WEST LOS ANGELES COLLEGE
Theater 130 - Playwriting
PROFESSOR: Martin Zurla
NOTES: Setting The Stage
The following material has been collected to give
you an idea of how other playwrights have noted
their stage setting and additional production
comments. You’ll notice that some of the writers
use extensive notes while others very little. It
all comes down to personal taste and what you feel
- as the playwright - best serves your stage play.
Miss Julie
By August Strindberg
Translated By Harry G. Carlson
CHARACTERS
MISS JULIE, 25 years old
JEAN, her father's valet, 30 years old
KRISTINE, her father's cook, 35 years old
The action takes place in the count's kitchen on midsummer eve.
SETTING. A large kitchen, the ceiling and side walls of which are
hidden by draperies. The rear wall runs diagonally from down left to
up right. On the wall down left are two shelves with copper, iron, and
pewter utensils; the shelves are lined with scalloped paper. Visible
to the right is most of a set of large, arched glass doors, through
which can be seen a fountain with a statue of Cupid, lilac bushes in
bloom, and the tops of some Lombardy poplars. At down left is the
corner of a large tiled stove; a portion of its hood is showing. At
right, one end of the servants' white pine dining table juts out;
several chairs stand around it. The stove is decorated with birch
branches; juniper twigs are strewn on the floor. On the end of the
table stands a large Japanese spice jar, filled with lilac blossoms.
An ice box, a sink, and a washstand. Above the door is an oldfashioned bell on a spring; to the left of the door, the mouthpiece of
a speaking tube is visible.
KRISTINE is frying something on the stove. She is wearing a lightcolored cotton dress and an apron. JEAN enters. He is wearing livery
and carries a pair of high riding-boots with spurs, which he puts down
on the floor where they can be seen by the audience.
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The Importance of Being Earnest
A Trivial Comedy for Serious People
By Oscar Wilde
THE PERSONS OF THE PLAY
JOHN WOR1HING, J.P.
LADY BRACKNELL
ALGERNON MONCRIEFF
GWENDOLEN FAIRFAX
REV. CANON CHASUBLE, D.D.
CECILY CARDEW
MERRIMAN, Butler
MISS PRISM, Governess
LANE, Manservant
THE SCENES OF THE PLAY
ACT I: ALGERNON MONCRIEFF'S Flat in Half Moon Street, W.
ACT II: The Garden at the Manor House, Woolton.
ACT III: Drawing Room at the Manor House, Woolton.
Time-The Present.
ACT I
SCENE: Morning room in ALGERNON'S flat in Half Moon Street. The room
is luxuriously and artistically furnished. The sound of a piano is
heard in the adjoining room.
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Pygmalion
A Romance in Five Acts
By George Bernard Shaw
ACT I
London at 11.15 p.m. Torrents of heavy summer rain. Cab whistles
blowing frantically in all directions. Pedestrians running for shelter
into the portico of St Paul's church (not Wren's cathedral but Inigo
Jones's church in Covent Garden vegetable market), among them a lady
and her daughter in evening dress. All are peering out gloomily at the
rain, except one man with his back turned to the rest, wholly
preoccupied with a notebook in which he is writing.
The church clock strikes the first quarter.
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The Cherry Orchard
A Comedy in Four Acts
By Anton Chekhov
Translated By Constance Garnett
CHARACTERS IN THE PLAY
MADAME RANEVSKY (LYUBOV ANDREYEVNA), the owner of the Cherry Orchard
CHARLOTTA IVANOVNA, a governess
ANYA, her daughter, aged 17
VARYA, her adopted daughter, aged 24
GAEV, brother of MADAME RANEVSKY
LOPAHIN (YERMOLAY ALEXEYEVITCH), a merchant
TROFIMOV (PYOTR SERGEYEVITCH), a student
SEMYONOV-PISHTCHIK, a landowner
EPlHODOV (SEMYON PANTALEYEVITCH), a clerk
FIRS, an old valet, aged 87
YASHA, a young valet
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A VAGRANT
THE STALLION MASTER
A POST-OFFICE CLERK
DUNYASHA, a maid
VISITORS, SERVANTS
The action takes place on the estate of MADAME RANEVSKY.
