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Steve Gooch (1)

Auteur van Writing a Play

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Steve Gooch is an established playwright whose work has been performed many times on stage and radio. He has also worked as a literary manager and translator of modern German plays, and has tutored popular playwriting courses

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I don’t think I found this very useful for my purposes and I have been wondering why that is. I think the miscue could be down to my club-footed approach rather than the author not appreciating what his readers are looking for, so it’s unfair to label defects. In other words, it may be that readers who already have experience of playwright-style composition find this book to be a helpful supplement to their knowledge, an insider’s view of the business or something.

I understand that theatre establishes ground rules (what the stage looks like, how the audience is positioned, setting the structure in acts, upstage/downstage, speaking facing forward etc.) and then playwrights feel challenged to break the rules in any imaginative manner they can present (actors on wires, a chorus of sheep, audience seating turns out to be a hovercraft, love letters fall down from the rafters, the whole play is performed in the dark, making someone famous do something crude, the cast are on their phones and go up and down several buildings in lifts, etc. Mad stuff). However, writers new to the subject just want to know the beginner’s guide, the ground rules, preferably one simple step at a time. When we’ve got that applied to memory, only then do we need to know what Ibsen, Potter and Bennett did that set them out as different, or what man-management runs through your head when you get in a huff with a producer. In cooking, you learn to cook, you get a job in a restaurant, you become a competent chef, a master and only then do you nudge the boundary of the profession forward a quarter of an inch with your signature dish invention. I’m looking to learn the necessities to deliver a competent script with no beginner mistakes, to get the job done. I don’t need to know the embellishments at this stage as I’ll feel pressure to have a signature dish before I can boil an egg.

I think the book works through some of the answers I need. If, in my ignorance, I want to present a script, I’d probably email it as there’s no one I can ask what page size, font and fastenings it’s supposed to be in, about margins or how many words are supposed to be in a synopsis, how to work around the confines of a small cast and, perhaps, what genres of play are the most often commercially accepted. What about things which are so far in this author’s past he’s forgotten to mention them (e.g. TV actors make small movements because the camera captures fine detail but theatre actors need more movement and rely more on figurative words and metaphor)? Are theatre audiences more intelligent than television audiences, or likely to better accept classical references or subtle wit? How should we pitch it? This book is a resource for some technical information. Stage directions are of course vital, e.g. how to write that they’re speaking over each other or there are sounds off. What about things you are not supposed to say on paper, as that’s telling the Director how to do their job? This book should put me straight, which happened several times but it wasn’t comprehensive and then strayed into recounting experiences (e.g. what it’s like to inflict a mildly communist character on the audience of a theatre workshop in a country newly freed from detested communism – of course they’ll take it personally. Am I being cautioned against doing something, when it’s already obvious with a bit of common sense, or was that section padding?).

It also had a sort of emergent negativity toward the end, suggesting that when you’ve written your work and it’s been accepted or optioned, the Director and actors can mangle it into any form they like as you now have no right to interfere in it or, indeed, be in the room. If that is the standard working relationship in theatre, that writers are annoying and need to be locked out, that’s depressing. I see three kinds of creative theatre, the emotionally uplifting insight into the human soul, the completely unexpected and original flabbergaster, and the urban, aggressive, soul-destroying angst that makes you shut down or end up like Tam O'Shanter's wife who nursed her hate to keep it warm. I can just about see from whence this instructor is coming. Is it essential for playwrights to be angry? Discuss.

What this book has taught me (an unintended lesson) is that there are no short-cuts to learning to write a play. Sure, you can Google a list of stage directions, but that won’t help you write well. I think having natural writing ability and style is just the start of it. The key to knowing stagecraft is to read and attend a dramatically long list of plays, then reflect on them from an author’s perspective. What makes impact? What can a character say to make the viewer share their hope or distress? Can you really reach out and tweak the listener’s heart-strings or prick their conscience with a good line? How did the writer pull of that trick, the change of perspective, losing trust in the character, the amplification of emotion, the gut-twisting reveal or the disconnect that left us wanting more? A play is nothing if it isn’t a crucible of human experience and you need to see it and feel it to have an experience. I think the apprenticeship for this job turns out not to be buying a book; It’s buying a ticket.
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HavingFaith | Jan 8, 2019 |

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Statistieken

Werken
9
Leden
54
Populariteit
#299,230
Waardering
3.0
Besprekingen
1
ISBNs
17
Talen
2

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