TOOT 2

WHAT'S THAT YOU SAY?

Let's look at another way to discover and explore the characters in your play, one I find even more useful than character sketches or collages -- through voice.

Unlike the fiction writer or poet, who may have her or his own personal "voice" as an author (ie., a recognizable style), playwrights deal in "voices" -- not how they see and experience the world so much as how their characters do, and how that's reflected in both what the characters say and how they say it. Just as the way a character behaves and acts reveals who he is, so too does the way he speaks. In fact, "voice" is, I think, one of the most potent character-building tools of all.

If a . . . character . . . speaks in . . . a way that . . . suggests they often like to . . .
(Pause.)
. . . pause and think before they . . . speak . . .

Then we get the impression that that character is thoughtful or reflective or perhaps just a little slow.

If they -- you know -- constantly interrupt themselves -- well, I don't mean interrupt themselves, but -- well yes interrupt themselves and tend to EXCLAIM and talk in sentences without a lot of commas where in the ORDINARY COURSE OF THINGS YOU WOULD EXPECT COMMAS --

Then we understand that that person is a bit hyper and probably doesn't have a very peaceful inner life.

And so on. You probably know this. I'm just here to encourage you to make use of voice in building characters more often.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS COUNT

One place where voice is very specifically useful is when a character is first introduced in a play. Your parents may have told you before your first job interview that first impressions count, and that's nowhere more true than in theatre. I think an audience makes up a lot of its mind about who a character is and whether they're likeable or not in the sixty seconds or so after that character first enters the play. As playwrights, we may work to undermine or totally reverse that first impression over the course of the play (though the latter is hard to do), but if we don't give the audience a firm handle on the character right off the bat, they're liable to make up their minds anyway -- only they may decide things quite different from what we want.

So, I always pay a lot of attention to how a character is introduced, and most particularly what they say in those opening moments, because voice can convey a lot of character information very quickly. Listen to how Wendy Wasserstein introduces the character of Mrs. Plumm in Uncommon Women and Others:


MRS. PLUMM : I'm so glad I have this opportunity to welcome all you girls to tea this year. I'm Mrs. Plumm, housemother of North Stimson Hall. Take your feet off the table, dear.

We know in three sentences a great deal about who this woman is. And note that we find out through a combination of what she says (in this case, she literally tells us who she is) and how she says it ("I'm so glad to have this opportunity . . ." as opposed to, say, "It's kickin' to have this chance . . ."). Both are important in creating a character's voice.

Then, a page or two later, Wasserstein goes on to introduce some of the young women in Mrs. Plumm's care:

SUSIE: Oh, no, wait. You can't sit down till Mrs. Plumm comes.

CARTER: Who's Mrs. Plumm?

SUSIE: She's our housemother.

RITA: She has syphilis.

Wasserstein doesn't beat around the bush; we get a sense of both Susie's deference (some might call it "suckiness") and Rita's pointedness right away. We don't get much sense of Carter yet, but that's because Carter's voice is defined by the fact that she hardly ever speaks, which emerges (silently) as the scene continues.

Or listen to how Lanford Wilson (a master at this) introduces Father Doherty in Angels Fall:

FATHER DOHERTY: (Enters from the garden, talking to himself) "And the road was a ribbon of moonlight, over the purple moor --" (Sees Niles and Vita) Oh dear goodness.

NILES: (Puts cigarette case in pocket) Perhaps not.

FATHER DOHERTY: I have no concept of time. I'm sure I've kept you waiting. (Calls) Maria! (Back to them) Well, she won't come out as long as you're here. Well then, just to leap in with both feet, we call these little talks Pre-Cana conferences. Water into wine, remember. Accipite aramturam dei.

VITA: No, Father, we're not here for religious instruction.

DOHERTY: You're not here for the conference. In spite of everything you've undoubtedly heard of me, I do that rather well. Then you're -- Don't help me, it'll come to me.

You could probably tell me quite a bit about who you think Father Doherty is at this point, based on just those three lines of dialogue: his voice.

EXERCISE 2:

Create a voice for the character you created last week (in Exercise 1) -- that is, a unique way of speaking that is revealing of them, so that we learn about them both from what they say and how they say it. Do it in monologue form (the character can be talking to another character, or to the audience, or to him or herself, or whatever). Keep writing until you've established the voice and can "hear" it for yourself. Also use this monologue to further explore the character -- to add to what you discovered about them in your character collage. The monologue should be at least a page long.

POST-IT NOTE:

"There are many different ways in which a story will reveal itself. You may work and work and work on a play and then another comes in the middle. You always have a play that comes as a gift, that's just waiting there and pops right up. You always have to be working on something because you have to trust your unconscious life, to be ready to deal with a play when it says, 'Here I am.'"
- John Guare (Six Degrees of Separation, Lydie Breeze)

To Handout 2