ACT I
A room, which has always been called the nursery. One of the doors
leads into ANYA'S room. Dawn, sun rises during the scene. May, the
cherry trees in flower, but it is cold in the garden with the frost of
early morning. Windows closed.
Enter DUNYASHA with a candle and LOPAHIN with a book in his hand.
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Six Characters in Search of an Author
A Comedy in the Making
By Luigi Pirandello
English Version By Edward Storer
CHARACTERS OF THE COMEDY IN THE MAKING
THE FATHER
THE BOY
THE MOTHER
THE CHILD
THE STEP-DAUGHTER
THE SON
(The last two do not speak)
MADAME PACE
ACTORS OF THE COMPANY
THE MANAGER OTHER ACTORS AND ACTRESSES
LEADING LADY
PROPERTY MAN
LEADING MAN
PROMPTER
SECOND LADY
MACHINIST
LEAD
MANAGER'S SECRETARY
Ingénue
DOOR-KEEPER
JUVENILE LEAD
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SCENE-SHIFTERS
Daytime. The Stage of a Theatre
The Comedy is without acts or scenes. The performance is interrupted
once, without the curtain being lowered, when the manager and the
chief characters withdraw to arrange the scenario. A second
interruption of the action takes place when, by mistake, the stage
hands let the curtain down.
ACT I
The spectators will find the curtain raised and the stage as it
usually is during the day time. It will be half dark, and empty, so
that from the beginning the public may have the impression of an
impromptu performance.
Prompter's box and a small table and chair for the manager.
Two other small tables and several chairs scattered about as during
rehearsals.
The ACTORS and ACTRESSES of the company enter from the back of the
stage: first one, then another, then two together; nine or ten in all.
They are about to rehearse a Pirandello play: Mixing It Up. Some of
the company move off towards their dressing rooms. The PROMPTER who
has the "book" under his arm, is waiting for the manager in order to
begin the rehearsal.
The ACTORS and ACTRESSES, some standing, some sitting, chat and smoke.
One perhaps reads a paper; another cons his part.
Finally, the MANAGER enters and goes to the table prepared for him.
His SECRETARY brings him his mail, through which he glances. The
PROMPTER takes his seat, turns on a light, and opens the "book."
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The Playboy of the
Western World
By John Millington Synge
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PREFACE
In writing "The Playboy of the Western World," as in my other plays, I
have used one or two words only that I have not heard among the
country people of Ireland, or spoken in my own nursery before I could
read the newspapers. A certain number of the phrases I employ I have
heard also from herds and fishermen along the coast from Kerry to Mayo
or from beggar-women and ballad-singers nearer Dublin; and I am glad
to acknowledge how much I owe to the folk-imagination of these fine
people. Anyone who has lived in real intimacy with the Irish peasantry
will know that the wildest sayings and ideas in this play are tame
indeed, compared with the fancies one may hear in any little hillside
cabin in Geesala, or Carraroe, or Dingle Bay. All art is a
collaboration; and there is little doubt that in the happy ages of
literature, striking and beautiful phrases were as ready to the story
teller's or the playwright's hand, as the rich cloaks and dresses of
his time. It is probable that when the Elizabethan dramatist took his
ink-horn and sat down to his work he used many phrases that he had
just heard, as he sat at dinner, from his mother or his children. In
Ireland, those of us who know the people have the same privilege. When
I was writing "The Shadow of the Glen," some years ago, I got more aid
than any learning could have given me from a chink in the floor of the
old Wicklow house where I was staying, that let me hear what was being
said by the servant girls in the kitchen. This matter, I think, is of
importance, for in countries where the imagination of the people, and
the language they use, is rich and living, it is possible for a writer
to be rich and copious in his words, and at the same time to give the
reality, which is the root of all poetry, in a comprehensive and
natural form. In the modem literature of towns, however, richness is
found only in sonnets, or prose poems, or in one or two elaborate
books that are far away from the profound and common interests of
life. One has, on one side, Mallarme and Huysmans producing this
literature; and on the other, Ibsen and Zola dealing with the reality
of life in joyless and pallid works. On the stage one must have
reality, and one must have joy; and that is why the intellectual modem
drama has failed, and people have grown sick of the false joy of the
musical comedy, that has been given them in place of the rich joy
found only in what is superb and wild in reality. In a good play every
speech should be as fully flavored as a nut or apple, and such
speeches cannot be written by anyone who works among people who have
shut their lips on poetry. In Ireland, for a few years more, we have a
popular imagination that is fiery, and magnificent, and tender; so
that those of us who wish to write start with a chance that is not
given to writers in places where the springtime of the local life has
been forgotten, and the harvest is a memory only, and the straw has
been turned into bricks.
