednesday 11/26
even if they elect not to conference.