The Art and Craft of Playwriting

by Jeffery Hatcher

  EXERCISES

  1. Return to the situation you established in the earlier exercises. Maybe you've already thought about some of the things the characters might say to get what they want. Maybe not. After all, if a character's goal is to steal a bag of money, pulling a gun and grabbing the cash might be the quickest, most effective means. But write a scene that doesn't depend on physical action or props. Put two characters in conflict over an object—a jewel, a diary, a letter, a photo, whatever. What can each character say to the other to get the object? Be clever. Be imaginative. What could your protagonist say to get what he or she wants?

  2. Look at your dialogue. Did you use active verbs (“Give me that letter or I'll strangle you”)? Or did you rely primarily on descriptive passages emphasizing nouns and adjectives (“That letter reminds me of a long-lost love, like a memory of a delicate flower”)? As we discussed in this section, active verbs are what drive the best dialogue. Look at great lines and passages from famous plays. Find the verbs within the sentences. You'll be amazed at the number of active verbs writers use and how the verbs provoke actions and reactions on the part of other characters. If your own dialogue seems to lack active verbs, rewrite your scene to include them as much as possible.

  3. Write a one-page scene of dialogue in which every exchange regarding the conflict contains a verb. (Example: “I want you to give me that letter.” “Only if you leave this room.” “Not unless you turn your back first.”)

  MUSIC

  When Aristotle wrote his Poetics, music was an integral part of the classical Greek theater. The dialogue of the time was not spoken but rather sung. Music has always played a major part in the theater—as song, as music for dance, in opera, in musicals and as incidental music. Remember when we defined theater, in part, as the sensory appreciation of live performance? Music has great power in our lives. We respond to music in physical, emotional and intellectual ways. Music feeds the human spirit, and the smart playwright includes music to the sensory experience of his play. Many of Shakespeare's plays contain songs. Hamlet includes the eerie song Ophelia sings before her death. Othello has Iago's devilish drinking song.

  Vaudeville, burlesque, melodrama (literally “melody” and “drama” folded together) kept music a part of the theater well into the early twentieth century. The piano player situated in his pit or off to the side of the rehearsal hall is a staple theatrical image. The great musicals of the Broadway stage started early in the century with George M. Cohan. But it was with the landmark 1926 production of Jerome Kern's and Oscar Hammerstein's Show Boat that the modern American musical was born. Show Boat was the first “book-musical”—a musical that alternated between songs, dance numbers and a written, dialogue-driven plot. The genius of Show Boat, however, was that its music and lyrics also moved the story. Songs like “Can't Help Loving That Man of Mine” and “Old Man River” were not only beautiful melodies with moving lyrics that depicted the lives of the characters, they also constituted actions that moved the story. Oscar Hammerstein's work on Show Boat revolutionized the American musical theater.

  Music still plays a large part in the contemporary theater, and not just within the traditional “musical.” Many playwrights explicitly include music in their “nonmusical” plays—the haunting melody Arthur Miller required for Death of a Salesman comes to mind, as do the incidental score Richard Peaselee composed for the Peter Brook production of Marat/Sade and Christopher Durang's The Marriage of Bette and Boo.

  There are many dramatic ways to represent music onstage:

  • Hedda's last trill at the piano, the trill that so annoys her husband George and her rival Mrs. Elvstead, before she shoots herself at the end of Hedda Gabler.

  • The eerie whistling of the killer in Emlyn Williams' thriller Night Must Fall.

  • The “ta-rum-ta-rum” Masha and Vershinin hum to each other as a kind of lover's code in Anton Chekhov's The Three Sisters.

  • The pulsating, scatological chant that punctuates the end of the first act of Caryl Churchill's satire about greedy financiers, Serious Money.

  Unfortunately, as we move deeper into the twentieth century it's fair to note that most plays do not include music. Nonetheless, Aristotle's fifth element shouldn't be dropped from the list. In fact, we can stretch the definition of music. We can stretch it to include sound.

