Tag: Playwriting

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London III

Hello, hello, I’m a bit late posting this week, life, as it does, has been beginning to get in the way, less and less time to squeeze things in, so obviously, the immediately productive things, like scene writing and play reading, come first, blog writing, and apparently, sentence structure, latterly so. The third trip down to London this time, and the second half of the Natural History Museum (see the picture – ironically enough, very relevant to later, you’ll see!), before schlepping through the rain to the RC. I would be tempted to write a much shorter entry had the session been run of the mill, but it actually offered a really useful and refreshing systematic approach to playwriting. Not to say that the rest isn’t extremely useful, it’s just having taken part in quite a few workshops with TWP and the MPhil, it was excellent to hear a wholly new approach. The worst thing is I can’t for the life of me remember the name or the exact position of the woman who led the session! Suffice to say she’s high up in the literary dept. (she may have been the head of it). Anyway, what was so refreshing about what was in essence, a structural seminar, was that instead of admitting grudgingly that ‘yes the 3 act structure is mainly for films, though there is currency in it, and although Aristotle was a very very long time ago and writing in a different world, he makes a lot of sense, if you look at it objectively’ she pretty much threw that out the window straight away, and then crucially, she offered an alternative. The Storm Play. She suggested that the best, greatest , and earth shattering plays are Storm plays, plays that admit life to be chaotic, indivisible, and as unpredictable as the weather. Following on from Brook’s assertion that ‘theatre is life concentrated’ (I’m probably paraphrasing) she suggested that we think in organic terms, about plays as living systems, as unpredictable and volatile as the weather/the global economy/the political arena etc. There are 4 key definitions of a living system:

  1. They exist on the edge of chaos – they are ever changing (and never in the ‘equilibrium’ that the life-manuals so desire (equilibrium=death!))
  2. They are dynamic and never stay still – there is high and low pressure, energy moves out and in. (think entrances/exists/catalysts/characters)
  3. They move constantly between order and disorder – moments of change provoke evolution. Disorder is the place where change happens. (and follows on from the previous point)
  4. They respond to disturbances by rearranging their patterns- the system is pushed to a point where either it must change or die (both of these are possible outcomes). In Chekhov’s The Seagull, the suicide is caused by the character’s inability to adapt.

Thus the idea of (not entirely discarding the 3 act structure, but changing the structural emphasis to) the ‘storm’ in a play, was posed as a manner of thinking about playwriting. To consider your job as constructing a living system, to acknowledge that you cannot direct that system, only put pressure on it and disturb it in order that you discover the edges, and find your way to the eye of the storm (heart of your play). You can also consider this on a smaller scale- in dialogue- dialogue can be seen quite easily as a living system – good dialogue is under pressure (else why speak?), it is dynamic, it moves between order and disorder and rearranges itself according to the characters’ intentions- we talk in order to change people – which is (apparently I have no source for this and it’s too late to look) an evolutionary imperative.

It was a very interesting a quite releasing approach to playwriting, I have to say that I have always felt incredibly bogged down by thought on act structure- forcing plays into boxes, obviously plays need structure- I’m not going all hippy about this, but the session sort of articulated and made ok, something I have always felt I was failing slightly at- strict structure. An organic approach, seems much more sensible, and at this stage in my writing, very useful.

There is more to talk about in terms of the scene that I’ve been actioning/redrafting, and the 5 plays which I have now read (see previous post for titles), but it really is time for bed, work tomorrow, followed by another weekend away, I’m not back until next Tuesday, and am (again) fast losing the ability to grammarise. So yes, I shall leave you. I think I may not have done the RC lady justice (not least in not remembering her name) and assure you that it was very definitely not hippyish- just more like new science is to old science, if that makes sense.

Good wishes to all.

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London II

So, my second visit to London, and I had a much better time of it. This time I went to the Natural History Museum, and thoroughly enjoyed myself! I enjoyed it much more than the Tate Modern… not sure what that says about me! But yes, walked around the dinosaur bit- and the animal/human biology wing, and before I knew it, it was time to go! Only did about a ¼ of it, so I think I may go back next week, South Kensington also has the V&A and Science Museums– enough to keep me happy for a good few weeks I reckon, and then perhaps spend a day in one of the parks, and the national portrait gallery. Also, the food in London- how good? So many different types and awesome smells, makes me wish I wasn’t so poor I had to take my own pack up!

