Writing Your First Play - Roger Hall.pdf

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1998 by Elsevier. All rights reserved.
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This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hall,
Roger A.
Writing your first playmoger A. Hall.-2”ded.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-240-80290-X (alk. Paper)
1. Playwriting.
I
Title
PN1661.H28 1998
808.2-dc21
97-31903
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
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........
Foreword
Writing a play is a snap. All you have to do is arrange a bunch
of words in order
so
that when actors say them on stage, they will bring
an audience to laughter, tears, or enlightenment. Go to it. I’ll catch you
later.
OK, so
that’s an exaggeration, but there are
a
slew of writing books
out nowadays that do deliver the message that the important thing is to
write
the play (or novel or screenplay) and get that sense of accomplish-
ment. Figuring out how to do so will come to you along the way.
The fact that this theory isn’t applied to other professions (”The
important thing is to
do
the heart/lung transplant. You’ll figure it out as
you go.”) doesn’t seem to bother anyone. Plays are emotional things, things
from the heart. They aren’t something you have to learn how to do.
Or do you? Faith and inspiration might get you
a
good scene
or
even a good act, but eventually you’ll see that those flashes of inspiration
need to be made part of a structure, that a play has to be built. In order to
build something, you need to have material and tools. That’s what this
book provides.
I’ve been working as a writer for a dozen years in theater, film, and
television, and I’ve only taken one writing course.
It
was the first one
I
ever took, and it was taught by Roger Hall.
I
hadn’t written before then.
I
haven‘t stopped since.
I
remember one exercise in particular (it’s in this book) that
changed my whole idea of what a play could be. Open a script and the eye
clearly sees what a play is-people standing around talking, sometimes
sitting around talking. So when Dr. Hall assigned Exercise 1-write a scene
with no dialogue-it seemed like a weird, if fun, stunt. As
I
wrote the scene
(as
I
recall it was about something startlingly original, like people in dorms
playing loud music),
I
saw that it didn’t have to be strained, or forced,
or twisted to fulfill the requirements. (If it was all three, that wasn’t the
assignment’s fault.)
I
saw that a scene could be complete and whole with-
out words because a play isn’t about words; it’s about people doing things,
and speaking is only one
of
the things they do.
It sounds obvious. It’s a simple lesson, but of the hundreds of
scripts I’ve read since
I
became a producer,
99
percent
of
them have been
nothing but people talking.
ix
x
Foreword
All of the exercises from Dr. Hall’s class, each a giant leap forward
in knowledge and experience for me, are in your hand right now. Also in it,
and most entertainingly, are my fellow students. One of the most delightful
aspects of this book is the writing samples from Dr. Hall’s students over the
years.
Most writing books, in their section on conflict, ask you to read,
say, a scene from
Glengarry Glen Ross,
which leads any sensitive novice
writer to give up and
go
into frozen produce marketing.
You
won’t be able
to write like Mamet right off the bat, and forcing a comparison like that is a
recipe for writer’s block. If you’re serious about being a writer, you‘ve read
the great and the good plays; you know what to aspire to. Now you’re
trying to learn your craft.
That’s a lonely process, and the other students in this book will
keep you company, give you someone to compete with. Someone to make
you say, ”I can do that” or
”I
can do better than that.” (Though you may be
surprised; some of this writing is quite good.)
So
do it. Read the book, do the exercises. Have fun, talk back. When
you’re through, you’ll be ready to tackle that heart/lung transplant without
fear of losing the audience on the operating table.
Phoef Sutton was executive producer and writer
for
the classic NBC television
series “Cheers!“
for
which he won
a
pair of Emmy Awards. He also wrote
for
and
produced two
of
Bob Newhart’s endearing sitcoms.
Mu.
Sutton
has
been
a
recipient
of a
National Endowment
for
the Arts Playwriting Fellowship, and he was the
winner of the Norman
Lear
Award for Comedy Playwriting and the RobertslShiras
Playwriting Award. Most recently, he wrote the screenplays
for
Mrs. Winter-
bourne
and
The Fan.
........
Preface
When Focal Press first wanted to publish
Writing Your First Play,
I
was elated. When people
I
didn’t even know began to write me letters
saying how much they had benefited from the book,
I
was even more
pleased.
I
mean,
I
knew this approach worked within my classroom setting,
but
I
wasn’t entirely sure how it would translate to other teachers or to
individuals laboring on their own. Apparently, it worked!
