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Per Jonah’s podcast, number 1.1: “Theatrical–of or for the theater of acting or actors; calculated for effect, showy, artificial, affected.”

In chapter two of [amazon_link id=”1585103403″ target=”_blank” ]Playwriting in Process: Thinking and Working Theatrically[/amazon_link], Michael Wright considers theatricality and the flaws of current approaches to teaching playwriting and deficiencies he often sees in plays created by new playwrights.

In his Theatrically Speaking series of podcasts, Jonah Knight started with podcast 1.1 and 1.2 by considering theatricality.

I think the fact that both of these playwrights have started their works by looking at theater through the lens of theatricality is telling. That is, it must be important. There must be something about it that demands or merits attention. And on my part, theatricality has been the most difficult and elusive of elements and only recently have I started to get my hands on it or my head around it.

My Take on Theatricality

To me, writing theatricality means grasping space as you write. It means apprehending not only the characters and events that you mean to portray, but the physical environment in which they exist; how that physical environment affects your characters and events”and then using this apprehension creatively to your advantage”or more specifically, passing the three-dimensional world of the play that you are creating on to the audience and thereby making that world actively interesting, engaging, and unique to the meaning and content of your play.

In my play A Howl in the Woods one of the characters is in a bad position”he’s trapped in a place where he doesn’t want to be (physically, psychologically, and spiritually)”throughout the first part of the play trash has been thrown about and has covered the ground: including beer cans. It came to me suddenly that this character could flatten a beer can and use it to construct a mock telegraph machine and use it to send a message”and then it hit me next: what if he got an answer? What if that answer were a howl from off stage? A presence that kept encroaching? This, to me is theatricality. In this scene, the character is having a dialogue with himself; his behavior is telling: it shows his state of mind and the mock telegraph makes tangible his struggle to get out; it holds mystery; it reveals his imaginative nature and experiments with the space he occupies.

Before I wrote this play, the extent of my theatrical sense of a stage was limited to people crossing up and down and from side-to-side and motioning and, occasionally, singing something as they puttered around. That is, this was my physical sense of the play. I have always had a good verbal sense; and my plays are highly imagistic and carry meaningful metaphors and themes. This is to say that language is important, too. As is emotion. Getting that sense of what a character is all about by seeing that character move in space, seeing that character break a vase, weep in deep sobs, tackle another person. Theatricality is realizing all the elements of emotional characters; using all the elements at your disposal: language, physicality of action, physicality of expression, etc.

Not Thinking Theatrically

In [amazon_link id=”1585103403″ target=”_blank” ]his book[/amazon_link], Wright begins his first chapter by writing that: “One of the most interesting teaching challenges I’ve experienced is dealing with a student population that does not innately think ‘theatrically.’ And Jonah discusses this in podcast 1.2 where he describes a reading in which the characters just sit around and play trashcan basketball. That nothing happens. Nothing in the dialogue refers to what they’re doing (playing trashcan basketball). It, in fact, has no relation to the scene. This, to my mind, makes the activity spectacle”and poor spectacle at that. That is to say, the activity doesn’t advance the plot, it doesn’t expand our understanding of the characters; it doesn’t reflect on the meaning of the play in any symbolic or metaphorical sense. It is just something that for some reason the playwright thought was “active.”

Wright offers two solutions to overcome this state of not thinking theatrically: read more plays, and write as much as possible. The writing, he insists, will force the young playwrights to experience the challenges of creating and overcoming obstacles in the creation process.

A Representation of Potential

One of the things that I like about what Wright says is that:

“a stage is always a physical representation of potential. The stage is a space that contains possibilities, not realities: it is a place for imaging “In itself a stage is theatrical. Even empty, it’s a kind of show because the imagination is engaged by it. In use, there is no limit to what can happen there, unless the imagination itself is limited.”

I think Jonah makes a good point on this as well. He talks of an exercise that he once experienced that asked playwrights to figure out something that could not happen on a stage. Jonah’s idea was “the sky falls down.” He talks about moving the stage; doing it with lighting, etc.

I think what is important is what Wright says at the end of the quote above”unless the imagination itself is limited,” so the real challenge is to break out of your own style and always explore, always challenge yourself, always think and push what is possible: what’s going on here? How can it be different? How can I look at this situation differently? How can I show what is happening and not have people talk about it?