J.M.S.
21st January 1907.
PERSONS IN THE PLAY
OLD MAHON, his father, a squatter
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CHRISTOPHER MAHON
SHAWN KEOGH, her cousin, a young farmer
PHILLY CULLEN AND JIMMY FARRELL, small farmers
MICHAEL JAMES FLAHERTY (called MICHAEL JAMES), a publican
MARGARET FLAHERTY (called PEGEEN MIKE), his daughter
SARA TANSEY, SUSAN BRADY, AND HONOR BLAKE, village girls
A BELLMAN
SOME PEASANTS
WIDOW QUIN, a woman of about thirty
The action takes place near a village, on a wild coast of Mayo. The
first Act passes on an evening of autumn, the other two Acts on the
following day.
ACT I
Country public house or shebeen, very rough and untidy. There is a
sort of counter on the right with shelves, holding many bottles and
jugs, just seen above it. Empty barrels stand near the counter. At
back, a little to left of counter, there is a door into the open air,
then, more to the left, there is a settle with shelves above it, with
more jugs, and a table beneath a window. At the left there is a large
open fireplace, with turf fire, and a small door into inner room.
PEGEEN, a wild-looking but fine girl, of about twenty, is writing at
table. She is dressed in the usual peasant dress.
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The Verge
By Susan Glaspell
PERSONS OF THE PLAY
ANTHONY
TOM EDGEWORTHY
HARRY ARCHER, Claire's husband
ELIZABETH, Claire's daughter
HATTIE, the maid
ADELAIDE, Claire's sister
CLAIRE
DR EMMONS
DICK, Richard Demming
ACT I
The Curtain lifts on a place that is dark, save for a shaft of light
from below which comes up through an open trap- door in the floor.
This slants up and strikes the long leaves and the huge brilliant
blossom of a strange plant whose twisted stem projects from right
front. Nothing is seen except this plant and its shadow. A violent
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wind is heard. A moment later a buzzer. It buzzes once long and three
short. Silence. Again the buzzer. Then from below-his shadow blocking
the light, comes ANTHONY, a rugged man past middle life;-he emerges
from the stairway into the darkness of the room. Is dimly seen taking
up a phone.
ANTHONY: Yes, Miss Claire? - I'll see. (he brings a thermometer to the
stairway for light, looks sharply, then returns to the phone) It's
down to forty-nine. The plants are in danger - (with great relief and
approval) Oh, that's fine! (hangs up the receiver) Fine!
(He goes back down the stairway, closing the trapdoor upon himself;
and the curtain is drawn upon darkness and wind. It opens a moment
later on the greenhouse in the sunshine of a snowy morning. The snow
piled outside is at times blown through the air. The frost has made
patterns on the glass as if-as Plato would have it-the patterns
inherent in abstract nature and behind all life had to come out, not
only in the creative heart within, but in the creative cold on the
other side of the glass. And the wind makes patterns of sound around
the glass house.
The back wall is low; the glass roof slopes sharply up. There is an
outside door, a little toward the right. From out- side two steps lead
down to it. At left a glass partition and a door into the inner room.
