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A Playwright's (Highly Selective) Alphabet It's always a useful exercise to review and re-consider some of the key concepts we use when fabricating a new script. Yes, we all are determined to break new ground at every turn, however, playwrights in the past have discovered that there are some techniques and concepts audiences tend to respond to. And by the same token, there are some mistakes that are made over and over as new generations take their shot at re-inventing the wheel of stagecraft. Break all the rules you want — that's how we move the culture forward. But, let's face it, you can do a better job of breaking the rules, if you know what they are!!! Herewith, in alphabetical order for easy reference, some of the eternal verities that have endured. Use them and soon you will be navigating that new play successfully through the straits of inertia into the safe harbor of a completed first draft, ready to send it on its way into development hell.			SOME USEFUL ON-LINE THEATRICAL GLOSSARIES: Ancient Theatre Archive Japanese Theatre McGraw-Hill Plays In Perpetuity Playwriting 101 Theatrecrafts (Tech) Tupelo Community Theatre* *Recommended
ACTION What characters want and why anyone would bother watching or listening to them for holurs on end. These days, we are all addicted to finding out if other people get or do not get something they really, really want. Coincidentally, we take great pleasure in the prospect that they just might not.
BACKSTORY All the boring stuff you get to leave out of your play because audiences are smart enough to figure out what has already happened to these people that makes them so messed up.
CRISIS Welcome to my world. It's such a comfort to watch other people confronting dire circumstances from which they may never recover. And occasionally we can derive an insight into our own plight(s) by watching how other people deal with theirs. As playwrights, we get to amplify some of our own problems into full-blown life threatening situations for our characters and take some comfort that things are not necessarily as bad for us as they could be. (Well, why do you write plays?)
DIALOGUE How we usually find out what characters on stage have on their minds. They talk to each other (or all-too-frequently, to the audience, in a form known as "direct address", which is actually a monologue, unless some drunk in the front row decides to talk back to a character, in which case you've got a kind of improv uber-meta-dialogue situation on your hands.)
EXPOSITION The bane of a playwright's existence. There are some things you just have to let the audience in on if you want them to have a clue about what your characters are doing and why. For example, you have two characters engaging in sex at the beginning of your play. If one of them then says, "Can I go upstairs and do my homework now, Uncle Harry?", you've told us a great deal. Rather economically. And that's always the trick with exposition — keep it artful. At all costs, avoid having your characters say something like, "I don't want to play this game anymore because you are my uncle!"
FORESHADOWING If a character in a play signs for a FedEx shipment of condoms, somebody better have sex on that stage before the final curtain comes down. Foreshadowing simply means dropping hints. Their function is to make the resolution of a plot feel reasonable and appropriate. The trick is to not give away what is going to happen by foreshadowing that goes clunk - clunk - clunk throughout the play. Clues should hide in full view, and be introduced on a slant. So if that FedEx signature turned out to be about the hunky deliveryman in the cute shorts getting the slutty receptionist's name, rather than erotic precaution, it would still make sense by the end of the play but not in such a predictable way. In either case, however, sex should happen on stage.
GENRE Bloodbath or bed of roses? Where is the ending of your play headed? Answer that question and you begin to dip into the swirling waters of genre. Because once you define one choice, more and more choices present themselves, some related to the story that will unfold, and some with the style or manner in which it is told? Genre can be helpful in envisioning your play, as long as it keeps a healthy distance from generic. In other words, allow genre to be fluid in order to avoid what, in my view, would be the cardinal sin of hack writing — predictability.
To be continued www.standingpoem.com ©2008 Cass Brayton