Why I Go

Theatre as a Riot in Perpetual Motion?

What the media is slowly turning to, after front page outrage decrying thuggery, criminality and insanity, is the root cause of the recent riots in London. How is it, they ask, that a single incident can ignite such enormous social unrest? It’s perplexing, there’s no single answer, the debate is unending they say.

Difficult questions are abundant in theatre and one of the reasons I continue to return there because the answers are often provocative. There are times however, when the questions are not so compelling and the answers not so fruitful but from these too, there is something to learn.

Two shows I saw last week brought this to mind.  But first, let me tell you about a time when I attended a court case in West Virginia. After everyone was ushered in and took their place, the murderer walked in. He walked past my friend’s family without a glance.   They stood, as the rest of the court did, in total silence, as he went to take his place in the dock. I could only imagine what was going through their minds as the person who took the life of their child and brother, walked calmly past them…in physical reach.

As I watched Stephanie Jacob’s The Quick at Tristan Bates (until 8/13), a moral play on the forgiving possibilities of both criminal and victim, I was struck by the lack of theatrical truth in her premise; that it is possible to forgive. It is not that we can’t do that or that we do not have the capacity but that the kind of truth this play seeks is a banal, middle-class kind of infinite justice mechanism that is not theatrical truth. Simply, it is not interesting to present such a simple question and answer in theatre. So while the dramatic question may be somewhat compelling (will he forgive, will she change?) there are no lingering provocations once that question is answered. I mean, when I left the theatre the play did not carry on in my mind with new thoughts and questions springing forth.

A totally different play but worth discussing in the same vein is Rosencrantz and Guildernstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard at Theatre Royal Haymarket until 8/20.  While this is  a comedy about two boyos who discover that they are part of a plot to have Hamlet killed in England, it contrasts with The Quick in  that the premise (who were R & G, really) is answered in the first act. After that, if you don’t find sitcom style ooo-errr kind of comedy a bucket of laughs, you are waiting for the Dead part to come as swiftly as possible. It takes two hours. However, this R&G is a treatise, because  the two minor characters in Hamlet are essentially you and I, in a funny way, as we too are minor and thus it is a note on  our own mortality and purpose. So here we have a case of an interesting idea but very weak dramatic question.

In sum: The Quick had a strong dramatic question but weak theme while R&G had a weak dramatic question but interesting theme. Neither worked very well as a result. Both plays, though very favourably reviewed far and wide,  are interesting lessons in theatrical integrity: that our questions should be both difficult to pose and the answers perplexing and provocative. High standards, yes, but the reason why I go. I don’t have the answers but I sure look to theatre for the questions.

Converting a PDF script to Word without pain

I wanted to edit a script I’d written years ago, but could only find a PDF version of it.   Spent half the day trying to copy and paste with loss in formatting etc. I found an add-on for Open Office but it imported it into Draw. No good.

Then the answer came to me as I was uploading a file to google docs.
Docs does it automatically!
If you don’t use google docs to store your scripts online, you’re missing out. It’s a great way to access your work on the road and keep versions organized – and convert PDFs to Word.
Too many hard disk crashes have taught me to rely on online backups as well as CD-ROM.

Go to http://docs.google.com  to upload with your account. When you click the upload button you’ll see at the bottom a checkmark to convert a pdf.

Swell!

The Meaning of Premise

Elements of Drama: The Meaning of Premise

A question regarding premise was asked of writer Orla Higgins after her reading of her short story, The Thin Blue Line .  The question prompted me to consider a question about meaning. How do we draw meaning from story? To understand this I went back and had a look at premise, a key element of drama.

 

Premise definitions:

It is the meaningful act by a person that causes change in themselves through a battle with an opponent.

Premise is what the drama is about.

It commits the story to one sentence and evokes its essential meaning. 

The premise is Aristotle’s unity and an essential part of story.

It answers the question, what is the beginning , middle and end?

The dictionary defines premise as  ‘A proposal from which a conclusion can be drawn. Or A proposal from which an argument is based.’  

