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Chapter 3: The Playwright. . The nature of playwriting, the qualities that make a fine play, and the process and career of playwriting. What does a playwright do?. The playwright provides the point of origin for nearly every play production...the script.
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Chapter 3: The Playwright. The nature of playwriting, the qualities that make a fine play, and the process and career of playwriting.
What does a playwright do? • The playwright provides the point of origin for nearly every play production...the script. • More and more today, the role of the playwright is to write the play and then to disappear • Today’s playwright is considered an independent artist whose work is executed primarily in isolation.
Some notable playwrights Sophocles 497-406 BCE William Shakespeare 1564-1616
21st Century Americans Tony Kushner Neil La Bute Sarah Ruhl Suzi Lori Parks
We are all playwrights As dreamers, we are all beginning playwrights
WHY a playwright? A playwright “makes” plays as a wheelwright makes wheels or a cartwright makes carts
So, although a literary art, playwriting is much more than an arrangement of words, rather it is a blueprint for a play.
Examples of the playwright’s craft • Oh! Oh! Oh! (Shakespeare’s OTHELLO) • Howl, howl, howl, howl! (KING LEAR) The above are more than text, they are pretexts for great acting... Playwrights use formal literary values that are fully integrated into the whole of the theatrical event
Playwriting as event writing • The core of the play is action...the ordering of observable events that can be dramatized • A series of events forms a PLOT which are expressed using the playwright’s tools • Fundamentally, the playwright works with two tools • Dialogue • Physical action
Events of a play are linked • Chronologically (cause and effect) as in realistic theatre. Such plays are CONTINUOUS in structure and LINEAR in chronology • Many plays are discontinuous and nonlinear as were many of our classic plays which were character-driven and episodic • Shakespeare’s plays shift, time, place and action • Modern and postmodern audiences accept whatever structure the play requires
Credibility and intrigue Death of a Salesman
CREDIBILITY is the audience imposed demand that the play’s actions and characters flow logically and believably • INTRIGUE is that quality of a play that makes us curious to know what will happen next
Speakability • A line of dialogue should be written so that it achieve its maximum impact when spoken...as in this example from Shaw’s MAJOR BARBARA UNDERSHAFT [hugely tickled] You don't say so! What! no capacity for business, no knowledge of law, no sympathy with art, no pretension to philosophy; only a simple knowledge of the secret that has puzzled all the philosophers, baffled all the lawyers, muddled all the men of business, and ruined most of the artists: the secret of right and wrong. Why, man, you're a genius, master of masters, a god! At twenty-four, too!
Stageability • A STAGEABLE script is one which staging and stage business are not adornments but essentials Peter and the Starcatcher
Flow. A play that continuously says something to the audience and is not constantly interrupted by changes of scenery, shifts in time, or too many intermissions.
Richness is not an easy quality to develop in writing It is depth, subtlety, fineness, quality, wholeness and inevitability. Here is an example from Margaret Edson’s Pulitzer-Prize winning play WIT VIVIAN. I don’t mean to complain, but I am becoming very sick. Very, very sick. Ultimately sick, as it were. In everything I have done, I have been steadfast, resolute—some would say to the extreme. Now, as you can see, I am distinguishing myself in illness....What we have come to think of as me is, in fact, just the specimen jar, just the dust jacket, just the white piece of paper that bears the little black marks.
Depth of Characterization Anthony Sher as Richard III PhyliciaRashad as Big Mamain Cat on a Hot, Tin Roof Laurence Olivier as Hamlet
Gravity • A play’s theme must be important... “You just can’t look at it like that. You got to look at the whole thing. Now, you take a fellow go out there, grab hold to a woman and think he got something ‘cause she sweet and soft to the touch. It’s in the world like everything else. Touching’s nice. It feels good. But you can lay your hand upside a horse or a cat, and that feels good tool What’s the difference? When you grab hold to a woman, you got something there....” Roger Robinson as Bynum
Hamlet (Act 3, Scene 1) HAMLET: To be, or not to be--that is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune Or to take arms against a sea of troubles And by opposing end them. To die, to sleep-- No more--and by a sleep to say we end The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to. 'Tis a consummation Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep-- To sleep--perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub, For in that sleep of death what dreams may come When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause. There's the respect That makes calamity of so long life....
Pertinence • The play needs to be relevant to its time. Arthur Miller wrote THE CRUCIBLE in the 1950s during the McCarthy hearings to mirror the witch-hunting frenzy in 1692 New England...
Other qualities • COMPRESSION refers to the playwright’s skill in condensing a story • ECONOMY relates to an author’s skill in eliminating or consolidating characters, events, locales and words • INTENSITY is the result of the playwright’s success in compression and economy AND can take many forms...harsh, abrasive, explosive, calm, physical, etc.