  Language is about the words. But the sound of those words can be musical. A line from Othello (“She loved me for the battles I had fought, and I loved her that she did pity them.”) sounds beautiful to the ear—its cadence, its combination of vowels and consonants, its balance—devoid of its intellectual and emotional meaning. The active sound of typewriters in Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur's newspaper comedy The Front Page or the clamp of horses' hooves in Equus or the sinister tap of a golf putter on a frightened man's glasses in Sam Shepard's True West all have a musical sense. Strategically placed sound can have tremendous theatrical effect.

  One of my most memorable theatrical experiences took place at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis in 1979. In Barbara Field's adaptation of nineteenth-century Russian playwright Nikolai Gogol's satire of love and courtship Marriage, a bachelor played by Peter Michael Goetz had a habit of petulantly kicking a wall. His kicks had an odd rhythm. At the end of the play, his fiancée is waiting for him at the wedding banquet. The audience knows the bachelor has run off. What we hear on the sound system is the rapid clip of his horses' hooves as they gallop away. The rhythm of the hooves is the same as his odd kicks heard earlier in the play. The Guthrie's sound system was sensurround—in-the-round—and the audience heard the hooves gallop around them, as if the horses were circling the house, torturing the weeping bride. And at the end of the play, in a marvelous coup de theatre, all the champagne corks on the wedding banquet table popped off together, at once, on cue.

  One more example: Silence can be musical.

  Look at the plays of Harold Pinter and study his precise arrangement of pauses and silences. The impact of what is not heard—like an expected action that does not take place—is often as theatrical and dramatic as what is.

  In the theater, as in life, audiences need music. Imagine our lives without it. A baby falls asleep to a lullaby. A teenager cries along with a love song. An old man hums a tune from a half-remembered symphony. A percussive rhythm makes a woman leap to her feet and dance.

  Music is a vital part of the human experience, just as it remains a key ingredient of Aristotle's six elements. And the playwright who ignores the impact music provides in terms of vitality, melody, mood, and elucidation of character and action ignores what is often the very spirit and soul of a theatrical/dramatic experience.

  EXERCISES

  1. Go back to your dramatic situation. What opportunities for music are afforded you by this situation? Could either of your characters sing? Or play an onstage instrument? Is there a band nearby? An orchestra? A radio? Could someone whistle or tap out a rhythm on a table?

  2. If you could include music in your scene, what function would it perform? Would it tell us about the time period or setting? Would it create mood? Would it be an action? How might you use a song to perform an action? Maybe it's a love-affair code like the one Chekhov used in The Three Sisters. Maybe it has an emotional effect, like “As Time Goes By” does in Casablanca. Maybe it's used as an irritant, something to provoke another character. Write a scene involving conflict. Write in a cue for music. Make it depict the setting or time period. (Example: “We hear the sound of a radio broadcast of 1930s dance music.”) Now write a scene where an onstage instrument is played for dramatic effect. Now write a scene where a character sings all or part of a song to provoke an action on the part of a second character.

  3. What sounds lend themselves to your scene? Think of the setting. Think of props. Almost any object can have a dramatic sound if placed within the proper context. How can sounds be used by a character to achieve goals? Write a scene that utilizes everyday items (shoes, pencils, bottles, buckets of water, e
tc.) that can have an aural impact. How could a character use the sounds these objects make to provoke another character?

  SPECTACLE

  In Aristotle's time, spectacle referred to what was seen onstage, and what was seen onstage in fifth century B.C. Greece was often spectacular—lead players wearing masks and robes, the sweep of the Chorus. Big stuff. But it's easy to confuse the concept of spectacle with that of bigness. Let me define spectacle this way: It's whatever looks neat onstage. Some examples:

  • The Greek Chorus majestically entering the stage in Oedipus.

  • The swordfight at the end of Hamlet.

  • The intricate, moving, mechanical stage designs that Inigo Jones created for playwright Ben Jonson's seventeenth-century Stuart court plays, or “masques.”