 

The premise of The Thin Blue Line  is  ‘A girl discovers her own sense of self while waiting for a pregnancy test’.   Is my premise of her story accurate? Her story is the conclusion or argument. Her story argues for the girl’s reflection which draws her into maturity with a thread as thin as the line on the pregnancy kit.  The dictionary definition means a story which proves a point, or a story which the characters actions show an argument and from which conclusions can be drawn.

But in order to prove this idea, you need to have a unified proposal. Not a half sentence but a full sentence one that states what the proposition is and the sum of the proof.

The power in premise is the story that we then draw meaning from. A solid premise gives a story a certain life of its own, like a creature that  is vibrant and changeable and from which we can repeatedly draw meaning.

 A Premise has three parts at minimum : 

1) The protagonist

2) Their Action

3) The Result

A prince delays revenge for his father’s death and loses his own life and those he loves – Hamlet

 Expanded parts:

1) The Protagonist

2) Their need

3) Their action 

4) The Battle/Opponent

5) The result
 

The purpose of premise for the writer is to emblazon the central idea of the story so as not to stray and lose the unity of the tale. For the reader, it allows cogent understanding of what happens in a story. Given that Story is what happens and the meaning we draw from what happens, we can talk about a story itself being of being:

1) A set of events – What happens.

2) What the sum of those events mean.

Lets look at meaning first. For meaning to be received by the audience, it needs to be expressed. The meaning is what is received based (usually)  on the last act decision and action made by the protagonist.  This also gives us the theme. Theme is also the expression of the premise.  For a story to be meaningful the audience themselves must be somewhat transformed by what happens – which is astounding because it is not actually happening to them. What this means for a the writer is that you can’t just tell the meaning, because that won’t transform anyone, it will just lecture them. The transformation is done by the mimic of action by a character in the story who themselves are transformed. They are transformed by taking a series of actions and going through some catharsis during or after a battle. We too will follow that journey at least emotionally. That is our transformation, an emotional one.

A definition from Creative Screenwriting magazine:

Story creates the deeper understanding about human nature that we experience when we hear or see what has happened to another human being. Whether it’s an incident in the life of someone we know, the true-life experience of someone in the news, the adventures of a fictional character, or the heroic life of a compelling historical figure, we are fascinated by the progression of events that a human being encounters, and this progression of events is called plot. However, what engages our imagination on a human level is how the main character reacts to this progression of events, and this cumulative insight is called story

What happens in a story is that someone has one set of ideas and pursues something then someone else wants something too and that something is going to get in the way of what the first person wants. One of them wins out but not easily, not only do they have to fight someone to get what they want, they have to change something about themselves to overcome them because when they started they didn’t have everything they needed to do that, otherwise they would have just got it

That’s what we find interesting. Watching others attempt to overcome.

 

So what is it about meaning in story? Our lives are constant successions of failure and overcoming. We hardly think of it in that way, but together, those two actions are what we call striving.  Meaning, then, is why we have story. We like to think we do more overcoming than accepting defeat, and meaning  plays its part in building a narrative for our own striving and thus is essential in how it acts as a bridge from indifferent reality on one side and the metaphysical meaning of that on the other. 

Quick Start to Writing a new Scene

To quickly write a scene, it helps to sketch out your beginning, middle and end a little beforehand, otherwise you run the risk of wandering and making the piece weak in terms of tension. But first lets define a scene. A scene is the change that occurs through a single event in one place and time . That change can be in the situation, i.e. a new event occurs in the action or a change in the relationship between people in the scene. The change in the relationship may be from the tension being raised as a result of increased conflict i.e. one person wants something and other won’t or can’t give it. The single most important element in a scene is what people want. Give a desire to one or both characters and prevent them from getting it. Hey, I don’t see this in every scene – you say. What is in every scene is change of some sort. If conflict doesn’t build from scene to scene, the play will wilt.

So

1) Put a change into your scene as a result of something that happens in it.

E.g. New information arises out conflict causing a character to pursue their goal in a different way.

2) Give one character a desire for something and let the other character not give it.

e.g. Boy wants to break up with girl. Girl tries to stop him. Nothing works. She then tells him she’s pregnant. Boy reveals that he is dying. Girl is not really pregnant – but now has to pretend that she is.

