3.21.12 - Script Development

It’s been a few days since I have blogged, so I want to update the millions of people who are not reading this blog on the many things that have happened since our showing last Thursday.

I forgot to mention something important Andy said before we began the showing.  He said to put as much effort and focus into moving a chair or walking across stage as you put into the lines you say.  This is the product of Moment Work because all theatrical elements are equally expressive.  The text you say can be as important as the light you shine on someone or the set piece you move.

Friday morning Andy and I had a meeting to take stock of where we are.  We talked about the things we liked from the showing.  I decided I wanted the play to focus on teachers – teachers was our way into the larger conversations.  So we decided I would act as narrator character and then each of the other five actors would have a main teacher character that we would follow throughout the play.  Of course, we will all be playing multiple smaller characters.  These five teachers would be the people we invest in, we feel for, we get to know.  After the meeting I started working on character arcs.  In other words, finding text that would tell a dramatic story for each of the teachers.  After Andy and I met, we also met with Brooke to talk more specifics about costumes.

On Monday, Andy and I talked again to discuss the character arcs I had sent him.  He told me that each moment in a character arc needs to talk about one thing, otherwise the audience gets confused and can’t follow the story you are leading them through.  He also said that each moment in a character arc needs to have an entrance and exit point.  The entrance point tell us what is to come in the moment, gets us interested.  The exit point makes us want to hear what happens next.  The goal of this kind of writing is to craft an interesting story that gets the audience emotionally invested.  In this way, moment writing isn’t that different from “traditional” playwriting.

I’ve been having a hard time with all this playwriting because I don’t consider myself a playwright, nor do I have any skills at it.  Taking the job of head writer for this play has been challenging, but in the end, I’m sure it will have been a great learning experience.  Tuesday, I had a productive meeting with Ron and he basically said, “You need to write the script this week.”  That doesn’t mean that things won’t change as we start to rehearse the piece, but we have mostly been working with moments in isolation.  It’s now time to think about the big story we are telling and see how moments fit next to each other.  So, that’s my task for the rest of the week.  As you can see from the pictures below, I am writing visually.  Each moment is a puzzle piece and I am trying to fit them together.  I’m trying to think of what moments can be juxtaposed and what moments can support each other.  I hope to have a draft of the complete script by our rehearsal on Saturday.