When Focal Press then asked me to prepare a second edition,
I
wondered to myself What can
I
put in a second edition that
I
haven’t
already put in the first?
I
knew
I
could update the references to plays.
I
knew
I
could include different scenes and examples with more contempo-
rary material.
I
also knew
I
didn’t want to alter the basic structure of the
book, and
I
didn’t want to change the tone of the writing;
I
want that to be
as personal as possible between you and me.
So
what difference,
fundamen-
tally,
would a second edition make?
First,
I
decided to expand on one of things that people liked most
about the original edition: the exercises. I’ve used quite a few more writing
exercises with students than
I
actually included in the book.
So
for this
edition
I
included an expanded chapter (Chapter
8)
with additional exer-
cises that illumine the art of playwriting and get your writing muscles
warmed up.
Then
I
turned to the list
of
helpful suggestions that people had
passed along. Those included a more substantial final play example, a fuller
explanation of how to proceed from scenes to a full one-act play, and more
information about what to do once the play was completed. I’ve tried to
respond to each of those ideas by enlarging the chapter on Writing Your
Play (Chapter
9)
and adding a new section on Marketing Your Play
(Chapter 10).
The essential core of the book, however, remains-especially the
sequential exercises that help a writer learn the fundamentals of
playwriting and develop a play at the same time. Just as
I
tell people to
write from their own experience, the basic concept for that arrangement
goes back to my own days as a student.
I
once took a playwriting class in which the teacher, on the first
day, said: ”Your first assignment is to write a play. Bring it to class in two
weeks, and we’ll read and discuss it.”
After class that day
I
turned to the student beside me and asked,
”Do
you know how to write a play?”
”No,”
she replied, ”that’s why
I
xi
xii
Preface
took the class. Do you?" No. I didn't either. I realized intuitively that there
had to be a better way to help people write plays. When
I
began teaching
playwriting myself,
I
put my efforts together with Dr. Ralph Cohen, a
colleague in the English Department, who had similar interests.
We wanted to devise an approach that would allow students to
work on certain fundamental aspects of playwriting one element at a time.
We also wanted to encourage plays to evolve slowly from one idea to
another. After some trials and errors, we developed a series of exercises
that helped students to understand and use basic elements of drama such
as action, conflict, dialogue, and character.
It just
so
happened that our experiments with playwriting came at
a good time, for the last few years have seen a burgeoning interest in
playwriting. Playwriting contests have sprung up like wildflowers, some-
times in the most unlikely terrain, and many of them carry substantial
financial and artistic rewards. Community theater, secondary school drama
programs, and college theater departments have demonstrated a greater
willingness than previously to depart from the Broadway-hit syndrome and
experiment with original works. The same is true of regional professional
theaters, many of which have become prominent in the development of
new scripts. In addition, almost every major city has semiprofessional or
professional companies that focus their attention, sometimes exclusively, on
original drama.
Broadway-the New York commercial theater-which in many
ways is still regarded as the pinnacle of American theater, has also re-
sponded to this surge of new plays. Because of high costs, most of the
productions in the major New York theaters have hued to the economically
safer road of revivals or imports of successful British plays. Even in New
York, however, such original American plays as
Six Degrees
of
Separation
and
Three
Tall
Women
have flourished. In many cases scripts such as
Oleanna, The Piano Lesson,
and
Angels
in
America,
which were developed and
produced first in other areas of the country, have eventually enjoyed
Broadway success. Also, numerous off- and off-off-Broadway theaters
in
New York have gained a certain amount of notoriety through their produc-
tion of new material.
This current fascination with the production of original scripts has
led to explorations of the best and most effective ways to put a story into
dramatic form. That is hardly a new concern. Ever since Aristotle some
2300
years ago tried to label the elements that comprised a superior tragedy,
writers and critics have been attempting to tell people how to construct
plays. Writers of our own century have not been idle in that enterprise.
Dozens of volumes have been printed on playwriting, playwrighting,
playmaking, how to write a play, and even how
not
to write a play. They
have been written by knowledgeable critics of the drama such as Walter
Kerr and Brander Matthews, experienced teachers of playwriting such as
George Pierce Baker and Sam Smiley, and successful playwrights such as
John Van Druten (author of
I
Remember Mama
and
I
Am
a
Camera)
and John
Howard Lawson (author of
Processional).

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