In this scene you can see clearly who wants what and the change that occurs in the scene. The girl has made a trap for herself and has to pretend to her boyfriend that she is pregnant as it is the only hope the boy has.

Sketching out a scene

To sketch it out, ask yourself some questions, write them down. Don’t answer them in order or get academic, its more like daydreaming, probing questions. Run through places, people and situations that you recently thought about, saw on TV, hate, love, fantasize – anything at all that stuck to your imagination in some way. Write stuff down, scratch it out, put the first thing that pops into your head down then revise it. Spend about 2-3 minutes doing this. Did you have an argument with someone recently? Read a book that sparked your imagination, put your observations into the scene. Don’t be boring! Make the characters be opposed strongly - even if they are polite and soft spoken on stage, they should be burning up inside somewhere.

Brainstorm with these questions – whatever you come up with is good because it is material, free yourself from judgement. Have fun, take it places that surprise yourself.

1. Where are you? Where’s the scene happenning? In a room? What room? Outside? What’s the weather like?

2. Who is in the scene?

3. Give one of the characters a concrete goal that matters to them. i.e. They know what it is, we know it and know when they get it or not. Importantly, if they don’t get it, there is severe consequence.

4. Have the other character oppose it with equal or greater strength.

The opposition should be strong. Imagine you are up a tree and there’s a bear below who wants to eat you. How are you going to get away safely? That’s how difficult the opposite character should be in reaching your goal. Avoid speaking to these things directly, otherwise known as speaking the subtext. e.g. A: Can I have a Milky moo? B: No

This scene has conflict but no tension. Let’s up the ante

A: Are those Milky Moos? B: Did you call your mother about the loan?

5. Give one or both characters a past that directly affects the scene/play. This is called the Ghost, because it affects their ability to accomplish what they need in this scene. E.g. Man rearends a woman in traffic at night in the country, She is fine but her child is badly shaken and arm appears to have a small fracture. She quickly splints it. She goes back to man who is bleeding badly but conscious. She takes her phone out to call 112 but then smells alcohol on his breath. Her husband was killed by a drunk driver two years ago. He begs her for help. He even looks like the guy who got away with murder. She doesn’t make the call and goes back to her car and attends to her daughter. The man is bleeding to death behind her, calling out. She is there for five minutes and the man has stopped calling out. Then something flashes through her mind, something she saw in the car; a needle. The alcohol smell could be diabetes. She rushes back to the man etc.

6. Now write your scene, get the characters striving for the goals and put up blocks against them. You don’t have to know how your main character gets what they want but it should come out of having tried everything else first and now has to get out of their comfort zone and do something that surprises themselves.

Establishing time, place and people.

In one excercise, we took a postcard and used that to establish the environment. If you are sitting at your desk thinking something up, run through places that you recently thought about, saw on TV, hate, love, fantasize – anyplace at all that stuck to your imagination in some way. Anything compelling or exciting or fascinates you.

For people, think about people who are inscrutable but active. i.e. They can be provoked and will follow a course of action, but are discovering things along the way about themselves. Yourself is as good as anyone, but perhaps notions of people, people who popped into your imagination.

Final word

Daydream with these questions. That will make it less like an academic excercise. Watch people around you and frame what you see in dramatic terms. Who wants what? Why can’t they get it?

Hard to Believe I Was Ever That Young Whelp!

Krapp’s Last Tape by Samuel Beckett

Before I saw Moving Still’s production of Krapp’s Last Tape I made some notes on my 250 hour phone voice recorder.  I wondered what Krapp would make of such technology that would allow him to record every moment of his life. Would he be a blogger? Would Krapp tweet?
Though first produced in 1958 the play has much to do with our modern preoccupation with the meaningless. Krapp (Fergus Cronin) is an aging loner who listens to and records his daily journal using a reel to reel tape up in his attic. (Sound familiar?) The play opens on the night of his birthday with the patter of Krapp moving in tight steps across the stage to an overflowing table of tapes lit by a single fixture above. He fumbles about with keys eventually finding a banana in a locked drawer, eating it with strange delight eliciting laughter from the audience. After finding his tape, the main conflict begins; the random, dispersing, hopeful thoughts of his earlier 39 year old self versus the eventuality – that current self, an old decrepit man of 69. The man alive in front of us disparages the long gone thirty nine year old who in turn disparages the young man of twenty something before him like a lampooning mirror. “Hard to believe I was ever that young whelp. The voice! Jesus! And the aspirations! And the resolutions!”.