  • The first time “real” furniture appeared onstage in Restoration comedy when a playwright attempted to make eighteenth-century London audiences identify with the social and material aspirations of his characters; a love seat in Richard Sheridan's comedy of manners The School for Scandal may have had the same spectacular visual impact in the 1700s that the famous helicopter does in the today's musical Miss Saigon.

  • A dance number from the musical Guys and Dolls.

  • A puppet show.

  • A box that transforms itself into many things in the course of a play (see Shel Silverstein's comedy The Box).

  • A single match lit in the darkness in Bill Corbett's nightmarish political satire Motorcade.

  Remember the sensory definition of theater. Spectacle makes the audience say “Wow.” A big wow or a small one—it's all context. Miss Saigon is a big musical filled with big visual moments—marches, dances, onstage cars, etc. Miss Saigon needs something as big as its famous helicopter to make an impression. Because the show has challenged itself and upped-the-ante, its spectacle impact demands a grander scale. It's the same with the falling chandelier in The Phantom of the Opera.

  On a bare stage, spectacle takes on a different meaning on a different scale. Trevor Nunn's famous eight-hour version of the Royal Shakespeare Company's The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, adapted by David Edgar from Charles Dickens' novel, utilized every theatrical trick in the book. Actors “played” animals, children and soldiers. Actors “played” a stagecoach. Actors “played” a wall. That's spectacle.

  Sometimes spectacle is achieved by a small gesture. In the premier production of Bill Corbett's Motorcade, two actors portrayed dozens of characters in a small midwestern town. The sight of two gifted impersonators changing character before our very eyes—by just a shift in body-language, an alteration of expression, a lowering of voice and flick of rhythm—was spectacle enough. But at one point, the lights lowered to darkness and one of the actors, Corbett himself, struck a match. The effect—the scrape of the match, the spark, the flash of blue, then the tiny ball of yellow and red as the pinpoint of fire illuminated Corbett's devilish transformation into one of his more diabolical characters—was stunning. Aural. Visual. Dramatic. Spectacle.

  Props such as the match are often useful in creating stage spectacle. Guns, swords, pens, flags, letters—all have a power onstage. Sometimes a prop has a dramatic purpose as well as a theatrical/spectacle purpose. The latchkey that is used in Frederick Knott's Dial “M” for Murder is dramatic because its use by Tony Wendice in the play's final moments proves Tony's guilt. Tony had earlier lent the key to the hired murderer. And it's theatrical because we hear the key enter the lock, and then see Tony enter the flat, key in hand. In Elizabeth Egloff's romantic drama The Swan, a woman and a man toss a full beer bottle back and forth a number times, but they don't spill a drop. The spectacle comes from our knowledge that this is happening live, and that the actors could drop the bottle. It's not a movie; there aren't any retakes. The “live” aspect of such an action lends the bottle toss its spectacular quality.

  Spectacle can be about the human form and the physical/spatial relationship onstage between human beings. Remember: Always show instead of tell. What will an audience think if a man says he hates the woman he is arguing with and then grabs her hand and kisses her? The physical action will counteract the verbal expression. Physical gesture in theater can be as grand as a wave of actors doing battle onstage in Shakespeare's Henry V, and it can be as small as a woman reaching out a hand towards her husband in J.B. Priestley's An Inspector Calls. In the right dramatic and theatrical contexts, both gestures are huge. That wave of soldiers and their patterns of battle will determine the fate of nations and the futures of many characters we've grown to care about in Shakespeare's play. That woman has been depicted in An Inspector Calls as an icy, imperious grande dame; when she is forced to reach out for her husband, we see in her gesture the desperation, the fear, and the tender need beneath her armor. Spectacular.

