How to Write a Play

I’m a writer, not a teacher or a dramaturg. I’m not even sure exactly what a dramaturg is… This means I can’t tell anyone how to write a play, I can only say how I've written some of my plays, and what I've learned in the process. It starts with character almost always. I can’t begin with a plot, because until I begin to know my character and hear them speak, I have little idea what is going to happen to them. 

The first play I ever wrote (call it play A) certainly began with a character who was already partly formed, from my novel writing. He was an offshoot from my fictional protagonist, who I was able to take in a different direction to his counterpart in the novel. I found that recreating him with a different scenario to enter was very liberating. In the novel there was such detailed intensity that it sometimes became hard to make the story progress. With a play I’ve usually found fewer restrictions.

But play A soon became bogged down in its own details. I’d been to see plenty of plays and I’d read many play scripts. I felt I understood how the layout and form on the page should look; I thought I knew it should have a literal structure of three acts, divided into many scenes. I didn’t, at that stage, understand that the page is largely irrelevant, it’s the stage which counts and the real people involved. In my ignorance I began with a detailed description of the set. This description proceeded to tie me down in the action and it grew and became more elaborate as I introduced more interactions with more props and more bits of set. This was my attempt to make the characters ‘do’ and not just ‘say’, having been instructed that they mustn’t just make speeches.

I didn’t realise that you can trust most competent directors and casts to work out much of the detail of movement and interactions for themselves. The writer’s stage directions will be largely ignored. Play A still exists. I sometimes feel the urge to return to it and tame it so that my characters, who I still empathise with, can interact with each other instead of with the furniture!

Play B was the opposite of Play A. By then I’d both seen and read some Beckett and some Pinter. Play B came out of a duologue between two nameless characters, neither of whom seemed to know what was going on. They asked pointed questions which weren’t answered and they made no speeches. There were no acts, no scenes, no set and only one essential prop. Play B worked, it was funny, dark and above all short – 10 minutes or so. It was first performed at an evening of script-in-hand shorts, was picked up, rehearsed and staged at an evening of short plays which toured to several venues, ending at the Ilkley Literature Festival.

Play C was a different kettle of fish. It built very slowly, in stages, over several years. First was a mere writing exercise; create a character, give them 3 attributes, make them have a conversation in which there is a disagreement. My character emerged roaring. He was old, he was passionate about his collection and he was furious because someone was trying to get their hands on his collection. The character developed very quickly but the plot took a while longer, because I’d been working on the wrong premise. He was angry because he was alone, he had been abandoned by the one person he loved.

The initial drafts of play C aimed at a length of around 20 minutes, which were successful but only so far. By then another character had emerged, the lost love. I needed to tell their story more fully and make the lover as full a character as the protagonist. The script expanded to become a production lasting around 40 minutes, with a brilliant director. I helped create the set and I found most of the props. This helped me, more than any writing exercise, to see how a staged play should work and how the set should not dominate the characters and the action.

Play C won a prize at a minor literary festival, the prize was to have the play staged, with that brilliant director. I was very pleased but not quite fulfilled. The characters needed more, I knew that their backstory needed filling out, but I didn’t want to resort to flashbacks. I tinkered with it a bit halfheartedly and then came the opportunity to stage it again, with myself as director.

I did the re-write fast and furiously and in the process the backstory finally came to life. I also learned that I’m not a director and I don’t know enough about the vagaries of casting. Luckily two of the three actors on stage were more than competent and professional, they managed to support the third actor and get through the evening without most of the audience realising I was acting as prompt. Play C worked as both tragic story and as a staged production, there’s little more that needs doing to it.

…to be continued…

Do you enter Writing Competitions? Don't dismiss the small ones!

I do enter writing competitions, I've had a go at dozens over past years. Mostly I never even know if my manuscript or email has reached the correct location and not exceeded the deadline. Those who run competitions obviously can't notify all who enter and don't win, but it is frustrating never knowing.

However I'm not saying there's no point in entering competitions. I have been told I was on a long list years ago and once I was even on a shortlist and very close, but my short story didn't quite fit with the others which were all to be published together in a magazine. So that was that.

And once I was joint winner! It was a local playwriting competition for scripts of up to one hour, and there were not hundreds of entries. However there were two winners and the prize wasn't cash, but much more valuable than a couple of hundred quid. My play was joint winner with Andrew Crowther's Funny Men. We both got to see and participate in full productions of our plays as part of the Snowgoose New Writing Festival in Bradford in 2008.

