Writing a Play

This is the first in a series of three blog posts that are based on a class I was asked to attend for a friend of mine at New York Film Academy on playwriting versus screenwriting versus TV writing. This isn't an excerpt from a lecture that I'll be giving, but more of a riff on the subject. I wanted to jot down some notes to get me thinking about what I could possibly say about how I approach writing plays. And then I'll follow up with a little something about screenwriting and a little something about TV writing.

So here it goes…

What makes a play different from writing in another medium?

For me, it's about ritual and structure. If I'm writing something that is meant to be performed live, it has a different quality. Theatre is a live experience. That suggests some sort of interaction between the audience and what is performed on stage. There's a thrill and a danger to what's going on onstage and the audience provides that because they have real time reactions to what they are seeing. As I get older and as I've written more plays, I can say that the theatre writing I do is always informed by that interaction.

I'm writing a play right now that has a certain ritual that takes place four times during the course of the play. Each time the ritual is performed, the characters in the story have a different reaction to it. And I have given character to the audience, so each time this ritual is introduced, the audience sees it through the eyes of a different population of people. In this way, the audience is identifying with different groups of people. I couldn't really do that on film.

Whether or not something should be a play is not affected by the subject matter or the dialogue. The dialogue I write doesn't always differ that much. I am more fascinated by the things that aren't being said than the things that are. I don't write dialogue that's poetic or flowery. I write dialogue that expresses the need to articulate thought, sometimes successfully and sometimes unsuccessfully. I probably do concentrate more on what's not being said and how it's not being said. I also love non-dialogue scenes. Part of my background is in dance, so I'm not afraid to put movement in my pieces, whether it's stylized or pedestrian. I like when characters express themselves through gesture and movement. And sometimes it's about a certain identifiable dance style, which takes us back to ritual. I think that a lot of subjects cross mediums. But if I know that through structure and ritual, I can amplify the themes of the story, it usually becomes a play.

In terms of structure, that's probably what makes my plays theatrical. Again, I don't write in any sort of stylized way. But I like to choose a form or a way of telling a story that amplifies its subject. In a recent play I wrote, there were these sermons that the priest character delivers and those sermons relate to the scenes that follow. Also, I decided that I wanted to tell the play backwards because I wanted to explore the idea of someone who has had experiences that shaped them, but I wanted to go from their most experienced to least experienced selves to amplify how life had changed them. Also, I had never written a play with a big reveal in the middle, at the end of the first act. So I ended up doing that in the play as well. It changes the way we see these characters and almost makes them different characters once you get into Act Two and are aware of that reveal. I don't know if the story would be as successful had it been told as a screenplay or a TV show.

Also, when I write a play, it's more contained and more concentrated. I feel like I can explore a subject matter more fully and in a more focused way in a play or screenplay. TV shows are a bit more open ended (we'll get to that soon). Plays allow me to be more playful in a way. And they change from play to play. The rules are different. Screenwriting and TV writing are so structured in terms of the way they're told. They meet a certain expectation. They are static in a way that plays are not static. In a play, I can make up a structure that works for that particular play because the audience is prepared to have a different experience. Not all plays look the same. Some are one acts, some are two acts with an intermission.

When I have an idea for a play, it is usually in my head for awhile. The new play I'm researching I have been thinking about since February. Then I jot down certain things I'd like to have happen. I also don't outline my plays per se.  If I'm working with a complicated structure, then I might organize the story lines to see where they intersect. But in a certain way, a play should feel less fixed. It should feel alive. Because it is live.