Children’s Theatre as an example

One of the things [amazon_link id=”1585103403″ target=”_blank” ]Wright[/amazon_link] points to is children’s theatre. That several things happen in children’s theatre: 1) it is usually done on a limited budget so things have to be imagined; 2) children are expected to participate in the act of creating”not just to sit passively and watch.

This doesn’t mean that you have to have your audience help create the play”although, as I pointed out in my podcast appearance on Theatrically Speaking, in people’s theater it is one approach to play generation. But more practically it means always be open to the possibility that any scene holds for you. How can you look at the scene differently? How can you evolve it using what is already there? What haven’t you explored in a given scene? In its setting? What is available to you if you act imaginatively?

I have a staged reading coming up on November 7th at Cleveland Public Theatre and I’m trying to get a sense of how I should feel about this. A part of me is excited and proud. Part of me is highly skeptical.

Four years ago I entered the Masters program at Cleveland State University not really knowing what I wanted to do. I was a medical librarian at Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital. I was a webmaster and manager of video teleconferencing. I was to appearances successful and very busy. But something wasn’t right and I looked back to the interests that my ‘true’ self had. I always remark on the quote by Joseph Campbell that has become somewhat cliche by now, that each of us should follow his/her bliss. [amazon_link id=”0060926171″ target=”_blank” ]Campbell[/amazon_link] said that people try to change the world by moving the pieces around–this is just, this is unjust; this is not equal; this person makes too much money; this person doesn’t make enough; this is evil, etc. But Campbell firmly stated that moving the pieces around doesn’t lead to a world that is vital; that any world is a living world regardless of how the pieces are arranged. To be truly happy in this world you must do what it is that makes you happy. If you do this, and it is never easy to do it, you will become energized and vital. You will come alive. And he said that ‘a vital person vitalizes’ the world. One vital person makes the world resonate and live. Think what a world of people vitalized would do. This is by way of saying that I was anything but vitalized at the time. I felt like I did when I was on the playground in third or fourth grade and looked off to the horizon and wished devoutly that I was any place but on a playground in third/fourth grade.

A year after entering the master’s program at CSU (so, three years ago) I decided that I wanted to write plays. So, I picked up a book and started reading how to do it. A year later, I was in the NEOMFA program on a playwriting track and had already had a play staged. Then it was another play. Then I was working on a play with a group of playwrights for the Ingenuity Festival. And now I’ve got a staged reading.

Things have moved fast and I guess I should be proud. Four years ago I was unsure what I wanted to accomplish, and now I’ve got a reading at a theater I could barely comprehend in 2003; let alone be heard in.

In 2003, I had the first act of a play that I had written in 1995 stuffed in a drawer or a box. In 2007, I have nine finished plays and a solid idea for the tenth and a strong feeling of momentum moving me toward a solid path. So, why am I trying to convince myself? I feel, sometimes, that I am too old. I look at Shepard who was successful by 21 or so. Then I think, what do I have to say? A librarian working in a university with a pregnant wife, a daughter, three cats, two cars and a mortgage. Who am I to talk about the mysteries of life? Who am I to dramatize anything at all? And on a more personal level, what is this voice that keeps trying to burst out from my head and scrawl itself all over lined pages and computer screens? Is it my true voice? Is it the devil? Is it a fraud? Should I trust it or should I even listen to it?

I’ve been through the play development process before; several times. I should be used to it. But somehow, now, it seems to be on another level. I feel that I am no longer in the realm of students, but in the realm of professionals–people who are committed and dedicated. People whose time I am wasting if my stuff is no good. That my smirking inner voice (the other inner voice) needs to shut up, pay attention, and have some respect for the sacred path I’m walking onto.

I’m reminded of the post from Intermission that I discussed earlier. My in laws will be coming to this reading. What do they think of all this? Is their son-in-law just wasting his time? Is it a nice little hobby that he has? Is this even a fair characterization? What is serious in this world? What should be taken seriously and what derided? There are young men and women dying each day in a foreign land for an ideal that is as ineffable as a puff of air and yet as strong and binding as coils of steel wire. And I worry about a staged reading or my future success as a playwright. Is this valid? Is it indulgent?

The only leg I can find to stand on, again, is that formed by the words of [amazon_link id=”1577315936″ target=”_blank” ]Joseph Campbell[/amazon_link]. His insistence that each of us must live the life that makes us feel alive: vital.

This is sacred. This is important. Perhaps the only thing there is. And in this, I can find consolation.