Write a Playscript

I’m going to write a play.  It will be the third play I've written and it will be the best one yet.  I just finished the second book by Stanislavsky and have a glimmer of understanding of what is necessary for acting in a play.

There are three basic elements in a play that an actor has to incorporate into creating his role and two of these are supplied by the playwright.  One is the Super Objective and the other is the Through Line of Action.

A play created without these in the playwright’s mind leaves it up to the actor to supply them and work with them.  There is, however, a problem with this in that the actors may have a different interpretations.

It is the job of the director to make the final judgements on these two elements and make sure that all of the intermediate activities of the play follow the Through Line of Action and fulfill the Super Objective.  This would be true whether or not the playwright made it clear.

The next big job of the playwright is to write the dialogue of the play.  In order to be accepted for production, this has to be real; it has to be genuine to the Super Objective of the play and allow it to be achieved, no matter in how circuitous a manner.

The Super Objective of Our Town was to illustrate life, living, and dying.  The Through Line of Action was the life and death experiences of two families.  There it is, as simple as that and yet profound.

Then there was a great variety of things that transpired on stage.  They ranged from the important to the mundane but each added to the achievement of the Super Objective of the play.  There was nothing superfluous in the script.

The two plays that I’ve written were done so without a full understanding of these requirements.  Yet when I reflect on one of them, Duplicity, I can see that there is a Super Objective and a Through Line of Action as well as a variety of situations that support them.  It can be rewritten to make them clearer.  Looking back on the play, I can see that it has promise.

This is where one of the major bugaboos of my psyche gets in the way.  I see it but does anyone else?  How do I go about getting someone to take the time to work on it with me?  Whom do I ask?  Will he/she tell me the truth?  Will they be able to suggest changes to make it better?  I dunno.

This is where I am in life.  I don’t seem to have the ability to ask for help and get it.  A friend read it, said it was good but that isn’t for what I was looking.  I need someone who will take the time to read it, understand it, and then work with me to first of all make it worth producing and secondly give me the confidence I need to propose it to a theater company.

There is one production company for which I have been in eight different plays.  This company has a process that they use for the development of a play that they may produce.  There is, associated with this company, a playwright with whom I am acquainted on a professional basis and she said she would be happy to.

Duplicity may be a worthy candidate for rewrite into a murder-mystery and be seen all the way through to the stage.  On the other hand, it may be better to conceive a whole new play and go through the development process with them on that.  Then use the experience of that to develop Duplicity into its own production.

I am more favorably disposed to the latter strategy.  Mainly because Duplicity is a story that needs to be told and in it nobody is murdered or dies.  The theme of it is the current self-centered philosophy of the Millennial generation, “you only live once,” and how that can run amok.  It would be taking the easy way out to rewrite it for a murder-mystery.

There it is, an answer to my first decision.  Write a play for the murder –mystery stage and make it a new and different plot.

There is still the artistic requirement that it have a Super Objective and Through Line Action.  This is self-imposed because from what I’ve seen of these plays it isn’t always in the mind of the playwright when it is written.  

A further requirement is that it have supporting objectives, situations, dialogues and characters that advance the Super Objective and do it along the Through Line of Action with enough complexity that the audience is involved with the characters and sub plots in an interesting love-hate relationship.

There are many possibilities to realize these objectives.  It is now up to me to decide which one to use.  It will be a new and different approach for me but one that may yield surprisingly good results.  

My goal is to write a murder-mystery that gets produced on the local stage in the 2017-18 season.  My main objective now is to decide on the Super Objective and the plot that will achieve it.  This is not going to be a quick process and I may run a few of these plots before my friends to see what they think of them.

Writing the plots will be a good exercise in creativity but I must decide on a Super Objective first, then come up with a plot that will support it.  This may be after trying out many plots, which are possible for achieving a Super Objective.  There are many streets one may take to reach a certain address.

This is the first installment in my quest to write a play.