Drama – Lit Bits

Musical Theatre Writing in the Classroom

Playwriting teachers occasionally encounter students interested in musical theatre writing. Unfortunately, they may feel that they do not have the skills or time and may, unwittingly, discourage potential authors. To combat this tendency, I have lately made a concerted effort to nurture students interested in writing musicals. After all, one could argue that musical theatre is where theatre is healthiest. Musicals represent a theatrical genre that does not need to justify its existence: Broadway continues, thanks to the musical, and musical plays sell seats in high school and community theatres across the nation. We should, therefore, not discourage those who want to write in this form.

Perhaps the biggest roadblock to musical theatre writing is that scripts require many separate skills that hardly ever reside in the same person. They are usually written in teams—book writer (script writer), lyricist, and composer. Whereas most playwrights would be perfectly happy writing the script—and, possibly, the lyrics—it is unusual that they would have the musical expertise to write all those darned notes. Musical theatre writing then would best be taught as an interdisciplinary endeavor—music and creative writing—possibly with students taking different roles within the class. While I believe that such team-taught courses exist in larger universities, I doubt that the average college would have the resources. What to do then at a smaller school when faced with a musically-inclined student?

From a practical point of view, I do a few things. First, I lay out the realities: I am not qualified to teach music theory, but can help with words. I make sure that the student knows that musicals are extremely time-consuming and usually written in teams. Second, I urge students to become acquainted with musical theatre literature—especially the integrated book musical, as exemplified by Rodgers and Hammerstein, one of the U.S.A.’s most significant contributions to drama. I also make a few general statements regarding musical numbers. I discuss basic formatting: song lyrics are written as verse, with line breaks, and in all caps. I describe how songs are used in the integrated book musical: the action of the play does not stop for the song; rather, the song comes at the height of drama. An old adage states that what cannot be said in words must be said in song; and what cannot be said in song must be said in dance. Songs, then, are for intense moments—climaxes and decisions. Last, I suggest that the student have a melody in mind while writing lyrics: the melody does not have to be good, but it will allow the student a stronger sense of structure as the lines are written.

Usually, with just these bits of advice, students can make forays into musical theatre writing. Later, more advanced students continue in independent studies with me or with faculty from the Music Department. Most important, though, is acknowledging that budding musical writers should be encouraged, not discouraged.

Playwriting Teachers Must Be Advocates for Playwriting

In a blog post titled, “We Need More Crappy Plays,” theatre scholar Scott Walters makes a claim that should be obvious: healthy theatre requires a healthy dose of new plays. Walters lauds the Goodman Theatre in Chicago for declaring that it will produce four world premieres as part of its 2015-16 season. As he wistfully states: “Imagine if every regional theatre in the country devoted half of its mainstage productions to new works . . . . What would be the result? An American Renaissance in the theatre as our stages became [sic] once again to be relevant and vibrant.” Unfortunately, the field of theatre—especially professional theatre, which often makes conservative choices in the name of increased ticket sales—is not always eager to support new work.

As teachers of playwriting, we must realize that we and our students are part of a community of artists. Whereas writers in other forms—poetry, for example—can imagine that they operate exclusively in a world of writers, playwrights have no such luxury. Their work depends on a vast network of artists – actors, designers, stage hands, etc. – who are not primarily literary. Whereas the decision makers for the printed genres (for example, editors of creative writing journals) can be presumed to have a literary background, decision makers for theatre (for example, artistic directors of professional theatres) may have found their way to the profession through any number of fields unrelated to writing. For this reason, they do not always see playwriting as important. It is up to us, then, to insist that it is.

Scott Walters points out that popular music does not rely on covers of past hits, nor does the motion picture industry confine itself to remakes. In fact, I would go so far as to say that our most vibrant contemporary art forms—popular music, stand-up comedy, video, and, to a lesser degree, movies—are predicated on originality. Of the arts, only classical music shares theatre’s obsession with re-creating works of the past. In contrast, visual artists must create afresh, and poetry and fiction become mere book-making without original contributions from today’s writers. Puzzlingly, theatre is an unwitting oddball in its preference for works of the past.

What we have today is a karaoke theatre, where contemporary artists recreate yesterday’s hits. While karaoke is entertaining, no one thinks of it as high art because it lacks the ability to further the field. No one looks to karaoke singers to define what art and culture will become. Regrettably, theatre today is largely karaoke theatre and satisfied to remain that way. It excludes the contributions of today’s writers; paradoxically, amending this exclusion could be the solution to many of contemporary theatre’s problems.

Playwriting teachers must be aware of the issues facing the theatre community and must be prepared to make cases like I have made. If teachers do not advocate for playwriting, there will be no need for the playwrights that we train.

