Sort-of Toot #7
We've been looking at the subject of writing visually. Last toot, I asked you to write a monologue using visual language, as a way to round off our unit on theatrical language in general. Now I'd like to ask you to write something that is -purely- visual.
Exercise 7:
Write a scene entirely without dialogue. Use any of the other resources theatre has to offer: light, sound, bodies in space, image, setting. Just no dialogue. Your scene could tell a story: beginning, middle and end. Or perhaps it will be a sort of visual poem, evoking sensations rather than sense -- though, like a poem, it should feel complete when it's done. Or both. But no dialogue.
POST-IT NOTE:
'I try to stick with the initial impulse. I think the danger of doing a lot of rewriting is that you often get away from your initial impulse. Sometimes your initial impulse is not always right, but more often it is. In general, initial impulses are to be trusted.'
- John Pielmeier ('Agnes of God')
Which reminds me of a story . . . I was at the O'Neill Theatre Centre one summer, and rode back to the dorms in the van one night with John Pielmeier and some others. (I also shared the van at various points that summer with Swoozie Kurtz, Edward Albee and David Henry Hwang.) Pielmeier was writing 'Agnes of God,' and announced to us, as we bumped along: 'Okay, I've got the whole thing written! Now all I have to do is divide it up into sentences and assign them to characters and it'll be finished!'
Apparently, it worked.
There's no Handout 7
To Toot 8