The Single Utamaro at the Carriageworks Theatre,
Leeds & Bradford Playhouse in June 2011
cast: l-r Richard Houghton-Evans as Chas,
Steph Lodge as Martha and Harry Venet as Benedict

My play was called 'The Single Utamaro'. The whole process was extremely rewarding. I helped with the set and props but the directing was done by an expert, Audrey Caldron. I learnt a huge amount and after two re-writes the play was revived three years later with a largely new cast and I directed. I've written other plays since but the Utamaro* is still a piece of writing which I'm very close to.

So forget the Mann Booker prize, entries for that have to be submitted by a publisher anyhow! Get involved with smaller competitions run by groups and organisations nearby. The fact that there will be less competition for the prizes doesn't imply that it's not worth entering. There's more chance that you will get valuable experience and recognition. This doesn't mean you don't have to be a really good, conscientious writer. It does mean there's more chance of your good writing being noticed.



*Utamaro was an eighteenth century Japanese painter and printmaker who was famous for creating exquisite images of beautiful women.

Monolgue for Leonora Carrington, 1917-2011

Leonora Carrington, artist and writer who died in 2011

Monologue/ Interview
(following a comment, I must point out that this is a fictional interview, based on some known facts and my huge admiration for Leonora Carrington's rebellious spirit and her remarkable art)
 

 Leonora

I do vaguely remember her, that journalist.  What was her name..?  Joyce… something. Whatever it was, she would insist on asking me the silliest of questions:

“Leonora, how does it feel, to be your age?” 

I mean really!  What does she expect me to say to that?  ‘I’m eighty-nine, you know.’

Of course I didn’t say that.  In any case I may not have been eighty nine, I can’t remember exactly.  If anyone asked me now, I’d have to adapt the stupid cliché.

“I’m actually dead, you know!”

She said my life, in those days, would make a great a movie script.  Absolute tosh of course! Mind you, I haven’t been to the cinema for years.  That Hollywood stuff was so unreal and I don’t suppose it’s changed.  All those unconvincingly goodly heroes and unfeasibly villainous villains and the women relegated to be either grieving mothers or simply useless and fainting in coils all over the shop.

I was always determined to be much more useful than that.

Not that father saw it.  I was destined to be beautiful, rich, make a good marriage; that was all I was expected to achieve.  A girl, you see, was not expected to do anything for herself.  Daddy was rich, a clever, self-made man and so desperate to become acceptable in ‘proper English society’.  He wanted to be a Toff and decided that he could buy his way in.

What Daddy decided, was so.

So. I was expected to stop being a little heathen and become a lady. I went to Saint Bride’s, an exclusive convent school.  The nuns failed to comprehend my difficulties; they were quite incapable of recognising any process which was not theirs.  I made up nonsense rhymes.  I painted a picture of Jesus carrying the ass, which apparently was blasphemous. I was expelled.  And another convent, expelled again, for smoking cigarettes.  Also, I wrote with either hand and composed mirror writing, which was obviously the Devil’s work.  I could draw with both hands too, and paint… but that came later.

I told her, that Joyce… what’s her name.  Told her that I was born into a one-hundred-per-cent Philistine family!  My brothers were hunting and shooting types, Father believed a female couldn’t be an artist, it was improper.  Although mother painted quaint little scenes which she would donate to her latest cause, but even she wasn’t so certain it was proper to be an actual artist.  Girls were supposed to be quiet and do what they were told, but of course I was a rebel of the most committed and superior variety.  

Eventually I was sent Florence for the summer to study classical painting.  This was in 1923 you realise, I mean who studied classical painting?  On the streets of Europe were Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Max Ernst.  Classical painting my eye!  And even this was dependant on my compliance.  I was to wear a silken gown, bow to the King and attend a coming out ball.  What a ludicrous malarkey! 

Well I’m a writer, you know, so I had to write a nasty story about that!  I called it The Debutante.  I made friends with a beautiful hyena at London Zoo, and I took her home with me.  She agreed to take my place at that ludicrous ball, and I dressed her in my gown, but her face was a slight problem.  She took matters into her own hands, or rather her own teeth and she ate the poor maid who had come in to help do my hair.  Ate the maid all up except for the face which she wore to the ball!  And of course everybody was far too ‘polite’ to comment, until the hyena grew hungry again and ate the face too, before leaping through an open window and escaping.

I even had to attend ladies day at Royal Ascot, wearing the most ghastly hat.  I managed to lose that to a convenient gust of wind, so I was hidden in a corner, which suited me.  I sat and read Evelyn Waugh.  That wasn’t the thing at all, there was so much whispering and tutting! Quite hilarious!