Mr. Cronin, intelligently directed by Art O’Briain returns to Galway capturing the essence of Krapp gracefully in this flawless, sold-out production with a character that is at once woefully sad and yet quite alive and funny. This is the skill which Mr. Cronin brings to the forty-five minute piece lighting the character of Krapp from the inside with warmth and humour. He plays Krapp somewhat out to the audience while creating a cell-like atmosphere which draws us in to his world and holds us there.   His every movement is captivating. His grey, wiry hair, long lines of age across his face like slashes, his messy waistcoat and a certain rotundness slowing his movements across the stage belies the unexpected lyrical anthem of hope Mr. Cronin exudes despite the futility of all that has preceded the current moment; “Unshatterable association until my dissolution of storm and night with the light, the understanding, the fire, my face in her breasts and my hand on her.” Krapp relives this moment over and over, recalling the time  he lay in ecstasy and regret with a woman all those years ago. It’s the reliving that Krapp likes most, the desire to “Be again”. But he discovers he has nothing more to say and it is at that moment he decides that this is his last tape he will make. He listens again to the recall of ecstasy and the haunting image of Krapp freezes in front of us as the tape reels out to silence and the single light on his face recedes to darkness. It is that darkness that we all fear, as Beckett once commented “Death is standing behind him and unconsciously he’s looking for it.”  Krapp’s futile journaling of his life mocks the modern obsession with blogging, twittering and self-documentary. For this alone it should be seen.  It is profound, eloquent and is emotionally pungent. It does not suffer from the verbal Olympics required in some of Beckett’s other works – so bring the kids!
What would Krapp do with our technology, the miniaturized devices that would allow him to record every moment? I don’t think he would care much, not for my phone or any of the rest of the gadgets out there.  He would arrive at the same conclusion about recording the awful minutiae, the happy moments, the nothing;  “Leave it at that” he would say and toss my Nokia into the Corrib.

Rating: 
SHOWTIMES/VENUE

Bank of Ireland Theatre
NUI, Galway

Ticket Price: E20-E22
Ticket Information: Galway Theatre Festival  www.galwayartsfestival.com

Monday July 13th to Saturday 25th July  2009 6PM

Krapp’s Last Tape
Produced by Moving Still
Directed by Art O’Briain
Cast Fergus Cronin

Love Amongst The Carnage

Meeting an old ‘ex’ can be discomforting but in David Harrower’s play ‘Blackbird’ at Nun’s Island Theatre, it can be downright heart-stopping.
Una (Judith Rolly) turns up at the grimy workplace of Ray (Stuart Graham), the shell of a man she once kissed, slept with and ran away with years before and begins to taunt him. 

(c) Galway Advertiser

This all sounds normal, even a little pathetic. But the complication begins when it is revealed that when they last met, he was 30 and she was 12. The action proceeds with Una, now twenty seven, pursuing and confronting her abuser alone except for the occasional tempering knock on the frosted glass door by Ray’s co-worker. But all is not what it appears. Set in the canteen of a grey, bland, aging office (by Owen MacCarthaigh) with flickering fluorescent lights and rubbish scattered around the room, the feeling, in this steeply raked theatre is one of frigid claustrophobia. Ray (who has changed his name to Peter and started a new life) wants her to leave “I don’t have to be here, you know” he says, but he doesn’t move, his eyes blotchy and red from sudden nervousness, her courage increasing on seeing the failure in front of her, she circles and hounds hims. But from this point of departure the action slowly twists into a different tale, not of victim and abuser, but of two very damaged people trying to fill gaping holes in their hearts, created by forced separation in a relationship that just could not be.