So it got around to 7pm again, and I made my way to the RC for session numero deux. We began by discussing Now or Later by Christopher Shinn (which we had been given to read the previous week). Overall It’s a really interesting piece, sort of an American state-of-the-nation play. Be warned, if you intend on reading it/going to see it for yourself, (and I would recommend it) the rest of this paragraph contains spoilers. The piece follows the son of the soon-to-be president elect of the USA (John) on the eve of his father’s electoral victory (John Snr.). It is almost certain that his father (a democrat) will take the presidency, and this is not the issue- rather the rather sticky situation of pictures of John Jnr. appearing at an Ivy League college party dressed up as Mohammed. There also emerges a video of him simulating fellatio on ‘Pastor Bob’ – a Christian far right fundamentalist loony. Think Harry dressing up as a Nazi had he been 3rd in line to the throne on VE day. However this is not a stupid prank, John Jnr had recently been embroiled in some complicated freedom of speech issues on campus- anti-Muslim cartons had been put up and Muslim groups on campus had used this to challenge the university’s freedom of speech policy- demanding punishment, calling the pictures an incitement to hatred/violence. John wrote a piece in the student magazine defending the freedom of speech policy which was the construed into an attack on the Muslim groups. A female liberal fellow student who also happens to be holding a ‘naked party’ attacks John Jnr in a lecture regarding this, he and a friend (on the spur of the moment) decide to go to the party as Mohammed and Pastor Bob to make clear the irony of the student completely defending the Muslim group’s right to quash freedom of speech- whilst also holding a party that a Muslim state would render illegal. The whole piece centres on whether or not John will make a statement apologising for his actions.

The play makes some interesting and uncomfortable points about the clash between public and private worlds, about the ‘narrative’-driven nature of modern politics, the difficult nature of left wing politics with regards to Islam, all played out within the gulf between a father and his son. Several very good points were made in the RC group discussion – for example the choice to close the piece down into a single space/time frame, to allow the complex issues to breathe, and also, the choice not to have a Muslim voice in the piece, which I think made it much clearer the confusion and misconceptions, and also doesn’t pretend to even begin to understand the other viewpoint. It is an uncomfortable read, phrases such as ‘these people’ and ‘more sophisticated than them’ made me cringe, but also made me think ‘yes I believe in the right to believe what you want, but a religion, any religion that disagrees with that, I must also disagree with- any kind of evangelist sect/religion’ I also have very deeply held beliefs about the freedoms of women, and although my dissertation research revealed that Islam is not historically sexist, and indeed stresses complete equality in monetary, personal and business spheres, it has (like many other religions) been subsumed by patriarchy, from which we get FGM, dowry, female-property laws, ridiculous rape laws et al. But the fact of the matter is that literal Islam – as it is read by many, fundamentally subjugates women, gay people, and other freedoms and human rights. The play emphasised the difficulty of this liberal debate by placing someone (gay, incidentally) seeing a situation in black and white, set against a debate of many, many shades of grey. I think that the play was overall very economical and well crafted, though perhaps suffered for the great weight of ideas and difficult argument (even 3 hours long I don’t think the piece would ever feel long enough), and the final decision a little disingenuous, it was a very interesting, and pertinent piece. I might ask my semi-Muslim, and strictly Muslim friends to read it though, would be interested in a reaction from their point of view.

Following the discussion of this piece, we moved on to working on the pieces written following last week’s session. In small groups we read out, and gave feedback on the short scenes – my scene was set atop a hill in Lincolnshire- two people are meeting there- A has asked B to come, she wants him to finally tell her it’s over- their relationship having finished, but him generally saying not forever. A loves B still. Although B has a family, and their not being together for 8 years, B won’t say it’s over, because there’s still something there. A is also losing her home – Lincolnshire has been given over to widespread flooding and is being completely evacuated. They are meeting on a hill on which they began and ended their relationship. As usual my first draft was far too cryptic, one guy got what A wanted, and not the flooding thing, and the other guy the other. This didn’t surprise me, but was still useful to know. We then did some work on filling out character backgrounds, and on the dreaded transitive verbs- ‘actioning’ words. IE the idea that a line of dialogue is only useful and dramatic- that is, active- if it has an underlying action; ‘I persuade you’, ‘I evade you’, ‘I tempt you’ etc. Always good for filtering out all of the pretty sentences which don’t actually move a piece on, though I do feel a tad tiring when applied in detail. Anyway, idea is to use those exercises in order to redraft the scene for two weeks time. We also have to read some or all of the following plays:

  • Woyzeck
  • Spring Awakening
  • A Raisin in the Sun
  • King Lear
  • Krapp’s Last Tape

Which should be good, I’ve already read Lear (though don’t have a copy) and have the complete Beckett, but I’ve bought the first four anyway, because the more plays you read the better really, especially when you can’t afford to see them!

So yes, that was Monday. In other news I had a fun birthday weekend with a meal out and some Jazz/Funk, but am extremely tired following London/Weekend out/not sleeping well last night because of a cold. Feels a bit odd to be going to work on my Birthday (tomorrow), turning officially mid-twenties (24) and generally not seeing anyone on my actual birthday, but ho-hum, such is getting older yes? Bah!

Thanks for reading.