When I was nineteen I fell for Max, almost before I met him.  It was mother’s fault, she gave me a book with a marvellous painting of his on the cover; “Two Children, frightened by a nightingale.”  Of course I was at Chelsea Art School at the time, mother probably thought I’d find the book useful.  It was certainly that!

The book pointed me straight towards the exhibition and there was Max, blond and graceful and intense with that marvellous beaklike nose.  Max, the bird superior and I became his bride of the wind, it was almost immediate.  We escaped to Cornwall for the summer.  Eileen was there, and Lee and Roland.  Lee photographed us all, I think Paul and Nush came over from Paris.

Was Breton there? I don’t believe so. And Dali?  Of course not!  Why on earth would you ask about that little pervert?  In any case Dali and Breton were seldom on the same continent if they could avoid it!  Thus a surreal meltdown was usually avoided.

Father interfered of course, once he tracked us down.  Max went back to Paris rather rapidly before father could have him arrested for abduction of a minor or some such rubbish, as if I was one of his horses!  I borrowed ten guineas and went to Paris and that’s where I began painting seriously.

I never saw father again.  He actually made that “Never darken my door again” speech!  Can you believe that?  I hardly ever saw mother again either, which was the worst of all that.  But I did write to her sometimes and I spoke to her on the telephone years later, when I was in Mexico.

Why did I never return to England?  What would I want to return for?  What had England, ever done for me, with all its petty class lunacy and snobbery?  In any case I was born Irish, hence those wretched convents, all those nuns, vapid and fluttering nuns or vicious and screeching nuns.  My childhood was miserable.  The smallness of all that wretched nonsense!  That’s all I could write about for years, you know.

My painting was freer.  I owe that to Max, I suppose and to Mexico.  I had two husbands in Mexico, neither of them were Max.  I’m glad I lived and died the best part of my life in Mexico.

I beg your pardon? Was that the exciting, film script part of my life?  The Mexican part?  Of course it was not! I’m an artist not a film star.  The so called ‘movie script’ part, that’s the story that people always ask about.  My love affair with Max Ernst.  You think that’s the only excitement I ever had?  Certain forms of excitement are over-rated, I can assure  you of that.  I’m too old to care for it.

 I’m not talking about any of that, not to you.  Why should I?

I need a cigarette, do you have one?

 

'Whatever Happened to Xenia Cage?' Scene from my play

(In copying this from Word, some of the script formatting has slipped slightly, apologies.)

Scene Seven– Mrs Cage’s Art & Crafts store, Los Angeles, 1933

        Enter Xenia, wearing a fashionable hat. She looks around the store.

Xenia             I hope this store has what I need for my course. Let me think. (ticks things off on her fingers) Soft pencils, turpentine, good brushes…

 
    Enter John Cage, shop assistant (played by one of the sisters)

 John              Good afternoon miss. Can I be of any assistance?

Xenia             John! What are you doing here? Sasha said there should be no famous people in this play!

John              But it’s only 1933. I’m not at all famous, not yet.

Xenia             Neither should there be any men.

John              Well, what am I meant to do about that? Cut me a bit of slack Xenia, please.

 

Xenia             I suppose I might, for now. Just out of curiosity.

John              You do remember this scene?

Xenia             Unfortunately, I remember it very well.

John              Shall we begin again?

Xenia             If you insist.

John              Would you care to go off and re-enter?

Xenia             Not particularly. Just get on with it.

John turns away, then back to face her.

John              Good afternoon miss. Can I be of any assistance?

Xenia             Thank you, but I require no assistance whatever.

John             That’s such a shame, we have so much to offer. We stock absolutely everything a talented artist like yourself could possibly need, from stretched canvas to hog-hair artists’ brushes.

Xenia           I want sable, not hog-hair.

John              Ok. We’ve got those somewhere, but they will cost you. Folk can’t afford much in these recessionary times, there’s no demand for sable brushes.

Xenia             I need three. I’m studying art at Reed College.

John              That’s marvellous. I’m a student too, I study music. I just work in the store to help out as I’m between tutors right now.

Xenia             A musician. Any particular variety of music?

John              Modern, absolutely modern, but not jazz. I’m working on a bunch of my own compositions right now, some piano pieces.

Xenia             I play piano.

John              I’m sure you’re absolutely excellent.

Xenia             I would be if I could only practice more.

John              Absolutely, you must practice. It’s essential for a musician to know what they’re doing, even if they then want to break the rules.

Xenia             I see. So you like breaking rules?

John              The classical stuff has been absolutely done to death, I need to be original. I want to break down barriers between musical performance and everyday sounds.

Xenia             Experimental music. I see.

Pause

John              But I don’t mean to denigrate your tastes. And you must practice, it’s so important.

