Playwrights

It’s a dirty job, but someone’s gotta do it!

Playwrights

• “wright” = Maker• Started out non-professional– For the Greeks, the writers were doing their civic

duty, honoring the gods during their festivals– Medieval plays were largely anonymous, often

identified by the town where they were performed (The York Cycle, for example)

– Many non-Western plays (Sanskrit, Kabuki, etc.) were also anonymous

Playwrights

• Theatre and playwriting became professionalized in the Renaissance and into the Neoclassical period

As theatre moved away from the role it played with the church – educating the people – it moved toward entertainment. And people were willing to pay to be entertained! So

professional companies started sprouting up. They were usually sponsored by some

nobleman who would help them pay their expenses and protect them from intervention by the authorities. Since then, playwriting has

become a well established and respected profession!

How Do They Work?

• Some write alone

• Some write with partners

• Some write as a collective

What do they write?

• Straight plays– Plays that are spoken dialogue without singing are

referred to as “straight plays” and the people who write them are called playwrights.

• Musicals– Plays that include songs are called “musicals” and

we call the people who write the music “composers,” the people who write the lyrics “lyricists” and the people who write the spoken portion of the script “librettists.”

Where do they start?

• Beginning to end• End to beginning• Piece by piece• Thematically• Characters first• Outline• Etc…

Like with any art form, there is no one way to write a play. Some

people will write straight through from the beginning to the end, some people work backwards,

some people skip around. Some have a strong idea of the theme, and they let the story grow from

there. Some start with the characters. Some have an outline

while others write more free-form. However they do it, they are

putting together events to create a plot of some kind.

Sometimes you just have to write…

• “I just started writing a line of dialogue and had no idea who was talking…Someone says something to someone else, and they talk, and at some point I say, ‘Well, who is this?’ and I give him a name. But I have no idea what the story line of the play is. It’s a process of discovery.”

- August Wilson, multiple Pulitzer Prize winning playwright We’re reading Fences by August

Wilson this unit. Take a look at some of his thoughts on writing.

Play Development Cycle

• First Draft• Reading (Table)• Next Draft• Staged Reading• Next Draft• Workshop• Next Draft• Full Production

The first draft of what a playwright writes will probably go through several stages of revision before the final product that is produced and published. First is the table read, when actors sit around a table and read the play aloud for

the first time. This usually gives the playwright a lot of ideas for revisions. Then there might be a staged reading, with actors still reading

from scripts, but this time they’re up on their feet. This leads to another revision and then

possibly a workshop production, which is closer to a full production. The actors might

memorize their lines and there would be some minor set and costume pieces. This could go on in a loop of workshops and revisions for a

while before finally being ready for a full public production.

Stage Directions

• The exterior of a two-story corner building on a street in New Orleans which is named Elysian Fields and runs between the L&N tracks and the river. The section is poor but, unlike corresponding sections in other American cities, it has a raffish charm. The houses are mostly white frame, weathered grey, with rickety outside stairs and galleries and quaintly ornamented gables. This building consists of two flats, upstairs and down. Faded white stairs ascend to the entrances of both.

It is the first dark of an evening early in May. The sky that shows around the dim white building is a peculiarly tender blue, almost a turquoise, which invests the scene with a kind of lyricism and gracefully attenuates the atmosphere of decay. You can almost feel the warm breath of the brown river beyond the river warehouses with their faint redolences of bananas and coffee […] (A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams)

Depending on the playwright and the type of play, the stage directions supplied by the playwright could be very realistic like this:

This gives the director and designers some very specific information to work with in

building the world of the play.

Stage Directions

• Beggars are begging, thieves thieving, whores whoring. A ballad singer sings a Moritat. (Threepenny Opera, Brecht and Weill)

• A great hole. In the middle of nowhere. The hole is an exact replica of the Great Hole of History. (The America Play, Suzan Lori-Parks)

Or they could be more stylized and open to interpretation like this:

Or they could be completely abstract, leaving lots of room for the director’s and designers’ imagination like this:

Then, it’s up to the director and designers to decide what to do with the directions they have been given by the playwright.

How do you know about a character?