One sees a little way into this room. At right there is no dividing
wall save large plants and vines, a narrow aisle between shelves of
plants leads off This is not a greenhouse where plants are being
displayed, nor the usual workshop for the growing of them, but a place
for experiment with plants, a laboratory. At the back grows a strange
vine. It is arresting rather than beautiful. It creeps along the low
wall, and one branch gets a little way up the glass. You might see the
form of a cross in it, if you happened to think it that way. The
leaves of this vine are not the form that leaves have been. They are
at once repellent and significant.
ANTHONY is at work preparing soil-mixing, sifting. As the wind tries
the door he goes anxiously to the thermometer, nods as if reassured
and returns to his work. The buzzer sounds. He starts to answer the
telephone, remembers something, halts and listens sharply. It does not
buzz once long and three short. Then he returns to his work. The
buzzer goes on and on in impatient jerks which mount in anger. Several
times ANTHONY is almost compelled by this insistence, but the thing
that holds him back is stronger. At last, after a particularly mad
splutter, to which ANTHONY longs to make retort, the buzzer gives it
up. ANTHONY goes on preparing soil.
A moment later the glass door swings violently in, snow blowing in,
and also MR HARRY ARCHER, wrapped in a rug.)
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Desire Under the Elms
By Eugene O’Neill
CHARACTERS
EPHRAIM CABOT
SIMEON, PETER and EBEN his sons
ABBIE PUTNAM
YOUNG GIRL, two FARMERS, the FIDDLER, a
SHERIFF, and other folk from the
neighboring farms.
The action of the entire play takes place in, and immediately outside
of, the Cabot farmhouse in New England, in the year 1850. The south
end of the house faces front to a stone wall with a wooden gate at
center opening on a country road. The house is in good condition but
in need of paint. Its walls are a sickly grayish, the green of the
shutters faded. Two enormous elms are on each side of the house. They
bend their trailing branches down over the roof.
They appear to protect and at the same time subdue. There is a
sinister maternity in their aspect, a crushing, jealous absorption.
They have developed from their intimate contact with the life of man
in the house an appalling humaneness. They brood oppressively over the
house. They are like exhausted women resting their sagging breasts and
hands and hair on its roof, and when it rains their tears trickle down
monotonously and rot on the shingles.
There is a path running from the gate around the right comer of the
house to the front door. A narrow porch is on this side. The end wall
facing us has two windows in its upper story, two larger ones on the
floor below. The two upper are those of the father's bedroom and that
of the brothers. On the left, ground floor, is the kitchen-on the
right, the parlor, the shades of which are always drawn down.
PART I
Scene 1
Exterior of the Farmhouse. It is sunset of a day at the beginning of
summer in the year 1850. There is no wind and everything is still. The
sky above the roof is suffused with deep colors, the green of the elms
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glows, but the house is in shadow, seeming pale and washed out by
contrast.
A door opens and EBEN CABOT comes to the end of the porch and stands
looking down the road to the right. He has a large bell in his hand
and this he swings mechanically, awakening a deafening clangor. Then
he puts his hands on his hips and stares up at the sky. He sighs with
a puzzled awe and blurts out with halting appreciation
EBEN: God! Purty! (His eyes fall and he stares about him frowningly.
He is twenty-five, tall and sinewy. His face is well-formed, goodlooking, but its expression is resentful and defensive. His defiant,
dark eyes remind one of a wild animal's in captivity. Each day is a
cage in which he finds himself trapped but inwardly unsubdued. There
is a fierce repressed vitality about him. He has black hair, mustache,
a thin curly trace of beard. He is dressed in rough farm clothes. He
spits on the ground with intense disgust, turns and goes back into the
house. SIMEON and PETER come in from their work in the fields. They
are tall men, much older than their ha brother (SIMEON is thirty-nine
and PETER thirty-seven built on a squarer, simpler model, fleshier in
body, more bovine and homelier in face, shrewder and more practical.
Their shoulders stoop a bit from years of farm work. They clump
heavily along in their clumsy thick-soled boots caked with earth.