Xenia             It’s difficult to practice. Right now I don’t have my own piano, my cottage is too small. Sometimes I visit my friend Gretchen’s house. They’re very wealthy, they have a good Steinway grand which I play.

John (slowly) You play on Gretchen’s Steinway?

Xenia             I believe that’s what I said.

John              Absolutely! How many Gretchens are there in LA, do you think?

Xenia             Oh, quite a few I should imagine, only she doesn’t live in LA. We were at Monterey High together and they have a marvellous house above Carmel Bay.

John              Not so many Gretchens in Carmel.

Xenia             I wouldn’t know. But I’ll bet you she’s the only one with a Steinway.

John              I’m certain she is. I’ve played on that Steinway too.

Xenia             I beg your pardon?

John              When I’m in Carmel, I play on Gretchen’s Steinway, just like you do.

Xenia             Well that’s a new chat up line. I certainly don’t believe a word of it!

John              I’m not actually… er… (pause) Listen, perhaps an introduction is in order. My name is John Cage, this is my mother’s store, she set this up to help impoverished artists. I help out when I’m in town.

Xenia             I am Xenia Kashevaroff. Pleased to meet you, John Cage.

They shake hands.

John              And I’m delighted to meet you, Miss Kashevaroff. You are absolutely the loveliest young woman who has ever walked into this store.

Xenia             Now that’s a much better line. Please do continue.

John              And plenty of beautiful people do come in here. Artists bring their models, and models bring their artists. Teachers bring their students and students bring their lovers. I’m not saying which might be the woman in any case. And, Xenia Kashevaroff, you outshine them all! If I were to be the marrying kind, you would absolutely be the kind woman I would want to marry.

Xenia (with an exaggerated Southern US accent) Why Mister Cage, without that kinda noticeable little word, ‘if’, I’d say you were being kinda hasty.

John              But how much less fun conversation would be without a few ‘ifs’! Don’t you agree?

Xenia             I might need some convincing of that. Ifs can be confusing, though I do have more of a problem with buts.

John              Okay. (pause) Returning to ifs, if your friend Gretchen, with the Steinway piano, turned out to be the very same Gretchen as my friend Gretchen, with the Steinway piano, would that be kind of convincing?

Xenia             That would be very amusing. But how could we possibly prove it, without going all the way to Carmel?

John              We can absolutely resolve the whole thing. If you care to tell me your friend Gretchen’s surname, I can then tell you if it’s the same as my friend Gretchen’s surname.

Xenia             Oh no you don’t John Cage! I’m absolutely not caught out so easily!

John           Xenia, beautiful Xenia, I’m absolutely not trying to catch you out. No ifs, no buts!
                    My friend’s name is Gretchen Schoeninger, which I think is unique. So, what is
                    your friend’s name?                

Xenia          So? I don’t believe we’ve come to so’s, but I can reply with a positive and. And
                    my friend’s name is also Gretchen Schoeninger.

Pause

John              And Gretchen’s little white dog howls when I play her piano.

 

Xenia             Ands are certainly doing well. What is your opinion of howevers? I need to
                      use one just about now.

John              I’m broadly in favour. I believe I actually used a ‘however’ a bit earlier in this very conversation, when I paid you a compliment.
 

Xenia             I can’t say I noticed.

 

John              And you are absolutely free to use however or whatever takes your fancy

Xenia             I wouldn’t call it a fancy. However, Gretchen’s little white dog certainly does not howl when I play the piano.
 

John              And you probably play far more beautifully than I do.

Xenia             If I confess to Schubert, would that tempt you to confess to the sort of
                      music which you play, on Gretchen’s piano?

John              That is definitely a confession! I play my own experimental compositions.
 

Xenia             I kind of thought you might. What does that sound like, to make the poor 
                      puppy howl?

John              It’s modern atonal stuff, less Schubert, more Schoenberg.

Xenia             I don’t exactly know who that is.

John              Miss Kashevaroff, would you care to be enlightened?

Xenia             Well I do declare, Mister Cage, I never heard it called that before.

John              I never meant… oh what the heck! (offering his arm) Miss Kashevaroff, would
                      you care to find someplace really nice to sit and partake of a soda?  I could
                     then enlighten you.

Xenia (taking his arm) Why Mister Cage, that sounds most enlightening.

          They walk towards the exit arm in arm, then they stop. 

 John            So, my darling. Was that as terrible as you remembered it?

Xenia            Oh Bunny, of course it wasn’t terrible.

John             And will you ever forgive me?

Xenia            I don’t suppose so. Not for one single moment.

      They exit together.