It was a smaller group than usual, I’m guessing because we
were coming off the long weekend, and the reminders landed in inboxes and on
feeds that weren’t seen while people were actually off their devices and
enjoying sun and friends. Which all sounds good and right to me. And which
makes me think about having the open office hours outside one of these days …
I decided to call this not “The Dramaturgy Open Office
Hours”, but “The Dramaturgy Open Office Hour Project” because I didn’t have expectations for it, so much as an
experiment I wanted to make. However many people show up, feels like the right
amount for the week. (I do spend some time wondering whether I need to be better at
publicizing, and then I do some more publicizing, and then I try to get back to
dramaturging.)
And when there is downtime between visitors, I catch up with
the guest dramaturg, which is always a treat. This week, I got to share
conversation and a brownie—both excellent—with Molly Marinik. Molly freelances
as both a dramaturg and director.
And, she was my
dramaturg on this project. When I had the question, “what would it look like
for a couple of dramaturgs to sit in a public space and provide dramaturgy for
a few hours a week to anyone who wanted to stop by?”, she was the person I brought
it to; her involvement gave me the incentive to write a proposal draft; she
listened and asked smart questions and gave feedback and helped me get this on
its feet. (Yes, dramaturgs need dramaturgs, too.)
We got some questions this week from a writer about
assembling the text itself—in terms of readability, format, amount of stage
directions to include, what sort of character/setting details.
Molly and I were in agreement that, as with most things,
there is no single correct way to approach these elements; being educated and
intentional about every aspect of your script is important, but the "right way"
depends on what your vision is and how you want to communicate it. Molly’s
astute advice, about this and in general: if you’re new at something and not
sure how to go about it, see how the people who have been doing it for a longer
time and with success have been doing it. Read other scripts. Ask around.
If you don’t have strong feelings that your script must be
formatted in a non-standard way in order for it to be understood, I’d suggest
doing it in the accepted standard format (see here),
which has become such for its easiness to read.
But anything that doesn’t make the act of reading of a play a chore,
doesn’t generally bother me. (It’s ironic to be discussing this topic on the
blog this week, after adjusting its own look to the critique that the white
text on dark gray background was difficult to read. Sorry, folks.)
As a reader, I am looking at the script so that I can try to
imagine what it would be like onstage—and often, more specifically, whether the
company for which I’m reading should consider producing it. If you want to
futz with the formatting in a way that makes it easier for theatermakers to imagine your play onstage, that sounds
great. Your diversions in format might evoke diversions in content or
structure, for example; again, as long as they aren’t maddeningly difficult to
read, that’s fine with me. Great writers including Suzan-Lori Parks have done this
very effectively. Futzing in ways that don’t specifically inform the stagecraft
feels more about shaping the reading experience as an end in itself, and isn’t
helpful in my thinking of the script as a staged experience.
We also got asked about stage directions. Molly pointed out that as a director, while it is her obligation to make
sure the dialogue is spoken as written, it's unlikely that all stage
directions will be strictly adhered to, for a variety of reasons. Writers should include those that they consider to be necessary
to their storytelling, or that help a reader (whether that’s a director or
producer or whoever else might be considering your play for opportunities or
collaboration) to follow certain dramatic moments or shifts that would be clear
when embodied in a theater. They can serve a similar function for a reader as
regular punctuation—which is to say, that they can indicate where a phrase or
beat ends. But the heavy lifting should and will be done by the dialogue, and
describing the entire play’s staging or the characters’ emotions, is not
necessary.
Character listings and setting descriptions came up, as
well. These can also allow a reader to more easily envision the script onstage.
Producers want to know whether they can support the cast size your play
requires, so it’s helpful when playwrights make the cast size/range
clear—indicating the number of roles, and possible or required doubling—as well
as the characters’ ages and genders, and whether the play is ethnically specific.
If the casting isn’t specific in these ways, indicating that you encourage
diverse casting is good practice. Charles Mee has a great version specific to
him and his work here.
If your play has many settings, include your thoughts about
how you see those being staged. Having specific solutions isn’t
necessary—through the beauty of collaboration, a set designer will likely
imagine something wonderful that you wouldn’t have thought of—but it is good to
be mindful of whether your bedroom-to-zoo-to-alleyway scene transitions need to
be represented literally/elaborately, or can be negotiated with minimal scenic/light
elements. When you see shows in different spaces, ask yourself what it would
take to produce your play there. Could your multiple settings be placed onstage
at once, with lighting coming up and down on each area as needed? If the stage
is smaller, or the lighting too basic, for that, would set changes be required
(with pieces coming on and off), which would take up stage time and require a
crew? Thinking about your play in three dimensions can help you decide which
theaters to submit your work to, how to articulate what is essential to your
story and what is ancillary, and possibly, how many locations to use.
Why not make it easier for someone to envision saying “yes”
to you? Especially if you plan on submitting your play to people who don’t know
you or your work. I think about this attention to the on-page version of your
play as being akin to what actors do when showing up to auditions. In order to
make it that much more likely for the people behind the casting table to
imagine them in a role, actors will dress in a way that suggests them embodying
that character. This doesn’t mean going in costume (nobody needs to see someone
with a hunchback to envision that actor as Richard III), but simply highlighting
their glamor, or that they’re down-to-earth; that they can be very
business-like, or more rough. A savvy actor can put themselves in the director’s
position, think about what the director is looking for, and come up with ways
to make sure those qualities are visible—in addition, of course, to their
talent.
In the time between attendees, Molly and I talked about the
importance of good theater journalism—and, in particular, theater reviews of
smaller productions that are unlikely to be reviewed by major publications.
Molly started a website that does just that—Theatre Is Easy, or www.theasy.com—which has been active for six
years now, providing guidance to theatergoers, and helping create a lasting
record of productions and individual artistic work that would simply evaporate
if not documented in this way. For the majority of us who play outside of the
narrow spotlight shone on the select group of mainstream theater personalities,
how do we share what we’ve made and what we’ve learned? God bless Adam
Szymkowicz, whose I Interview Playwrights series (here) is creating an Internet presence
for the phalanx of contemporary writers whose work has yet to make it into American Theatre or to be published in
self-titled collections. Thank goodness for the Times’s In Performance series (here),
which puts on camera a mix of the best-known and simply the best stage
performers, sharing snippets of their work on camera. I’m glad that HowlRound’s
NewCrit series (here) provides a
platform for theatermakers to discuss each other’s productions. And major kudos
to Molly Marinik and the crew of writers she employs at theasy to see and
seriously discuss the range of theater being made in New York. Intelligent words
in print about our art aren’t the only source of legitimacy for us, but it
keeps our art alive and in conversation with the work that came before it and is
coming after.
Last
week’s blog entry on the Dramatists Guild and its stance on dramaturgs, came
up in discussion with Molly and one of the writers, as well. It was great to
move past talking about the Guild’s stance on the relationship between
dramatists/generative artists and dramaturgs, and on to actually talking about
that relationship. I’m hoping more of these conversations will ensue, and I
will continue to feature updates in this blog about how that progresses.
More next week.
Jeremy
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