  Because spectacle is primarily a visual element—framed action, as it were—it's important that you study visual depictions of dramatic scenes. Look at models and drawings of famous theater designs. Look at photographs of nineteenth and twentieth century stage productions. Look at paintings that render dramatic characters, settings and actions: religious paintings, family portraits, representations of historical events—battles, executions, picnics, marriage proposals, surrenders and last rites. Spectacle is vital to an audience's senses, as sight is to a person's comprehension and enjoyment of the world. It is seeing, and spectacle is most firmly connected to the concept of the theater as a place for seeing.

  EXERCISES

  1. Imagine the stage picture you've created for your confrontation scene, the one between your protagonist and antagonist. What possibilities exist for spectacle? Could there be a violent disruption of the stage picture? Could something explode onstage, be destroyed onstage, come through a wall, turn the set upside down? Could something be constructed onstage? Could there be a dance? An embrace? A fight? Write the scene with this in mind.

  2. Think in terms of props again. What do they lend themselves to? Imagine a waving American flag, or a spinning full-length mirror, or a book catching fire. Write your scene with one prop used as an instrument of dramatic spectacle.

  3. Think in terms of the body. What can the body do by itself—without props—that has visual force and meaning onstage? Can the body transform itself into another person or object? Can it be shaped onstage, like a sculpture? What actions can be depicted by the body? What meaning can be derived from the actions? A crippled girl “dances” in Peter Nichols' Joe Egg. Actors pretend to be horses in Equus. A crazy minister gets on the floor and acts like bacon frying in Christopher Durang's The Marriage of Bette and Boo. Write your scene with the transformative nature of the human body in mind; make the body do something spectacular.

  PUTTING ARISTOTLE TOGETHER

  The great plays of Western drama employ all six of Aristotle's elements. There is a constant handoff of elements, often many working together at a single moment. I'd like to detail one famous example of a dramatic scene that employs all six elements at the same time to great dramatic effect. It is at the end of A Doll's House, Henrik Ibsen's famous 1879 play about Nora, the “little bird” of a housewife whose involvement in a blackmail plot finally results in a discovery of her own power and possibilities, which in turn causes her to leave her husband, Helmer. Here are the last lines and stage directions of A Doll's House.

  HELMER: This is the end then! Nora, will you never think of me any more?

  NORA: Yes, of course. I shall often think of you and the children and this house.

  HELMER: May I write to you, Nora?

  NORA: No. Never. You mustn't do that.

  HELMER: But at least you must let me send you—

  NORA: Nothing. Nothing.

  HELMER: But if you should need help—?

  NORA: I tell you, no. I don't accept things from strangers.

  HELMER: Nora—can I never be anything but a stranger to you?

  NORA: (Picks up her bag) Oh, Torvald! Then the miracle of miracles would have to happen.

&n
bsp; HELMER: The miracle of miracles?

  NORA: You and I would both have to change so much that—oh, Torvald, I don't believe in miracles any longer.

  HELMER: But I want to believe in them. Tell me. We should have to change so much that—?

  NORA: That life together between us two could become a marriage. Goodbye. (NORA exits)

  HELMER: Nora! Nora! Empty! She's gone! (A hope strikes him) The miracle of miracles—?

  (The street door is shut downstairs.)

  Curtain

  Did you find the six elements? Let's take them one by one:

  Character—The moment defines Nora. Her decision to leave Torvald—a shocking moment in both the history of drama and the history of gender politics—is a turning point for her character, the culmination of all her previous history and actions, and a launching pad for the person she will be for the rest of her life.

  Action—Nora's departure is the key action of the play. Nora's act changes not only her own life, but the lives of her family. It is the result of all of the play's previous actions, and no other acts on the part of any of the characters will ever be the same because of it.

  Ideas—Shocking then and still startling today, Nora's exit is a philosophical rallying point for a discussion of the role of women in modern society. What is a wife? What is a family? What duties and responsibilities do husbands and wives have to each other? And does the act of one woman—the act of one Nora leaving her Torvald—have a societal impact greater than her simple exit would suggest? Does it create repercussions in the audience? No idea engendered by any of Ibsen's other writings was ever as impressively wrought, discussed, debated and dramatized as Nora's exit.