And it this is what makes this psychodrama controversial – can it be that a man and a twelve year old be mutually in love?   Mr. Harrower explores the question with daring and provocation specifically by setting the action years after the event. At the end of Nabokov’s ‘Lolita’, for example, Humbert tracks down the once nymphet to discover a grown woman and loses interest in her. In ‘Blackbird’, Una, also a grown woman, has tracked down Ray but for a different reason and it becomes disturbingly obvious why. Moral cracks in our universe makes great theatre and this explains why Mr. Harrower has garnered numerous awards (Olivier 2007) and equal disdain for this compelling, brittle play with a superb premise since it debuted at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2005. Clearly, he has abused her “I didn’t mean to hurt you”; “You did”, but subtly sliced into the vicious attacks on stage is a remembrance of a gentle touch, a kind word, even love.
Andrew Flynn cleanly directs the strong cast with the young Judith Rolly unflinchingly pursuing her game about the stage with persuasive specificity yet modulating her various levels of anger by an unraveling vulnerability triggered by a glance or a word. Stuart Graham, recently seen as a strutting, confident rebel in Brian Friel’s ‘Home Place’ has brilliantly crafted a frayed, diminutive maneen who lives life in short, panicky breaths. Yet, Mr. Graham allows us a peek into the man he once was when he opens his heart to her with a confidence that only comes from love. Mr. Graham sidesteps any stereotypes and delivers a strong performance of a conflicted man hunted by his past embodied by the woman in front of him. Both actors are excellent listeners; they hang on to each other’s words with rapt attention even through long winding monologues and emotional tirades.

Mr. Harrower uses effective techniques for bringing the audience into the world of abused and abuser by having the attractive 27 year old, dressed in tall leather boots, black stockings erotically describe their past trysts. On the one hand you are looking at a mature attractive woman being sexually provocative and on the other hand she is describing an experience she had at the age of twelve. This schism is discomforting and simultaneously pulls and draws the audience away from the action creating an intensity that lasts from beginning to end. But it is the revelation of Una’s true feelings and his both at that time and now combined with the fact that he took advantage of her grounds the characters in a deadlocked but credible relationship that is ready to ignite and binds us to our seats.
A powerful premise may cause one to overlook a play’s flaws but unfortunately these are introduced early and often in this work.  At the outset, one would think that the author had an attack of the ellipses by the numerous unfinished sentences which neither director nor actor had any idea of the thought behind, perhaps due to their sheer volume or perhaps because there were no thoughts at all and the writer was simply dragging out the initial scene so that the reveals would be all the stronger when they occurred. Why they kick rubbish around the place at one point seemed unclear, though I was happy they did because I felt trapped with the back and forth argumentation and marathon monologues that seemed to repeat previous sentiments. The ending, which I will not give away, is an unearned surprise ending (has changed from the original production) and seems tacked on.  Despite these drawbacks, this production is worth seeing because it is a compelling piece of theatre with strong acting and a subject that challenges our assumptions at their heart.

Rating: 
SHOWTIMES/VENUE

Nun’s Island Theatre
Nun’s Island, Galway

Ticket Price: E20-E22
Ticket Information: Galway Theatre Festival  www.galwayartsfestival.com

Monday July 13th to Saturday 25th July  2009 8PM
Sat 13 & Sat 25th 3pm

Blackbird by David Harrower
Produced by Decadent Theatre Company
Directed by Andrew Flynn
Cast Judith Roddy and Stuart Graham

Set Design by Owen MacCarthaigh(2008 Irish Times winner)
Costume Design by Petra Breathnach(2007 Irish Times Nominee)
Lighting Design by Adam Fitzsimons and
Sound Design by Jack Cawley

Secrets in the Surprise.

There is great power in  surprise.  When used to reverse the meaning of a scene AND raise the dramatic question, the audience can be gripped from beginning to end in a vice-grip of tension.     Importantly the technique is used to raise the dramatic question through a surprise revelation that changes the meaning of what we have just seen.  The meaning is reversed because in the scene is a secret -  all the information necessary to give it a second meaning.   The changed meaning then raises the dramatic question.

I often use the example of the play ‘Proof’ by David Auburn as it is structurally quite technical and easy to dissect. So let’s look at how he uses this technique.

