Notes on Randy Baker's Playwriting II class

Randy Baker taught a playwriting class recently at the Writer's Center in Bethesda MD. He's a great teacher, the class was excellent, and here are some very rough notes (along with my own embellishments and possible mistakes) that I took during the class.

A playwright is a craftsman or builder of plays. The learning is in the doing. Many well-known playwrights actually dropped out of school. Playwrights learn by the doing.

We will structure the class by approaching it from the direction of Aristotle. He wrote in 300 BC the Poetics, and he discussed tragedies and what makes the story great.

What do we, our animal self, want from a story? We want it to move us emotionally.

Aristotle split what makes the play work into six categories:

1. plot or mythos (not quite the same as narrative plot),
   
2. character or ethos (not quite the same as a dramatic character),
   
3. thought or theme or dianoia (not quite the same as narrative theme),
   
4. music or melos,
   
5. diction or lexis (see also dialogue),
   
6. spectacle or opsis,
   

in order of importance.

In modern playwriting we often swap 1) and 2) in importance.

What does drama do? Drama is not an imitation of a thing but rather of an action.

For Aristotle, plot means something different than what we think of it. For him, plot means mythos. Mythos - myth or believe, or world-view perspective. For him, character means something else as well. For him, character was ethos, their a morality, their ethics, and how that affects their world view.

In modern playwriting, music could be referred to as tonality or poetry of the play.

Diction - the words we use, the type of dialogue.

Spectacle - the visuals, the set design, the location, the physical space used to convey the story. Where are the characters? What are they wearing?

Theater is defined by its limitations. It is analogous to the older history of poetry - when it was limited to meter. Aristotle's three unities:

• time - used to be required for the play to take place in 24 hours,
  
• place - used to required it to take place in one location,
  
• action - used to require it to have only one plot line (no B-story or C story).
  

For a recent example of this, consider the film Locke, written and directed by Steven Knight, starring Tom Hardy. Tom Hardy plays Ivan Locke who, years earlier, had an affair with a co-worker Bethan. Quoting from the plot section of the wikipedia page for Locke:

Over the course of the two-hour drive from Birmingham to London, Locke holds a total of 36 phone calls with his boss and a colleague, Donal, to ensure the pour is successful, with his wife Katrina to confess his infidelity, his son, and with Bethan to reassure her during her labour. During these calls, he is fired from his job, kicked out of his house by his wife, and asked by his older son to return home. He coaches his assistant Donal through preparing the pour despite several major setbacks, and has imaginary conversations with his father, whom he envisions as a passenger in the back seat of his car. When he is close to the hospital, Locke learns of the successful birth of his new baby.

We see then that Aristotle's time, place and action requirements are satisfied with Locke.

"The monsters under a writer's bed" - notes of a talk by Randy Baker

These are notes I took (therefore it is I who is responsible for all the inaccuracies) of an hour-long talk Randy Baker gave to a group of writers in Annapolis Maryland on 2014-02-19 at the Maryland Hall for the Creative Arts. The talk was sponsored by the Maryland Writers' Association. Randy is a playwright and teacher I wrote about in a previous post on the 10 minute play project.

Randy is a walking list of titles: he is co-Artistic Director of Rorschach Theatre, faculty member at American University (where is Director in residence), playwright in residence at the Arena Stage, faculty member at the National Conservatory of Dramatic Arts, and the list goes on.



Here is his wonderful talk, in a nutshell. I'll be posting the video later (added 2014-08-21: part 1, part 2, part 3).

Writers, playwrights and poets all have a common problem - the monsters lying under our bed, those things that keep us from writing.

Monster # 1: A kind monster - the monster of inspiration. What inspires you to write? We all want to make people believe in something fantastic - think of the ending in Shakespeare's "The Winter's Tale" (the husband is asked to believe and then the statue of his dead wife comes alive and they are reunited).

A tangent (one of many): How did I become a playwright? The path to being a writer is never a clear one. I always wrote but never called myself a writer. I directed and produced plays and even have being commissioned to write plays. Yet, for years I didn't call myself a playwright. Why? This leads to the next ...

Monster # 2: This is the biggest and most terrible monster: the monster of self-doubt. Some things writers say to themselves:

• "I'm writing the wrong way."
  
• "My writing will never be good enough."
  

Never talk yourself out of writing. I still have self-doubt - we all do. It is a part of being human. The trick is not to listen to it. Don't let it diminish your writing.

Another tangent: Stop talking about your writing. Instead, write it and show it to your writer friends.

Getting back to the inspiration monster - watch out for it and don't let it get in the way. Don't wait for it. It is a romantic cliche that you need to have inspiration strike you. Forget that. What you should remember is that writing is work.

A person with a good idea, with great inspiration does not a writer make. A writer writes as if it were work - which it is! A writer is a person devoted to the work and craft of writing (indeed, this meaning is at the origin of the spelling of playwright).

Create characters that want things and the rest will come.

Here is an analogy to keep in mind. Suppose you are a director of a play or film and you are preparing frantically in anticipation of the first day of meeting your actors. You prepare pages and pages of notes of how this scene should go and that scene should be blocked. Then you meet you actors and you find your prepared ideas will not work. They are not useless or wasted (you should always prepare) but they must be changed.

