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The
Playwright's FAQ
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The Playwright's FAQBy Lynne Harvey, writer-in-residence at the Drayton Court TheatreQ. What stage directions do I put in/leave out? A. It's not advisable to start off with a veritable thesis on set descriptions, unless you're an expert on stage design. This still happens and it's not needed. A simple description of the setting and any full scene changes are all that's required. Describing the look of a character in any great detail is also not required. The age and one line describing the character is sufficient. "Blonde, pallid, looking woman around fifty with short hair" could be better played by a "Dark, healthy, long haired woman". Unless of course it is imperative to the plot. If you've 'lived' with the blonde short haired woman while writing the play, and saw her in your mind as you wrote the play it can be difficult to see that part given to the dark haired lady - but watch the magic as the dark haired actress inhabits the part so soundly it's goodbye blonde lady nice knowin' ya. Statements of character movement can annoy hinder and restrict if they are too specific, and a lesson to be learnt early on is - actors don't like to be treated like robots. Only put stage directions in when you have to, that are imperative. Be consistent, check you haven't got your actors in a game of musical chairs. Oh the embarrassment in rehearsals when an actor says; "It says 'Gets up and stands near Geoff', but I'm already standing up and Geoff exited three pages ago"! If there's no reason for a character to stand up and look out of the window leave him sitting down, an actor will find the natural movement. A good actor will read the suggested stage direction and try it in rehearsal, as it might just be the natural movement at that moment, if it works it works, if it doesn't the actor will find their own movement in the rehearsal process. Sometimes the directions have to be specific and stated as in: JON TAKES THE KEYS FROM MARK'S POCKET WITHOUT MARK REALISING.But we don't need the extra: JON WALKS SLOWLY OVER TO MARK'S COAT WHICH IS HANGING OVER A GREEN ARMCHAIR, HE LOOKS AT MARK, WALKS BEHIND THE CHAIR, PRETENDS TO PICK UP SOMETHING FROM THE FLOOR AND SECRETLY TAKES HIS KEYS, PUTTING THEM IN A ZIP UP HOT WATER BOTTLE COVER IN THE SHAPE OF A RABBIT.Let the actor find a way of taking those keys. The other sin (and most have us have been tempted to do it) is describe to the actor how to say a line; 'Sarcastically, hopefully, meaningfully, resignedly dejectedly' etc are as useful as a representative from NASA defending how we got to the moon! Again, let the actor find it. Good actors will find exactly how to spin and interpret a line. Only when a line is so short and could be taken in many different ways leading to dead ends might a suggestion be placed, but these come up rarely and the play should really speak up for itself and the path it's taking, rather than you speak for it. This is yet another reason for getting the best actors and director you possibly can. One of my plays starts with an argument between two soldiers in the first world war. When I wrote it I couldn't imagine there was any other way of performing that argument other than the way I wrote it. It seemed so obvious where the rise and fall of the argument lay and how the lines would be said, what words to emphasise etc. On the very first reading the two actors performed the argument and moved around the stage in five different ways without changing a word. Four readings and two productions of that play later, I'm still amazed to see how different actors take those lines and make them their own, finding their own specific way to spin the lines and move round the stage - and not a word has been changed. So please don't be rigid with your stage directions, use only the ones you have to. You have produced the structure, backbone characters and story, let the director mould it's shape and let the actors feel free to move around in the characters.
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