Audio Theatre: A New Writing Platform

It had long been my contention that playwriting is more practical than screenwriting because it leads more directly to a finished product. In other words, whereas an ambitious playwright could organize his or her friends and stage a piece on a weekend, the screenwriter was dependent on the whims of Hollywood producers to obtain the resources to get their films made. This assessment of practicality, though, seems to apply less and less to today’s world in which there are so many opportunities through the internet. If a screenwriter uses the production and distribution means available through the web—for example, if a writer creates scripts for short Youtube films—then screenwriting can be every bit as practical as playwriting.

Besides screenwriting, the internet has enhanced the practicality of another field—radio drama. The format, which dwindled in the U.S. with the rise of television, is now reemerging under the aegis of podcasting and audiobooks. Teachers of dramatic writing are wise to embrace audio theatre for the following reasons:

It stands to become more and more important in our Internet Age.
It provides easy production opportunities for emerging writers—requiring no sets, costumes, or even line memorization, as required by film and the stage.
Digital recordings, the product of audio theatre endeavors, are easy to disseminate to a wide audience.

My university, Arkansas Tech, has been leading the way in audio theatre ventures for seven years now. Through an organization called the Arkansas Radio Theatre, we have created more than forty broadcasts which play on the local radio station, are made available to the visually impaired throughout the state, and are available on-line (click Public, then Radio Theatre). The Arkansas Radio Theatre is dedicated to new plays and adaptations of classic literature. An audio theatre company like the Arkansas Radio Theatre is easy to establish because free recording software is easily available. An interested instructor simply needs some microphones in order to record voices. Apart from that, an audio theatre company simply requires a means for broadcast—or some server space, which is readily available at most universities.

However, just because a production opportunity exists, that does not mean that student writers are prepared to take advantage of it. Because audio theatre is a unique form, writers must be trained with relevant coursework. In order to build the Radio Theatre into the curricular structures of my university, I am teaching (in Fall 2014) an upper-division topics course focusing on Radio Theatre Writing. Some of the assignments explore audio theatre as a genre: for example, listening to broadcasts from the Golden Age of Radio and comparing them to the audio drama available today. Students will eventually work toward hour-long original scripts. Hopefully, the insights learned in teaching this class will help others who attempt to engage in audio theatre projects. I will report on the progress of the course in later posts.

Drama as Theatre; Drama as Literature

It is not always easy to distinguish between drama as literature and drama as theatre. My view has always been that good drama is based on good literature, but having said that, we all know that there are moments in the theatre when the action moves far beyond the printed page and its stage directions. Those are the moments when we realize that drama is theatre.

This meditation is a result of my having just seen a wild adaptation of Molière’s A Doctor in Spite of Himself directed and adapted by Christopher Bayes, whose roots are in the Theatre de la Jeune Lune. Bayes tossed out the standard text and built a commedia dell’arte version on the comic bones that Molière had provided beneath the dialogue. Continue reading “Drama as Theatre; Drama as Literature”

Riders to the Sea

One of the things that humanizes the classroom is storytelling. In their reviews of my teaching, my students have often mentioned that our drama classes were enlivened by some of the stories I told of my own experiences in the theater seeing plays. That surprised me, but on reflection I realize they were right.

For example, when I taught John Millington Synge’s Riders to the Sea I told my students about the first time I saw the play. It was 1957 in tiny Theater East when the Abbey Theatre brought its company to the United States for the first time since the war. Siobhan McKenna played Maurya.

I was brought there with a group from my undergraduate class, taught by the late David Krause, who was an Irish Studies expert and my drama teacher. I had no idea what to expect. We had not read the play in advance. It followed the performance of Synge’s one-act In the Shadow of the Glen and seemed to us a riveting drama. Continue reading “Riders to the Sea”

Teaching Playwriting: “Theatricality”

Dramatic texts are one part writing, one part performed experience. In other words, a script must be judged not just by the quality of the writing, but by how well it works on stage. This concept is difficult for beginning playwrights to grasp. Textbooks try various ways to explain. For example, some call the script a “blueprint” for performance—a means to an end, rather than an end itself. Additionally, some instructors discuss the magic of “theatricality”—that je ne sais quoi that separates dramatic writing from the other genres.

Because “theatricality” is inconceivable apart from action—apart from the act of doing that constitutes performance—the teaching of playwriting requires performance as part of classroom activities. The concept of performance as pre-eminent should undergird all course structures. For example, when possible, written assignments should be shared aloud in class: hearing texts with an audience is preferable to at-home silent reading because the former better approximates how scripts are meant to be experienced.

Dramatic writers must learn to see themselves as performers. They do not need to be good performers, but they need to be willing. They need to be able to play roles well enough that they can hear in their minds the characters’ voices as they commit words to paper. It is not the same skill as that of the actor, who hears primarily one voice at a time, but is more like that of the stage director who understands the interplay of multiple voices. Most playwrights, I believe, mutter to themselves. And, while a little murmuring is probably common to all creative writers, I would guess that playwrights spend an inordinate amount of time muttering speeches and singing songs to themselves. This skill—necessary as a “trying out” of characters—can be nurtured in students by having them perform. Continue reading “Teaching Playwriting: “Theatricality””