More Advice for Community Theatre Directors

Greetings ladies and gentlemen.  My name is Bobby Keniston, and I'd like to welcome you to my little blog called Theater is a Sport, where I talk about all things theatre-related.

As regular readers know, I am very much a believer in the importance of community and school theatre, not only as a training ground for professionals, but because it is vastly important to our culture as a whole.  So, today, I thought I would share some more advice for school and community theatre directors, culled from my many years directing for both of these markets. 

I talked a good deal about "beats" in an earlier post, how they are essential for a director to find and interpret.  Today, I would like to share with you all what I do early on in the directing process as part of my "director's homework", before rehearsals even begin.  I like to make a chart, which I will demonstrate below, for the play I am directing, a chart that is based on the beats of a play, and that will help to give me a start at comprehending the technical requirements, as well as the beginnings of visualising the play in my head, beat by beat, character by character.  Here is an example of the chart below:

BEAT	Page #’s	Characters Involved	Setting/ Location	Props Used	Costumes/ Changes	Lighting & Sound

Now, as you can see, the number of boxes depends on the number of beats in the play.  So, I start with BEAT #1 in the first box.  In the next box over, I put the page numbers (for example:  Pg 6 (Mike: .... How are you today) through top of page 7 (Erica:  My tooth is starting to hurt).  This gives me a roadmap.  Next box, I list all of the characters involved, and whether they enter or exit, then the setting/location in the next box, props used (personal and pre-set), the starting costumes or if there are any costume changes, and then lighting and sound shifts as indicated by the script.  Now, obviously, this is a jumping off point.  You may decide during rehearsals to add props or lighting cues, play with entrances, exits, costumes, what-have-you.  All of that is fine and encouraged.  But what this chart does for me is helps me organize the show into pieces that are not overwhelming.  It helps me to see the details and not just the overall picture.  The vision begins to come into focus for me.  I have also found that doing this homework is great for production meetings with the designers, to organize every little shift.  It's also nice for the stage manager to see what kind of rehearsal props they can scrounge up.

Again, things might change, additions and subtractions may be made.  Those notes will go into rehearsal reports, so don't worry about it.  Making a chart like this, or, at least writing out these details (by all means, don't use the chart if you don't want to), you will begin to know the piece backwards and forwards, and see how one point flows into the next.

If you have any questions or thought about this chart, feel free to drop me a line in the comments below.

If you would like to know more about me, feel free to visit www.brookpub.com, www.histage.com, www.playscripts.com, and www.hitplays.com and search for me, Bobby Keniston.  You will find my plays and links to read free previews of them.  You can also find Theater is a Sport on Facebook by clicking right here:  https://www.facebook.com/#!/TheaterIsASport

Thanks for checking out this blog post.  Remember:  community theatre directors need to be organized, and theater is not only a craft or an artform--- it is also a sport. 

How to Write a Play or How to Enjoy Repeatedly Banging Your Head Against the Wall, Lesson 8: Let's Talk About Dialogue

Talk

Greetings everyone.  My name is Bobby Keniston, and I am your host here at Theater is a Sport.  Thank you for taking the opportunity to check out my blog.

For my regular readers, well, it's Tuesday, so you know what that means.  Yeah, that's right.  It's time for another lesson about writing a play. 

Are you excited?  You should be.  Today, we are going to talk about dialogue.

Some people say that certain writers have a "natural gift" for dialogue.  Writers as diverse as Pinter, Mamet, Salinger, and Elmore Leonard have all praised for the words they put in their characters' mouths.  "They have an ear for dialogue", people will say.

I don't know how much of that I buy.  Yes, I admit that all of those writers have written compelling dialogue, but, like anything else with writing, it is a skill that can be practiced and perfected.  You don't need to worry about the ear you were born with, but only be willing to use the ear you have now.

Dialogue in a play has only two purposes.  Ready for them?  Here they are:
1.  Dialogue to advance the audience's knowledge of the character
and
2.  Dialogue must advance the plot.

That's all.  Simple, right? 

Okay, so it's not as easy as it sounds.  One thing you want to make sure to avoid is simple ABAB dialogue, the type of dialogue that an audience knows exactly what is coming next from line to line.  For example:

A:  Hi.
B:  Hello.
A:  How's it going today?
B:  Fine. 
A:  Sure is hot.
B:  Yes.  I'm sweating.
A:  Gross.
B:  People sweat.
A:  You're right.  Sorry.
B:  No problem.

Not very fascinating, is it?  I can't imagine an audience giving their attention to these two speakers for much longer.

How do you avoid ABAB dialogue?  Shake it up a bit.  Try not to let the audience fill in the next line.  Let's take the previous scene, but shake it up a bit, shall we?

A:  Hi.
B:  It's too hot for mindless greetings.
A:  You're in a good mood.  Go change your shirt, you're sweating through it.
B:  Gotta do the laundry.
A:  Your wife making you do your own laundry now?  Good for her.
B:  I'll share your sentiment with her if I ever see or hear from her again.
A:  What?  She left you?
B:  On the hottest day of the year with a full load of laundry to do.
A:  Sorry.

Now granted, this little scene is no prize winner, but it does make an attempt to teach us about the characters and introduce a potential plot point with B's wife having left him. 

Another interesting point to keep in mind when writing dialogue:  You don't have to write like people talk, but should write how people would want to talk if they could.  In real dialogue, there are a great deal of "ummms" and "Uhs" and stumbling over words... some playwrights do fine adding this into their dialogue, but a little bit goes a long way.  Let your charactters talk, and if they talk in a way that most people believe they talk in real life, they will buy it.  (People think they talk much better than they actually do, myself included). 

I know this next piece of advice might seem a little stale, but it is very true when it comes to writing good dialogue.  In order to write good, believable dialogue, you have to KNOW YOUR CHARACTERS.   I have to stress this point again and again.  Just as in life, the more you know who you are, the more confident your personality.  The same is true for your writing.  The more you know your characters, the more confident you will be able to create them for the audience, including how they speak. 

Unless you are trying to deliberately make one or all of your characters inaccessible (and I don't know why you would want to do that), please make your dilogue understandable for most people.  There are exceptions to this rule, but these exceptions usually have brilliant tremendous payoffs because of it.  When you're starting out, try to keep things simple.

Tonight I must be brief, but I hope these few tips about dialogue are helpful to you.  In any case, keep writing and working towards completion.

Thanks for reading.  If you want to know more about me, follow the links below.  And, yes:  theater is a sport.  I should know.  I've played it all my life.

http://www.brookpub.com/default.aspx?pg=ab&afn=Bobby&aln=Keniston
http://www.histage.com/author/authorinfo.asp?AuthorID=528
http://www.playscripts.com/author.php3?authorid=1113
https://www.facebook.com/#!/TheaterIsASport