Robert Cohen - Theatre, Brief Version-McGraw-Hill Education (2016)

72 Chapter 4 The Playwright
to stimulate intrigue and focus audience expectation: a
tightly written play gives us the feeling that we are on
the trail of something important and that our destination
is right around the next bend. Thus, economy and compression
actually lead to intensity, which is one of the
theatre’s most powerful attributes.
Dramatic intensity can take many forms. It can be
harsh, abrasive, explosive, eminently physical, or overtly
calm. It can be ruminative, tender, or comic. But whenever
intensity occurs and in whatever mood or context,
it conveys to the audience an ineradicable feeling that
this moment in theatre is unique and its revelations are
profound. Intensity does not come about by happy accident,
obviously, but neither can it be simply injected at
the whim of the playwright. It must evolve through the
careful development of issues, an increasing urgency of
character goals and intentions, and the focused actions
and interactions of the plot that draw characters and their
conflicts ever closer to some sort of climactic confrontation.
A play must spiral toward its core—that is, its compression
must increase and its mood must intensify as it
circles its climax and denouement. Too many tangential
diversions can deflect a play from this course, rendering
it formless and devoid of apparent purpose.
CELEBRATION
Finally, a great play does not merely depict or analyze
life—it celebrates it. The first plays were presented at
festivals that—though perhaps haunted by angry or
capricious gods—were essentially joyful celebrations.
Even the darkest of the ancient Greek tragedies sought to
transcend the more negative aspects of existence and to
exalt the human spirit. The whole of Greek theatre, after
all, was informed by the positive (and therapeutic) elements
of the Dionysian festival: spring, fertility, and the
gaiety and solidarity of public communion.
The theatre can never successfully venture too far
from this source. A purely didactic theatre has never
satisfied either critics or the public, and a merely grim
depiction of ordinary life has little to offer this art form.
Although the word theatrical usually suggests something
like “glittery” or “showy,” it better describes more fundamental
aims: to extend our known experience, illuminate
life, and raise existence to the level of art.
This celebration can easily be perverted. Dramas
intended to be merely “uplifting”—with a reliance on
happy endings and strictly noble sentiments—or written
in self-consciously “elevated” tones do not celebrate
life; they merely whitewash it. The truest and most exciting
theatre has always been created out of a passionate,
personal vision of reality and deep devotion to expressing
life’s struggles and splendors, for the theatre is fundamentally
an affirmation. Writing, producing, and
attending plays are also acts of affirmation: they attest
to the desire to share and communicate, and to celebrate
human existence, participation, and communion. Purely
bitter plays, no matter how justly based or how well
grounded in history or experience, remain incomplete
and unsatisfying as theatre, which simply is not an effective
medium for nihilistic conveyance. Even the bleakest
of modern plays radiates a persistent hopefulness—even
joyousness—as archetypally represented by Samuel
Beckett’s two old men in Waiting for Godot who sing,
joke, and entertain each other, and us as well, in the forlorn
shadow of a mostly-leafless tree while waiting for a
probably nonexistent savior.
The Playwright’s Process
How does one go about writing a play? It is important to
know the elements of a play (as discussed in the chapter
“What Is a Play?”) and the characteristics of the best
plays—credibility, intrigue, speakability, stageability, flow,
richness, depth of characterization, gravity, pertinence,
compression, economy, intensity, and celebration—as
discussed in the preceding sections. But these are abstract
ideas; one must still confront the pragmatic, practical task
of writing.
There is no consensus among writers as to where to
start. Some prefer to begin with a story line or a plot outline.
Some begin with a real event and write the play to
explain why that event occurred. Some begin with a real
character or set of characters and develop a plot around
them. Some begin with a setting and try to animate it
with characters and actions. Some begin with a theatrical
effect or an idea for a new form of theatrical expression.
Some write entirely from personal experience. Some
adapt a story or a legend, others a biography of a famous
person, others a play by an earlier playwright; others
expand upon a remembered dream.
A documentary play might begin with a transcript
of a trial or a committee hearing. Other documentary
forms might begin with a tape recorder and a situation
contrived by the playwright. Some plays, such as Caryl
Churchill’s Cloud Nine, are created in part from actors’
improvisations. Some are compilations of material written
over the course of many years or collected from many
sources.
The fact is, writers tend to begin with whatever works
for them and accords with their immediate aims. On
the one hand, because playwrights usually work alone,