TOOT #6

SEE WHAT I MEAN?

To say that theatre is a visual medium is a cliche, but how often do we actually treat it that way?

There's an exercise I like to do (stolen, truth be told, from the playwright Maria Irene Fornes) in which I have writers scribble down a scene off the top of their head. Then I ask them to put it aside and start writing it again from memory, only this time I call out a word every two minutes or so, which they must somehow incorporate into the scene.

This is meant to be an exercise in following impulses as they occur to you. An interesting sidelight, though, is that 95% of the time writers will incorporate the word into their dialogue -- ie., they'll have somebody say it. I deliberately choose words that can be used various ways -- as nouns or verbs, for example -- but if, say, I use 'fire,' very rarely will writers have somebody fire a gun in the scene, or light the set on fire. Instead, someone will say something like, 'We need a fire.'

This is partly, I guess, because as playwrights we know that the language the characters speak is one of our most powerful tools. And because we've had it drilled into us -- more or less correctly -- that we shouldn't overuse stage directions. But consider this 'stage direction' from Buried Child:

'(As HALIE keeps talking offstage, TILDEN appears from stage left, dripping with mud from the knees down. His arms and hands are covered with mud. In his hands he carries the corpse of a small child at chest level, staring down at it. The corpse mainly consists of bones wrapped in muddy, rotten cloth.)'

I don't know what that little 'stage left' is doing in there (who cares which side of the stage he appears on, so long as he appears?), but otherwise this is powerful playwriting. What's more, it's not window dressing -- it's the play's climax, written entirely visually.

Or this, from Judith Thompson's Lion in the Streets:

'(MICHAEL hits him, they fight, rolling and punching, and end up on the floor. Very, very slowly MICHAEL raises his head, extends his tongue, RODNEY does the same. They come together and their tongues touch. It is an ecstatic moment for both of them.)'

I guess it would be. Actually, Thompson ruins it a bit for me with that last sentence -- what's gone before has created a rich and resonant theatrical image, all the more powerful for its ambiguity, like a good line of poetry. Explaining it, it seems to me, takes the ambiguity out of it. But the point is that this isn't stuff the actors and director would better figure out for themselves -- all that 'JUNE crosses to s.r., sits, tugging her dress over her knees while brushing three hairs from her eyes' stuff. Rather, the playwright is advancing the action of her play, using movement and images instead of dialogue.

KEEPING AN EYE ON THINGS

I have two techniques I use to keep the visual quotient in my plays up. Well, the first is more a trick than a technique: every once in awhile (especially if I'm stuck) I ask myself, 'What object is there onstage that somebody could pick up and do something with? Or is there some part of the set that they could do something to?' It's simple, but it works; what they do is very often more interesting than anything they could have said at that moment. (Taking the roses out of the vase and hitting someone over the head with them is a lot more piquant than announcing, 'I'm upset with you right now.')

The other thing I try to do is to see the play from three different points-of-view as I write. One is through the eyes of whichever character's speaking; in other words, from inside the character. That's where the emotional truth lies. But the other two perspectives are just as important: one is as if I'm standing in the middle of the characters; that reminds me that they're physical presences who might just as soon do something as say something. And the other is from the back row of the theatre, which reminds me that they're in a space in which events might happen, and in which the things we see around them (a man sits alone listening to the radio, while elsewhere onstage his wife makes love to his brother) can be telling also.

INNER CINEMA

Words and visuals aren't necessarily exclusive of one another, of course. Words can create visuals. In theatre, this is often a way to have the best of both worlds.

In general, it is better to 'show, don't tell' in dramatic writing. But there are times where an incident important to your story just can't be shown onstage, or, at any rate, would be better evoked in language than dramatized. For example, it might be better to describe the burning of Atlanta than ask your design department to actually recreate it. (Though that didn't stop one famous, failed musical adaptation of Gone With the Wind from trying.) But if we're going to describe it, we'd better do so vividly, so that it burns the image (pun intended) into the mind's eye.

For example, here's a bit from David Rabe's Streamers:

'So we're waitin' for the cops. Some cars go by. The guy's car is this big fuckin' Buick. Around the corner comes this little red Triumph. The driver's this blonde kid, got this blonde girl next to him.'

Each of these sentences throws a specific, vivid image onto that little cinema screen in our minds.The details of what is seen are precise and chosen carefully to evoke the moment (just as each line in a poem is carefully chosen to evoke a sensation). Once again, God is in the details: it's not just a car, but 'a little red Triumph,' driven not just by anybody, but by 'this blonde kid.'

This too is visual writing.

EXERCISE 6:

Write a monologue describing an incident that could not occur onstage. Use vivid, precise details and word-pictures to make us see it anyway, in the 'mind's eye.'

POST-IT NOTE:

'Rehearsals begin when you think the play is ready. Never go into rehearsal without being certain the spine of the play is there and works. You can fix a lot of things in the rehearsal period, but you can't fix the spine if it's not there.'
- Director Lloyd Richards (Fences, Joe Turner's Come and Gone, Two Trains Running and the other works in August Wilson's cycle)

To Handout 6