The play opens with a scene between father and daughter. It’s her birthday. She is drinking alone on the porch, he enters. It is a gentle, heart warming opening and we feel the strong bond between the two. He encourages her to study maths in college, she demurs and they discuss his mental illness. Then she announces quite casually about 15 minutes in, …’but you’re dead’.  She’s been talking to a ghost, her recently departed father who is about to be buried.
We have our surprise. The dramatic question has stirred but has not yet fully  formed in the audience. Perhaps they’re thinking. ‘What a lovely sight, father and daughter, reminds me of…wait a second did she just say he’s dead? ‘ They run through the scene again in their minds because now the scene has a SECOND meaning (Reversal of Meaning), it was not what they thought it was . Now, they think "Did she see a ghost? No, no, this is not a ghost story. If not then….Hey, didn’t she say he was cuckoo… ". The reversal of meaning created the dramatic question through a surprise revelation that was completely probable.    It is no longer a cute display of affection , we just witnessed something very distressing; grief, loss and possible madness. It has a second meaning.
The Audience Universe has been disturbed. Auburn has been quite clever here as we shall see in a moment.
The next scene brings on the nerdy grad student who has been poring over the father’s notebooks. He clarifies the father’s genius and she his madness. The student is also condescending over her mathematical talents (initiating the Tension of Opposites). Somewhere through this scene the penny will drop a little further ‘Hey, she was talking to a ghost just a minute ago, maybe she inherited her father’s madness. Let’s see some more’.  The  dramatic question unformed is ‘Did she inherit her father’s madness?’ .   The student is arguing that there is some great work to be discovered here, she insists that he was too far gone to able to produce anything, both citing evidence. He is clearly dismissive of what he says is her basic understanding of maths.  At this stage the audience is completely primed for what is about to happen. She gives him the key to a drawer that contains a notebook detailing a new, previously unworkable proof. He finds it, announces its genius, she announces that she wrote it.
We now have our complete dramatic question delivered again through surprise.
Auburn had to put that argument about how useless the father’s faculties were towards the end to go to the other side of the Tension of Opposites.
The audience is now thinking ‘Did she write the proof because I’m not sure. If she inherited her father’s genius perhaps but hey, she was talking to a ‘ghost’ so maybe she inherited his madness’ The audience is caught in the Tension of Opposites and cannot predict yea or nay because arguments have been set in motion on both sides – a bit more to the side that she was incapable and maybe a little dotty herself. This is necessary to provide the conflict between protag and antag  and give her a big problem to overcome.  So the dramatic question through the play is something like ‘Did she write the proof and as a consequence of that did she inherit her father’s genius or madness’ . As a side note see how we are guiled into thinking that the genius or madness is something you definitely inherit – not a real world fact but a fact within the story. 
So Auburn builds the dramatic question over the course of actions by the protag. He does not give it immediately but primes us slowly for it so that when delivered as a surprise it has immense power.   Mind you, some thought his second surprise rather soap-ish as in ‘I killed JR’.  I thought it simply dramatic . It worked fine and was necessary for the story.

Here’s how it lays out:
1. Preparation scene establishing key relationships and issues.
2. Surprise Revelation that 
     a) Changes the meaning of the scene or a key issue AND
     b) that change in meaning raises the dramatic question for the play AND
     c) the change has caused a Tension of Opposites.

So the whole purpose of that opening scene is now clear, it is something glinting and shiny in the sunlight as it raises up and above – then as it comes back down, that glint is the glint of metal and the shape is an incredibly sharp sword slicing through the air swishing just over your very raised neck hairs. It is a finely tuned structural technique executed with the discipline and finesse of a Samurai warrior.

