Just watched the PBS Great Performances show on [amazon_link id=”6305154481″ target=”_blank” ]Sam Shepard[/amazon_link].
I was pretty influenced by the fact that his early plays and early writing is so admittedly just stuff he put out there. Just had an impulse, notion, idea and dramatized it; shot it out, let it live. A lot of stream of consciousness. A lot of personal experience and personal history. Then, later, he went on to considering larger ideas, like family, leading to his “[amazon_link id=”0553346113″ target=”_blank” ]trilogy[/amazon_link].”
This has forced me to re-consider my approach to playwrighting, as I have been more driven to write plays about issues that concern me and about the people those issues affect. However, none of them really has any anything to do with me. Nothing like it has happened to me, or likely will, at best it is the impersonal made personal.
Often I have thought about approaching personal experiences: family silences, what is unsaid, etc.; and more personal subjects, but have been hesitant to go through that door. I think I have some understanding now as to why. Not that it will be any easier at some later date, but assuredly, knowing myself and writing plays that bring myself forward will iron the will that has to write plays that are larger in scope.
Like this:
Like Loading...
Struggling with the structure of plays. Have exhausted myself creating them without conscious awareness of the structure, that is, the historic structural questions.
| [amazon_enhanced asin=”0786887400″ /]
|
Picked up Poetics and have started that. Reading a history of the theatre, as well. I have a great book on Ibsen entitled Ibsen’s Workshop, which shows his notes, scenarios, drafts of plays, all of which you can compare to the final published plays. The additions to A Doll’s House are quite telling of his process, the fleshing out of his characters from a skeletal beginning.
This is the process I used for my play The Empiric. Unfortunately, per the first sentence or two, I was ignorant of the process and was adivsed to use it by my professor, Mike Geither, who is an excellent playwright. Mike, however, uses a method of discovery and writing that is at the opposite pole from my own: I being much more plot oriented.
So, I will begin at the beginning, with Aristotle, and work through. I have read William Archer as well, an interesting book on playwrighting and drama. Just finished a 1958 article by Arthur Miller entitled, “The Shadow of the Gods,” from Harpers. I will move on to a Theory of the Modern Stage and Esslin’s Theatre of the Absurd. The most important thing, I guess, is to keep writing. Plenty of ideas…
|
Like this:
Like Loading...