Their clothes, their faces, hand bare arms and throats are earthstained. They smell of earth. They stand together for a moment in
front of th house and, as if with the one impulse, stare dumbly up at
the sky, leaning on their hoes. Their faces have a compressed,
unresigned expression. As they look upward, this softens.)
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Our Town
By Thornton Wilder
CHARACTERS (in the order of their appearance)
STAGE MANAGER
DR. GIBBS
JOE CROWELL
HOWIE NEWSOME
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MRS. GIBBS
MRS. WEBB
GEORGE GIBBS
REBECCA GIBBS
WALLY WEBB
EMILY WEBB
PROFESSOR WILLARD
MR. WEBB
WOMAN IN THE BALCONY
MAN IN THE AUDITORIUM
LADY IN THE BOX
SIMON STIMSON
MRS. SOAMES
CONSTABLE WARREN
SI CROWELL
THREE BASEBALL PLAYERS
SAM CRAIG
JOE STODDARD
The entire play takes place in Grover's Comers, New Hampshire.
ACT I
No curtain.
No scenery.
The audience, arriving, sees an empty stage in half-light.
Presently the STAGE MANAGER, hat on and pipe in mouth, enters and
begins placing a table and three chairs downstage left, and a table
and three chairs downstage right. He also places a low bench at the
corner of what will be the Webb house, left.
"Left" and "right" are from the point of view of the actor facing the
audience. "Up" is toward the back wall. As the house lights go down he
has finished setting the stage and leaning against the right
proscenium pillar watches the late arrivals in the audience.
When the auditorium is in complete darkness he speaks:
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Mother Courage and Her Children:
A Chronicle of the Thirty Years' War (1939)
By BERTOLT BRECHT
Translated By Ralph Manheim
Act I
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SPRING, 1624. General Oxenstjerna recruits troops in Dalarna for the
Polish campaign. The canteen woman, Anna Fierling, known as MOTHER
COURAGE, loses a son.
Highway near a city.
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The Children's Hour
By Lillian Hellman
CHARACTERS
PEGGY ROGERS
MRS. LILY MORTAR
EVELYN MUNN
HELEN BURTON
LOIS FISHER
CATHERINE
ROSALIE WELLS
MARY TILFORD
KAREN WRIGHT
MARTHA DOBIE
DOCTOR JOSEPH CARDIN
AGATHA
MRS. AMEUA TILFORD
A GROCERY BOY
SCENE
ACT I: Living room of the Wright-Dobie School. Late afternoon in
April.
ACT II:
Scene I. Living room at MRS. TILFORD'S. A few hours later.
Scene II. The same. Later that evening.
ACT III: The same as Act I. November.
ACT I
SCENE. A room in the Wright-Dobie School for girls, a converted farmhouse eighteen miles from the town of Lancet. It is a comfortable,
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unpretentious room used as an afternoon study-room and at all other
times as the living room.
A large door Left Center faces the audience. There is a single door
Right. Against both back walls are bookcases. A large desk is at
Right; a table, two sofas, and eight or ten chairs. It is early in an
afternoon in April.
AT RISE: MRS. LILY MORTAR is sitting in a large chair Right Center,
with her head back and her eyes closed. She is a plump, florid woman
of forty-five with obviously touched-up hair. Her clothes are too
fancy for a classroom.
Seven girls, from twelve to fourteen years old, are informally grouped
on chairs and sofa. Six of them are sewing with no great amount of
industry on pieces of white material. One of the others, EVELYN MUNN,
is using her scissors to trim the hair of ROSALIE, who sits,
nervously, in front of her. She has ROSALIE'S head bent back at an
awkward angle and is enjoying herself. The eighth girl, PEGGY ROGERS,
is sitting in a higher chair than the others. She is reading aloud
from a book. She is bored and she reads in a singsong, tired voice.
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Endgame
A Play in One Act
By Samual Beckett
THE CHARACTERS
NAGG
NELL
HAMM
CLOV
Bare interior.
Grey light.
Left and right back, high up, two small windows, curtains
drawn.
Front right, a door. Hanging near door, its face to wall, a picture.