Dissecting this technique is one thing, doing it is another. However it is in our realm of experience. We all have some event in our past where a very clear and strong idea of something was changed completely on the discovery of some pertinent and (overlooked ) information. I was on a bus from UCLA to Venice one late night in December with a splitting headache when this young woman came on with her 3 kids in tow. They were completely out of control, shouting, rowdy, one even snapped a newspaper from an elderly man and threw it on the ground. All the while the mother sat motionless in her seat. I was sitting behind, judging her through my throbbing headache. How could she let her kids do that on the bus? Disturbing everyone and not giving a damn. What kind of upbringing is that, to let  her kids terrorize people on public transport? etc etc.  After ten minutes of this, my stop came up and I was glad to get off.  I made sure to look at the woman as I walked past to confirm my judgements by the look of her. In her hands she clasped a  small bouquet of flowers and some cards – mass cards. Someone had died, someone close. She looked up to me with reddened eyes and in that enormous river of meaning  we communicated in a glance, my heart filled with compassion for her and I exited the bus with a feeling of sorrow for her and shame at myself.  The surprise revelation was seeing the bouquet of flowers and mass cards which changed the meaning of the scene I was just in.

The Dramatic Question

You are likely to know the structural item  ‘The Dramatic Question’ (DQ) in story.  Important as the DQ is, it is the tension of opposites in attempting to answer it that brings real power and sophistication to a story.

The dramatic question is a central part of any story but not  in the story -it is in the audience’s mind. It is what keeps them in their seats. The question comes to mind shortly after or at the inciting incident in the story, that event which sets off the protagonist to pursue a path of action leading to the climax where the dramatic question will be answered by the final action of the protagonist. (“Will he be able to prove his innocence in time? – The Fugitive.  “Did she inherit her father’s genius or madness” – Proof).  The real power of the DQ  is in the level of doubt sustained by the audience as to their own prediction of the outcome. This is the Tension of Opposites.   If they do not believe their own prediction, then there is doubt.   Doubt is good.

The audience may not be consciously thinking the question aloud but it compels them nonetheless to stay and watch the rest of the story unfold.  Indeed, the question can change, redirect and become more subtle with the protagonist action since we are not talking rules here. Often it is difficult to be absolute about the question and to say it succinctly depending on the movie, play or book.  Audiences will rarely talk about the dramatic question and may not even understand the term but book readers will say  ‘That book  was a real page turner’  meaning the dramatic question was strong.    Within each scene of the work there is a smaller but connected dramatic question that in it’s own way leads the audience to sway one way or the other regarding the central dramatic question.

Structurally a DQ requires a setup, tension between the two sides of that question   and the payoff.    Here’s an example: Will the sergeant in Lady Gregory’s play ‘The Rising of the Moon’ help the revolutionary escape or will he turn him in for the reward?  The setup is the  discovery by the audience that the beggar is actually the revolutionary and the key to the sergeant’s reward. The tension of opposites is how the writer made the audience veer to both sides. At times you think he will and then at others you think he won’t.    A good DQ can win a Pulitzer! The play and film ‘Doubt’ by JP Shanley has the keystone of the dramatic question in the title.  The DQ is Did the priest molest the  pupil? The audience is brought from positive to negative and back again on this question by the writer planting doubt in their minds as to their own prediction of the outcome leading to an ending that divides the audience down the middle.
Watch for Tension of Opposites in your story and the ones you read and watch. Are you moved from one plausible outcome to another? Do you find yourself changing your opinion of what’s going on, despite yourself? If so then you are in a story of sophistication with a writer who has the power to move minds.

What should be my Second Spec?

After completing a spec script for one show, what should be the next show that I should write for?  Same genre to keep agents focused? Switch  from Drama to Comedy to show I can make people laugh? Swith genre to show I can do procedural as well as ?

After discussing this with an old hand in the business, I was advised to do none of the above. She said that agents are now looking for an original series as well as a spec script. Yep, the bar has been raised – now you got to go ahead and use your imagination. UCLA Extension has jumped on the bandwagon by offering a new class in Spring 09 ‘Creating a TV Series’ by Charles Rosin.  Get the details at https://www.uclaextension.edu/r/Course.aspx?reg=U8927

When A, B & C stories are not A, B & C stories

Breaking down ‘The Wheel’ episode in Mad Men shows a literary conceit that ties the title into the scenes playing out the cycle of life.  In this episode a man dies, a baby is born an affair is revealed and the first woman since WWII is given a copywriter position at Sterling Cooper.

