The Most Important Part of Your Script

The following is my weekly TheaterMakers Studio newsletter, dated June 21, 2023:

This topic may seem a bit random, but it is one that is important to me (and plenty of other folks who read as many scripts as I do). It’s also one that will have a HUGE impact on how you collaborate with other TheaterMakers.

It may just be the most important thing in your script.

It’s…

(Wait for it…)

Your stage directions.

Bet you weren’t expecting that answer.

Yes… dialogue is very important. And yes… so are concept, structure, character, and plotting.

However, stage directions are the thing that is truly unique about dramatic texts (and yes, for the sake of the following argument I am ignoring published texts that simply codify the staging of the production of note...).

This is perhaps a bit circuitous, but go with me here:

In many ways plays and musicals share with fine and other performing arts a similar relationship between the art (in this case, your text) and the audience: content is created by an Artist that then undergoes two layers of interpretation. Directors, Designers, and Actors provide the first layer of interpretation in a similar manner as Gallery Curators - mediating the relationship between the content and the audience by deciding where a piece is presented, how it is presented, etc (don’t believe me? check out this great article about gallery lighting that I found particularly… illuminating…). In the second layer, theatrical audience members are the same as viewers at a gallery, taking in the content and assigning their own interpretations and meaning.

What makes our situation as Dramatists so unique is that, unlike most Sculptors or Painters, we have the opportunity to communicate directly with the people who mediate the relationship between our art and the audience. That’s where stage directions come in. Not only do we get to provide the content, we can dictate some of the terms of their interpretation: perform THIS action THIS way, cross the stage with THIS intentionality, etc.

That’s a tremendous amount of power.

And it is tempting to wield it like an iron club, forcing any and all comers to submit to our particular vision of the story. And that makes sense… it is your story, right? You likely see it very clearly in your mind’s eye and you want to do everything you can to inform Performers and Directors of what you see and intend.

And that’s great... If you’re writing a screenplay.

But the theater is a collaborative art. It might often feel like it, but we are not alone as writers of drama. Once our job is “finished,” dozens of others begin - and once the script is out of our hands, we begin to relinquish control over its interpretation. That’s where things can get a little scary… and where the urge to keep an iron grip on the content can creep in…

I have seen hundreds of scripts where well-meaning writers attempt to control interpretation of the text by directing from the page with copious notes regarding precise movements, assigning adverbs for every line, and scenic descriptions down to the thread count of the sheets and the height of the pile on the rug… and what that does is suck out all of the room for interpretation and ingenuity on the part of your artistic collaborators (because that’s what your Director and Designers are). Directing from the page locks directors and designers into simply executing a To-Do list when crafting your show rather than building a sandbox for them to play in with you.

The best scripts I see provide spare stage directions that don’t dictate terms… they invite people in.

My favorite stage direction I’ve ever read?

(He flies.)

It’s my favorite because not only is it just poetic in its simplicity, it is one of the most exciting launching pads I’ve ever seen. How does he fly? With what does he fly (if anything)? What does it look like? Sound like?

You can make this stage direction happen with a production budget of $4.3 million or $4.30 - and they both could be just as emotionally compelling and breathtaking.

And the key to it is that the Writer was brave enough to let others take an idea and run with it.

The important thing to remember in collaborative arts like ours is that, ideally, everyone coming to work on your show A) has the script’s best intentions at heart and B) is an expert in their own field, so trust them and give them room to bring their talent, intellect, personal history, and ingenuity to interpreting your text. They’ll often surprise you by discovering things about your show that you never could have dreamed, and possibly could have missed out on had you not opened the door for an artistic conversation.

And if you want to make sure your Actors always interpret your lines as intended? Make sure the intention is IN the lines, NOT in the stage direction.

Write on!

Kicking Off a New Script

The following is my weekly TheaterMakers Studio newsletter, dated June 14, 2023:

Hello, TheaterMakers!

With all the new stuff happening with the TheaterMakers Studio (including our awesome new StageConnect community, which you should definitely sign up for), I’m taking the opportunity to pop into your inbox once a week or so to talk tips, tricks and ‘turgy (dramaturgy, that is!).

In honor of this new beginning, it seems only appropriate to talk about one of my favorite beginnings: kicking off a new script!

Not to toot my horn, but I have written a number of plays and musicals. Some have gone places, some are in development, and some sit in my drawer waiting for their moment (or to be given a proper viking funeral). What they all have in common, though, is that first moment of laying pen to paper or fingers to keyboard… and that inevitable dread of “oh dear god… how do I begin?”

I’m sure you’ve felt it, too. You’re buzzing with ideas, you’re sure you have the perfect concept. But then you stare at that blank page or screen and you just. Can’t. Seem. To. Start.

That’s because beginnings are hard!

Whether it’s starting a new job, going on a first date, or writing your first page… each beginning is exhilarating and terrifying, filled with both limitless potential and also… doubt and fear. What if nobody likes you? What if you have ketchup in your beard and nobody told you (not that that has EVER happened to me)? What if your story… isn’t good?

While I don’t have much insight into jobs or dating (all I’ll say is: thank goodness my wife loves me for all my eccentricities…), what I can share is that I’ve discovered much of this fear of the empty page is caused by the fact that we’re hardwired to begin, well… at the beginning. It is, after all, “a very good place to start…”

But unlike a first date where you’re likely to get ghosted if you jump several steps ahead in the process, writers have the luxury of being able to dive into the work wherever the heck they want - and what I find to be the most satisfying and exciting way to kickstart the creative process is to start anywhere but the beginning.

Personally, I know that when an idea really starts to gel in my head, there’s usually a key moment that encapsulates much of what is drawing me to the idea in the first place. A real world example: I’m currently working on a musical called Rise (with the fantastic composer / lyricist Scott Wilkinson) about the theologian and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who faced off against the Nazis and was executed for his involvement in Project Valkyrie, the attempt to assassinate Hitler (amongst many other amazing feats). The thing that I found so compelling about Bonhoeffer was that he was a man of the cloth, devoted to life and joy and peace… yet he aligned himself with a group plotting to murder someone (a monster of a someone, but a someone nonetheless). How does a person square those conflicting viewpoints? How can you preach peace, but work toward the ending of a life? That dissonance fascinated me.

When I first started writing the show, I had no idea where to begin. But I latched onto that dramatic question that so compelled me… and I skipped to the middle of what would be Act 2 and wrote THAT - a scene between Bonhoeffer and his mother where he faced head-on this ethical dilemma and made the choice that would seal his fate.

Once I had that… I knew I had the heart of the story, and I wasn’t scared of the page anymore.

So if you’re ever at a beginning and don’t know where to start, just remember what compelled you to become so invested in this story in the first place and write that. It could be the climax of the story. It could be the first time your lovers meet or heck… it could even be the ending (gotta know where you’re going to know where to start, right?). Many a musical has had its opening number rewritten a dozen times because they just didn’t know what show was going to end up being on draft #1. So why start there?

Write what excites you, what challenges you, what embodies the whole concept for you, because when you’re fired up you don’t have time to be scared of a stupid old blank page.