Writing is no different. You still have to prepare - perhaps one character has a hobby and affects the story line, so you do research on that hobby. Does that mean all your research has to make its way into the story somehow? No. Putting all your prepared research into your story may not work but that doesn't mean it's wasted.

When in doubt, I mainly rely on two things:

1. Look at the structure - at this stage of the story, what does structure say should happen?
   
2. Look at reality - what in the world around you relates to the problems being faced at this point in the story and how does the real world react to that situation?
   

Edward Albee said: "Playwriting is poetry meets architecture."

Would you expect an architect to say "I'm not working on designing that building until inspiration strikes me"? No, of course not. Writers can't say that either.

Back to Monster #2: The self-doubt monster also says "no one will ever read what I write". This is a biggie. On the other hand, no one asked you to be a writer. You must make that choice.

Monster #3: Loneliness. The stereotypical writer can't socialize well, thinks abstract esoteric thoughts, etc. Wrong. Writers must build a community, creating collaborations, and not be lonely. You must find your own community.

Remember: these monsters on not real. Stop listening to them, and write.

Notes on Randy Baker's "10-minute play" playwriting workshop

Last weekend I took part in a 10 minute playwriting project at the Writer's Center taught by Randy Baker, who was so absolutely great I have to write a post about it. The class started on a Saturday morning and ended on a Sunday night.

We each wrote a 10 minute play in 24 hours. That is 10 pages in standard format (12 pt font, in screenwriting format), or about 15000 words. This post is a summary of notes I took from what Randy Baker said.

Playwriters must know how to write a 10 minute play, and how to do so in 24 hours. Nationwide, there are about 100 10-minute play festivals each year, such as the Source Festival.

A 10 minute play is not a scene, it is not a comedy sketch, it is not an excerpt of a play. It must be a fully realized play, with a beginning, middle and end. It must be about interesting characters in conflict, with a beginning, middle and end.

Aristotle's Poetics:

• Beginning - backstory, central conflict, exposition of characters'
  goals, with inciting incident
  
• Middle - increasing complications leading to climax (at which
  point protagonist has a change of goals)
  
• End - Why the protagonist went on the journey in the first place
  

Always base an action in character. Wants and needs lead to action. Characters must want interesting things.

Q: How much motivation do you put on the page?
A: Tell the audience as little as possible to carry them along on the story.

What is conflict?
The best dialog with conflict is an argument exposing a hidden issue.

Make your conflict with ideas, or with additions, or with people. It must pervade the play. Everyone must want something a lot. Even a minor character must want something. No "furniture movers."

Have your character change, ask a question and answer a question, start a conflict and resolve a conflict. Think about your characters! Get ideas. Brainstorm. If you have good characters, the story will come.

Nietzsche: Tragedy is when two equally compelling characters, who have equally opposing wants, conflict, but one fails.

Rules for plays:

1. Create compelling characters in conflict
   
2. Get in late, get out early (use a little bit of time implying what occurs before that scene)
   
3. Create interesting dialog, said in interesting ways, not agreeing with each other, and sound different, be provocative.
   "Is that my hat?" vs "That is my hat!"
   
4. Make it visual. Make it specific and integral to your plot.Make it unique.
   
5. Worry about "What is too much?" How can plot ideas be simplified, yet have your characters complicated and interesting?
   
6. What is fun to stage and costume designers to design? If you know that ten you know what is viually interesting in a play.
   

Writers have so many excuses not to write. Never allow any writing "rule" be used as an excuse not to write!

Dialog in a train station, or bus terminal, or airport, take on an extra sense of urgency. Chekhov has lots of scenes at the train station.

The "Passover Question": What makes today different than any other day? (As opposed to: "What makes this Passover different than any other Passover?")
"Clerks" is a movie which illustrates a day which is different than any other day in the life of the clerk.

Plays are visual. They are not poems being read.

Think of the characters in a situation that is interesting and supported by the story and the plot. The location is a character and supported by story and plots. Location is a character in a play.

10 minute play structure

• pages 1-2: Introduce main characters (protagonist, antagonist) Show us the world of the characters. What the premise is, what the stakes are, what the play wil deliver
  
• pages 2-3: Something happens - inciting incident. Introduce conflict. (This can also happen on page 1, and can occur before the inciting incident.)
  
• pages 3-9: Complicate the story.
  
• pages 9-10: Restore the problem if the play.
  

Don't use the rule "don't write whats been done" not to write! Still, be bold in what you do.

Perception shift: "Planet of the Apes" is a good example. At the end, the movie means something else. Try to make perception shift a part of your play, but make it inevitable.

Good book: Gary Garrison's The Perfect 10.

For the project: Take your inspiration from a fairy tale. (Mine was "Jack and the beanstalk".) Do not retell. Why is it important to you? Make your character better than the fairy tale. Think about what this means to you.

I wrote a script titled "You Don't Know Jack", which was performed (as a staged reading) by 5 local actors on Sunday night. The first draft was due 9am on Sunday morning. We did a reading of each script and got suggestions from Randy. The second version was due at 5pm Sunday. The actors got a few hours to read the scripts before the performance.