Front left, touching each other, covered with an old sheet, two
ashbins.
Center, in an armchair on castors, covered with an old sheet, HAMM.
Motionless by the door, his eyes fixed on HAMM, CLOV. Very red face.
Brief tableau.
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CLOV goes and stands under window left. Stiff; staggering walk. He
looks up at window left. He turns and looks at window right. He goes
and stands under window right. He looks up at window right. He turns
and looks at window left. He goes out, comes back immediately with a
small step-ladder, carries it over and sets it down under window left,
gets up on it, draws back curtain. He gets down, takes six steps (for
example) towards window right, goes back for ladder, carries it over
and sets it down under window right, gets up on it, draws back
curtain. He gets down, takes three steps towards window left, goes
back for ladder, carries it over and sets it down under window left,
gets up on it, looks out of window. Brief laugh. He gets down,
takes one step towards window right, goes back for ladder, carries it
over and sets it down under window right, gets up on it, looks out of
window. Brief laugh. He gets down, goes with ladder towards ashbins,
halts, turns, carries back ladder and sets it down under window right,
goes to ash- bins, removes sheet covering them, folds it over his arm.
He raises one lid, stoops and looks into bin. Brief laugh. He closes
lid. Same with other bin. He goes to HAMM, removes sheet covering him,
folds it over his arm. In a dressing gown, a stiff toque on his head,
a large blood- stained handkerchief over his face, a whistle hanging
from his neck, a rug over his knees, thick socks on his feet, HAMM
seems to be asleep. CLOY looks him over. Brief laugh. He goes to door,
halts, turns towards auditorium.
CLOV (fixed gaze, tonelessly): Finished, it's finished, nearly
finished, it must be nearly finished.
(Pause.)
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Rhinoceros
A Play in Three Acts and
Four Scenes
By Eugène Ionesco
Translated By Derek Prouse
CHARACTERS
JEAN
BERENGER
THE WAITRESS
THE GROCER
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THE GROCER'S WIFE
THE OLD GENTLEMAN
THE LOGICIAN
THE HOUSEWIFE
THE CAFE PROPRIETOR
DAISY
MR. PAPILLON
DUDARD
BOTARD
MRS. BOEUF
A FIREMAN
THE LITTLE OLD MAN
THE LITTLE OLD MAN’S WIFE
And a lot of Rhinoceros heads
ACT I
The scene is a square in a small provincial town. Up-stage, a house
composed of a ground floor and one story. The ground floor is the
window of a grocer's shop. The entrance is up two or three steps
through a glass-paned door. The word EPICERIE is written in bold
letters above the shop window. The two windows on the first floor are
the living quarters of the grocer and his wife. The shop is up-stage,
but slightly to the left, not far from the wings. In the distance a
church steeple is visible above the grocer's house. Between the shop
and the left of the stage there is a little street in perspective. To
the right, slightly at an angle, is the front of a cafe. Above the
cafe, one floor with a window; in front, the cafe terrace; several
chairs and tables reach almost to center stage. A dusty tree stands
near the terrace chairs. Blue sky; harsh light; very white walls. The
time is almost mid-day on a Sunday in summertime. JEAN and BERENGER
will sit at one of the terrace tables.
The sound of church bells is heard, which stop a few moments before
the curtain rises. When the curtain rises, a woman carrying a basket
of provisions under one arm and a cat under the other crosses the
stage in silence from right to left. As she does so, the GROCER'S WIFE
opens her shop door and watches her pass.
GROCER'S WIFE: Oh that woman gets on my nerves! (To her husband who is
in the shop) Too stuck-up to buy from us nowadays.
(The GROCER'S WIFE leaves; the stage is empty for a few moments.
JEAN enters right, at the same time as BERENGER enters left. JEAN is
very fastidiously dressed: brown suit, red tie, stiff collar, brown
hat. He has a reddish face. His shoes are yellow and well-polished.
BERENGER is unshaven and hatless, with unkempt hair and creased
clothes; everything about him indicates negligence. He seems weary,
half-asleep; from time to time he yawns.)
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