– Stage Directions• “Two men come around the corner, Stanley Kowalski and Mitch. They are about

twenty-eight or thirty years old, roughly dressed in blue denim work clothes. Stanley carries his bowling jacket and a red-stained package from a butcher’s.” (A Streetcar Named Desire)

– What the character says about themselves• “They didn’t fire me cause I wasn’t no good. They fired me cause they was cutting

back. Me getting dismissed didn’t have no reflection on my performance. And I was a damn good Honest Abe considering.” (Top Dog/Underdog)

– What other people say about the character• “Gordon could be quiet… He must have respected you. He was quiet with women

he respected. Otherwise he had a very loud laugh. Haw, haw, haw! You could hear him a mile away.” (Dead Man’s Cell Phone)

– What the character DOES• “I ain’t worried about them firing me. They gonna fir me ‘cause I asked a

question? That’s all I did. I went to Mr. Rand and asked him, “Why? Why you got the white mens driving and the colored lifting?” Told him, “What’s the matter, don’t I count? You think only white fellows got sense enough to drive a truck. Hell, anybody can drive a truck.” He told me, “Take it to the union.” Well, hell, that’s what I done!” (Fences)

What do you need to know?

• Physical/Biological Characteristics – What does the character look like? Is he tall or short? Handsome or ugly?

• Social: What is the character’s job, economic class, family and how do these affect his community relationship?

• Psychological: What are the character’s likes, dislikes, desires, fears, motivations, etc.?

• Moral: What is a character willing to do to get what they want? (This one can be tougher, because characters don’t always talk about their morals in a straightforward way. Often you have to look at what they DO to discover their moral beliefs.

As part of his discussion about tragedy, Aristotle also talked about the things we need to know about characters

Put it all together…

• Konstantin Stanislavsky– Given Circumstances

Konstantin Stanislavski was a very smart man who we’ll be talking about a lot more in later units. But for now, we’ll stick with this very

important term that he coined: Given Circumstances. This was his term for all the

information that the playwright provides about the world of the play. Anything the playwright tells us about the location, the society, the characters, etc. would all be

considered part of the given circumstances.

Playwrights to Know• William Shakespeare

– 1564-1616– One of the most important

writers in Western literature– Performed as part of a company

called The Lord Chamberlain’s men (remember those rich sponsors), which later became The King’s Men

– Performed at The Globe Theatre– In addition to being a

playwright, he was also an actor– Hamlet, Romeo & Juliet, Much

Ado About Nothing, The Winter’s Tale, etc…

Playwrights to Know

• Aphra Behn– 1640-1689– First known

professional female playwright (yes, this means that she was making money as a playwright)

– The Rover, The Emperor of the Moon

Playwrights to Know• Bertolt Brecht

– 1898-1956– German Marxist playwright

known for his social commentary

– Verfremdungseffekt (Alienation effect) – Brecht believed that his audiences should not get lost in the world of the play, he wanted them to stay detached so that they could think critically about the ideas he was presenting.

– Mother Courage and Her Children, The Threepenny Opera, Galileo

Playwrights to Know

• Tennessee Williams– 1911-1983– American playwright

who wrote a lot about the South, famous for his use of imagery

– Summer and Smoke, A Streetcar Named Desire, The Glass Menagerie

Playwrights to Know

• Arthur Miller– 1915-2005– Pulitzer Prize winner– Married to Marilyn

Monroe for a while– Blacklisted by the House

Un-American Affairs Committee during the Red Scare

– Death of a Salesman, All My Sons, The Crucible

Playwrights to Know

• Neil Simon– 1927-– Prolific comic

playwright and screenwriter

– The Odd Couple, Barefoot in the Park, Brighton Beach Memoirs

Playwrights to Know

• Lorraine Hansberry– 1930-1965– First African American

Female playwright to have a play produced on Broadway

– A Raisin in the Sun, The Drinking Gourd

Playwrights to Know

• August Wilson– 1945-2005– Wrote a cycle of ten plays

- one for each decade of the 20th century - about the black experience in America

– Won TWO Pulitzers– Fences, The Piano Lesson,

Gem of the Ocean

Playwrights to Know

• Suzan-Lori Parks– 1963-– First African-American

female playwright to win a Pulitzer Prize for Drama

– Top Dog/Underdog, Venus, The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World

Playwrights to Know

• Sarah Ruhl– 1974-– Two time Pulitzer

nominee– I’m going to write my

dissertation about her (part of it, anyway)!

– The Clean House, Dead Man’s Cell Phone, In the Next Room or The Vibrator Play