Celebration • Finally, a play celebrates life...relishing the human experience in all its forms
Playwright’s Process • DIALOGUE should sound fresh and authentic as if the words spoken really happened • CONFLICT is at the core of drama, but if forced can come across as ineffective. Events such as discovery, victory, rejection, revelation, separation, or death are climactic scenes in a play and define structure. • STRUCTURE connects the various parts of the play together in a whole...some playwrights work from outlines, others from inspiration, still others from transcripts. But wherever the structure comes from, it needs to “work.”
Playwright’s rewards “The rewards are tangible and intangible. At its best, playwriting is more than a profession and more than just a component of theatre. It is a creative political act that enlarges human experience and enriches our lives...” The Pulitzer Prize Edward Albee withthe TONY Award
Current American Playwrights David Mamet (born 1947) “Race” NYC, 2010
Tony Kushner Born 1956
David Henry Hwang ...was awarded the 1988 Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critics, and John Gassner Awards for his Broadway debut, M. Butterfly, which was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. For his play Golden Child, he received a 1998 Tony nomination and a 1997 OBIE Award. His new book for Rodgers & Hammerstein's Flower Drum Song earned him his third Tony nomination in 2003. He was the book writer of Disney's Tarzan, with score by Phil Collins, and also co-authored the book for Elton John and Tim Rice's Aida, which ran almost five years on Broadway and won four Tony Awards. His most recent work is Chinglish which opens on Broadway this fall. Born 1957
M. Butterfly Chinglish
Joe DiPietro JOE DIPIETRO was most recently represented on Broadway with NICE WORK IF YOU CAN GET IT, a new musical based on the works of George and Ira Gershwin. He won Tony Awards for Best Book and Best Score for MEMPHIS, which was also awarded the 2010 Tony Award, Drama Desk Award and Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Musical. His other shows include ALL SHOOK UP; I LOVE YOU, YOU'RE PERFECT, NOW CHANGE (the longest-running revue in Off-Broadway history: THE TOXIC AVENGER and THE THING ABOUT MEN (both winners of the Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Off-Broadway musical) and FALLING FOR EVE. His plays include the much produced comedy OVER THE RIVER AND THROUGH THE WOODS, THE ART OF MURDER (Edgar Award, Best Mystery Play), CREATING CLAIRE and THE LAST ROMANCE. A New Jersey native, he lives in Manhattan with his pug, Rocco.
Playwriting credits Filthy Talk For Troubled Times (1989) In the Company of Men (1992) Bash: Latter-Day Plays (1999) The Shape of Things (2001) The Distance From Here (2002) The Mercy Seat (2002) Autobahn (2003) Fat Pig (2004) This Is How It Goes (2005) Some Girl(s) (2005) Wrecks (2005) In A Dark Dark House (2007) reasons to be pretty (2008) Helter Skelter & Land of the Dead (2008) The Break of Noon (2010) The New Testament & Helter Skelter (2009) Some White Chick (2009) The Furies (2009) In a Foreset, Dark and Deep (2011) Reasons to be Happy(2013)
Suzan-Lori Parks Born 1964
Lynn Nottage Ruined (2009 Pulitzer Prize) Intimate Apparel (2003) Mother Courage (adaptation)(1998) Crumbs from the Table of Joy (1995) Born 1964
Up close – Arthur Miller Arthur Miller was one of the major dramatists of the twentieth century. In the years before his death he often was called the “greatest living American playwright”. BORN October 17, 1925 DIED February 10, 2005 SOURCE: Marino, Stephen. "Arthur Miller". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 16 May 2008[http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=3116, accessed September 2010.]
He earned this reputation during a career of more than seventy years, from his first plays as an undergraduate at the University of Michigan in the 1930s to his achieved critical success in the 1940s with All My Sons (1947) and Death of a Salesman (1949). In the 1950s he wrote The Crucible (1953) and A View from the Bridge (1955), refused to “name names” at his appearance before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), and had a celebrated marriage to the film actress Marilyn Monroe.
He produced a critically acclaimed autobiography, Timebends (1987), and premiered new plays on Broadway and in London in the 1990s. In the new millennium, Miller remained as active as at the beginning of his career, publishing a collection of essays, Echoes Down the Corridor (2000), and completing two new plays, Resurrection Blues (2002) and Finishing the Picture(2004), which premiered a few months before his death.
Recipient of the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for All My Sons, Death of a Salesman, and A View From the Bridge... ALL MY SONS on Broadway with John Lithgow, Dianne Wiest, Josh Lucas and Katie Holmes (2008).
American Actors in the title role of WILLY LOMAN Brian Dennehy Philip Seymour Hoffman
...the Pulitzer Prize for Death of a Salesman, the Tony Award for All My Sons, Death of a Salesman, The Crucible, and Lifetime Achievement and the Olivier Award for Broken Glass...
...Miller clearly ranks with the other truly great figures of American drama – Eugene O’Neill, Tennessee Williams, and Edward Albee – and the pantheon of great world dramatists, such as Chekov, Strindberg, Shaw and Beckett.
