Passionfruit Theatre Company,9 Northgate St. Athlone.www.passionfruittheatre.com

How to write a play? (How to write anything!)

Inspiration and organisation (creative). Information and organisation (factual). Most works fail through lack of

organisation.

Therefore… Never think of your experience as useless

or unusable. The artist is someone who makes things

visible. He/she shows us how to see things that are

usually concelaed

Where to begin…? Write about what you know. Begin with yourself and work out. Don’t begin ‘out there’ and work back. Work out your own hidden strengths. Eg. Don’t try to be tragic if your real

strength is for comedy. Write about your own place.

How to continue… Find your own ‘voice’. T.S Eliot (the poet) said that writing has

three ‘voices’. Biography. Journalism. Writing with resonance.

What does that mean…! It means that creative writing is an imaginative

interpretation of reality that ‘lasts’. The same is true of all art (painting, sculpture,

films even etc.) Object – imagination – work of art. Object – work of art, is not art. A painting is not a photograph (but photography

can be ‘arty’.)

Why creative writing? “It is a strange paradox of literature that it is

almost easier to arrive at truth by means of a fiction than in any other way.” Anthony Cronin, The Last Modernist (biography of Samuel Beckett.)

The same is true of acting. The same is true of painting. The same is true of poetry. The same is true of all art.

So, back to drama. Let drama be dramatic. Don’t have it pretending

to be something else. Genre. Great writers are great readers. Some overlapping of boundaries is allowed. Residual and emergent elements. Accept the rules, then use them to your

advantage. No original stories. Only your own original

‘slant’. All stories are love stories.

Specific points to help you. Does your play have a narrator? The narrator can be ‘inside’ or ‘outside’ the

action. (Brian Friel, Dancing at Lughnasa) A narrator connects ‘unconnected’ scenes,

particular in ‘memory’ plays. A narrator provides the audience with essential

information. A narrator speeds up the action. Shakespeare uses narration in the form of

solilioquy/monologue. In films the ‘voice-over’ technique is used.

The ‘musts’ of dramatic writing. Narrative. (Your play must tell a story, with

beginning, middle and end, but not necessarily in that order.)

Humour. Shock/surprise. Dialogue. Use all the stage. Don’t have your characters constantly vertical. Use all the variations of the human form.

Dialogue. The essential part of all good plays. Can be suitable for time and place ( =

setting) and character. But doesn’t have to be! (Eg. Shakespeare is

often given modern costumes and a modern setting.)

Vary the register. Put in a few screams!

Characters. Contrasting. Different personalities. Different view of the world. Different function in the play. Different relationship with other

characters. “We all know how to take care of our

enemies. It’s from our friends that we need protection.” Sigmund Freud.

Conflict. Every good play, film, etc. has this. Internal or external. Allows for dramatic language. Allows for dramatic action (actor ‘storms off’,

some else ‘storms in’.) Allows for visual impact. Allows for technical back-up (sound effects,

change of lighting to add to effect.) Shakespeare expert at conflict. King Lear.

The production. This refers to the overall effect of the ‘bits’ when

their all put together. Style of acting, movement, setting, scenery,

lighting, costumes, music, sound effects. Who will play the lead? A well known person or

an unknown person? Can Hamlet be played by a woman? Can she be

gay? Production is the responsibility of the director,

and of the choices he/she makes with regard to the staging of the play.

An important quotation.

“There is a great neglect of that great provincial hinterland represented by Mullingar, Roscrea, Kilkenny and Athlone where the real dynamism of change and development is centred. When our city writers go down the country they invariably head for exotic places like Ballyferriter and Achill, bypassing a whole provincial ethos in a blur of alternating grey and green.”