It was great to read this show after having seen it twice last year. Reading Elaine’s lines it was hard to get Grace Livingston out of my head and eventually I realized I did not want to. I love hearing a specific voice in my head and usually it’s up to my imagination, but the idea of seeing the show was difficult to get out of my head. I love this play for a lot of the same reasons that I love The Laramie Project. The way the dialogue is written is very easy to say, it makes the actors’ jobs much easier. It’s written like someone would speak, with pauses and ellipses that really help identify a character. I think that as a writer, we need to be able to say our own words out loud without a problem before we ask an actor to attempt to act out our story. With Elaine, it’s fascinating how you can tell so much about her character by her way of speaking. Right off the bat on the first page she says “if me and my neighbors was all white” instead of using ‘proper grammar.’ It’s the little things like this that I think can really make a script but are also the hardest things about writing a script. When you’re deciding on a character, you don’t only have to decide on their personalities, but also how they speak, how they look, etc.
One thing that I like about this script is how well Rosalind pulls off having a character monologue. Many of the times it feels as if Elaine is talking to someone, to the audience, to an interviewer, anyone. But I think it just adds such a personal feel to the show that I think I end up caring more for her character because we’re given all this insight into her mind. That being said, another facet of the play that branches off of this that I found really interesting were the characters who came on stage for a monologue and would then leave. To be able to do this requires a great knowledge of the story that you’re trying to tell as well as a knowledge of the characters that you’re trying to portray.
I think plays that are mostly based on monologues, such as The Vagina Monologues or The Laramie Project, are especially difficult to pull off. I love that the transition between the monologues and the snippets of scenes are simple and smooth and not overdramatic. This makes the scenes just as powerful as the monologues and I’m not left feeling, either as an audience member or as a reader, that the scenes are a weaker part of the play. I think that they both lead in to each other and that is something I’d really like to master.
I also like the way that with Rosalind’s writing, we go along with Elaine’s character in believing that her neighbors are just drug addicts who are up to no good. So that the scene that they come to help her and assist her in escaping is just as powerful and shocking for the audience as it is for Elaine. This is difficult in writing but I think she pulled it off really well and I think that the way she does so is so seamless, which is something I would love to learn how to do.
I think that a play that tries to deal with a tragedy, especially a recent one, is very difficult to do well. This play is very well written and I think that I could learn a lot about how to write a play similar to this. I want to write a play about the Dirty War in Argentina, and while I’m not sure this specific style would work, I’d love to incorporate monologues and I think that studying this play can help me with my monologue writing.
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You're going to bring the actor angle in automatically, which is great. As a playwright, I suspect you will always automatically write for the actor, the stage. Others will have to struggle to get that piece into their writing, but you will not have that problem. That said, you know an actor's going to change what's in your head, that when actors say your lines on stage, they will change what you had in mind. Grace, in fact, is a perfect example of that. You've written that characterization is one of "the hardest things about writing a script. When you’re deciding on a character, you don’t only have to decide on their personalities, but also how they speak, how they look, etc." But this is always true in all writing, no? And all acting as well for that matter?
ReplyDeleteYou've lost me in paragraph two here, so let's chat about that Tuesday.
Start thinking too about how Rosalind (or whomever) "pulls off" the things you think work here. How do the scenes and transitions seem smooth? How is the audience just as shocked as Elaine? Why is that hard to do, and how does NOM do it? Nailing down the how is your goal here -- identifying what you like is step one, but then figuring out how it's done and how you can do it too is the important part.
So let's chat about that tomorrow too.