Best Advice I Ever Received About Playwriting: Learn How to Do Everything

Seems like a simple concept, and yet many playwrights continue to keep themselves away from the rest of the profession. I've heard them say things like “The more time I spend learning X, the less time I have for writing,” or “I'm not a set designer/director/actor, I'm a playwright. I need to concentrate on my writing,” or “I really can't afford the time.”

I do realize that we are squeezed for time; many of us work two jobs, have families, and whatever time we have for writing is precious. I'm semiretired and have more time than I’ve ever had to spill words all over a page. But when I worked full time I forced myself to get up earlier, trek to the coffee shop, invigorate my blood with fresh ground Costa Rican, and pretend I was on the fast track to a Tony.

We do what we can do in this profession. To take a note from the revered actor, William Shatner, I encourage playwrights everywhere to seek out new life and new civilizations within the trade. To boldly go into every part of the theatre, and learn about what happens after you set down the words that the rest of the profession hangs on.

Because, yes, without those words, there'd be little to do. But in my experience, writing in a vacuum has serious inherent liability. You’ve heard the chestnut warnings: never require the use of a whirling helicopter in a community theatre version of The Entire Vietnam War in Four and-a-Half Minutes. Never insist on 30 tuxedos and an orchestra for the closing number of your ten-minute play, My Cat Has a Cyst.

By spending time learning the crafts and working as a director, dramaturg, stage manager, artistic director, literary manager, and designer of sets, lighting, costumes, and sound, I’ve learned these playwriting lessons—the hard way. Extrapolate as needed:

• Expecting an actor to learn perfect Russian pronunciation to deliver the line “Umyay kahpusty bolshiah kahrona” (“My broccoli has a big head”) may not work out as you expect;
• Medieval dresses that hang to the ground (they ALL did) will cause your actor to go face first into the scenery if you require her to cross the stage at a run;
• Never give a legally-blind person a real sword;
• Attempting to punctuate a scene where two actors are debating work ethics while playing a game of racquetball with ball-bouncing sound effects will (a) create 30 sound cues, (b) cause the actors to lose their places at least once, (c) make the stage manager call down Biblical plagues on your head, and, most importantly, (d) annoy the hell out of the audience with repeated “thwop-ke-whops”;
• And speaking of stage managers, NEVER, EVER give them a task they have to spend inordinate amounts of time trying to accomplish to make your vision happen. They are your allies, your best friends, and the lifeline to a successful production. I'd rather have multiple root canals than a pissed-off SM;
• A reference to a recent historical event that has nothing to do with the setting, time, or theme of the play destroys the linear flow of a play;
• Asking for repeated “specials,” lighting cues that require rewiring, cue creations, and time spent in the flies may be technical overkill for a small, budget-bereft production;
• Asking for a set with the technical complexity of The Price or American Buffalo (both heavily laden with stage crap) may take your play out of production consideration. Theatre companies are (almost) all destitute. Asking for things above the average third-grader's school lunch budget may well get you a “Thanks, but we had 12 million submissions” email. My own preference, learned by trial and lots of errors: You can do (almost) anything with a black-box stage and minimal set pieces. And it's way cheaper.

Everything you do in theatre other than plying your trade as a scribe will benefit your writing. You are not just writing to create a world, you are writing to make that world credible and as easy to produce as possible. You are not alone in this work, not one bit. When you take the time to work with others and learn from their expertise, they will teach you how to be a better and more successful (produced) playwright.

Noooooo...It belongs Over HERE.

Every once in a while the question comes up: how detailed should I be with my set directions?

For me, the answer is easy. For others it may not be and the difference lies with either experience or preference. Some playwrights feel the use of detailed stage directions is necessary; it is as much a part of the script as the dialogue because it distinctly sets (pun intended) the visual aspect. In most cases a play needs a set. I say “in most cases” because there are those where the playwright is happy to let the actors have command of the bareness, the sheer volume of unimpeded air, the nakedness of the stage space itself. Some plays benefit from this deliberate nondescription, this lack of specificity.

Because it is specificity. Every object on the stage is a tool that helps define the time and place of the piece. Because every object on the stage is either a character's personal property or situational indicator, they should tell us something about the characters, the time, the place, the political situation, the geography. Sets tell us about the vision of the playwright, director, designers; are they realistic or exaggerated? A drawing room with 9-foot bookcases diminishes the actors while accenting the vast array of available knowledge, illuminating the difficulty of attaining the knowledge (those books placed on the upper shelves), and and [promoting] the economic advantages of the person(s) who can afford such luxury.

Or is the set nearly bare, such as the typical set for Samuel Beckett's Waiting For Godot? A road, a tree. (And the road itself can be implied as opposed to created.)

Is it a living room (if so, what culture/era/economic status?) where certain furniture is utilized?

My preference is that nothing should be onstage that is not critical or actually used. I lean towards minimalism for several reasons. In the first place, it's less clutter. Fewer distractions from the action. Theatre audiences don't need to be shown everything. They can imply. I like my actors to have as much attention and command as possible.

Second, it's expensive. I don't know about you, but I've lost beaucoup dinero on productions. It's bad enough to afford a venue, actor and tech salaries, and gosh knows what else, without forking out for a genuine 1930s Appalachin-style wood stove. Maybe the Public or the Mark Taper can shrug this off, but Bad Dog! Productions (“Who??”) certainly can't. On the other hand I was in a production of Mamet's American Buffalo on a set that was jam-crammed with tables of junk shop whatever-you-name-it. Most of the set was “found” or donated. The purpose (in addition to realism) was revealed when the director instructed me to, at the end of the play when Teach realizes that Bobby has been full of shit this whole time and that all his machinations and preparations were for naught, to “Trash the place. Destroy it.” Aside from one obscenely hammed-up death scene in Book of Days, I've never had so much fun on stage in my life.

In third place, it can be indulgent. Listing in detail how everything should be placed, how it should look, in order to transmit a world in exact detail because the play will not work to its fullest perspective otherwise is overkill. Theatre is not an exact science. Theatre is the realm of imagination. In movies everything is done for you. Hence “Lazy brain.” In theatre we leave room for our minds to fill in, amplify, translate what is happening. Theatre is where the audience is to be trusted, not led by the nose. For me, overcontrol of the production by the playwright squeezes the life out of it. By leaving as much to the discretion of the designers and director, I thrill to the idea that every production will be different, that every set will be unique. That every time my work is produced/translated, it will be fresh and new.

I suppose the best and most simple answer I can come up with to the question is: what do you absolutely need to make this play function? And what should you include that is absolutely essential?

As my colleague Arthur M. Jolly wrote: “For A Gulag Mouse, I have a detailed set description. That's partly technical (it really matters whose bunk is closest to the stove - that there is a stove - you can't have a fight about that without it!) and partly as the feel of the bunkhouse in this Siberian prison is important; it's part of the story. For my latest [play], I literally have a single word to say what room we are in, and I'll let the designers handle it. I let the play dictate.”