The ‘problem’ for Don in the story is to figure out how to market Kodak’s new gadget. The end shows Don revealing the slide projector as a time machine to go back and forth through the past and returning to the place where we are loved. We see slides of his kids being born, Christmas day, him and Bets in poses of family love etc. This is a self-revelation for Don and a tragedy at that because he cannot go back and forth like the carousel and save his brother or his marriage.  If that weren’t enough, the A, B & C stories tie into this metaphor of the wheel or carousel. This episode is an example of fine writing.

Using the Story Template to determine the A, B & C stories shows that they are not hierarchical. There are more stories, more evenly weighted and they tie into each other with greater meaning. Other episodes tend to have a parallel or mirror story structure where an event in one person’s life is mirrored in another’s and there are clear A, B & C stories.

Story	Who’s key	What’s it about
Kodak	Don	Don has to figure out a way to market the ‘Wheel’
New Biz	Don, Pete, Fellahs	Everyone has to bring in new business. Key to ‘self worth’
Affair	Bets, Francine	Francine tells Bets her hub is shagging Manhattan. This seq is about Bets admitting Don’s affairs to herself.
Relaxacisor	Peggy, Ken	Peggy shows command and ability to learn with her account
New Baby	Pete, Trudy	Under pressure to provide a grandchild, Pete relents but more to get Clearasil biz from father inlaw
Peggy’s Baby	Peggy	Peggy has her (& Pete’s) baby and ignores it. Climactic scene from multi-episode story of her pregnancy.
Adam Hangs Himself	Don, Adam	Don tries to reach out to his brother after shunning him. The photos of the two of them together prompt his call to him.
Thanksgiving	Don, Bets	Don decides not to join his family for TG, at the end he comes home to go with them to find that it is too late.

Many of these stories are wonderfully told. In the ‘Affair’ above the writer (Robin Veith and Mathew Wiener) uses Francine’s admission to Betsy about her husband’s philandering as a way for Betsy to confront her own denial about Don. The story is apparently about Francine but is not at all. Bets tells her shrink about Don in a very casual manner but this is a dam burst forth. The cliche would have been. 1) Francine tells Bets she called a manhattan # in their phone bill and got a woman. 2) Bets calls numbers in their phone bill and gets Rachel. 3)Bets confronts Don in angry mess and 4) ‘Hi Jinks ensue’ . Instead, the indirect method is used for greater effect and is more true to the situation. Just because people live in denial doesn’t mean that they will explode at some point. What Bets gets in this story is self-realization ‘I feel sorry for him’ – she has finally figured out what Don’s actions mean.
To arrive at this self-realization is a stunningly beautiful scene in the car park where she goes up to 11 year old Glen and confesses her deepest secret to him ‘I’m so sad’.

    This is her emotional realization of the problem with Don – she can’t quite say it yet only to admit to the depth of it. In the scene with the shrink she intellectual acknowledges it by saying it out loud.

If this series had a subtitle, ‘The tragedy of Don Draper’ would be it. No surprise if this series actually ends with Don ending up on the concrete after a dive from the top floor of Sterling Cooper.  The tragedy in this episode is shown beautifully with the Kodak carousel. Don discovers the way to market the product from the realization of his own tragic actions. After telling his brother Adam that he did not want to see him and then after going through old photos makes the call to him only to learn that Adam had committed suicide. Too late for the call.  At the presentation with Kodak, clicking through photos of a better life with him and Bets he describes the pain of Nostalgia and here the truth of his life is brought to the surface. Ironically, he calls it the time machine, a device that allows us to go back and forth. But for Don, it is too late. He has lost his brother and now that Bets is aware of his affairs, he will lose her (at least emotionally). The irony, of course, is that he can’t go back in time.  This is what makes that last scene so utterly sad and emotionally powerful for the audience. Great stuff.
Robin Veith is certainly a wonderful and intelligent writer. She started as a writer’s assistant with Mathew Wiener on "Mad Men" and no doubt it was her strong visual and literary instincts that got her in as staff writer this season. A writer to watch.

TV doesn’t always connect the A, B & C stories but there’s always a better payoff when it is done with intelligence. Take a look at Hamlet. The A story is about a man seeking to avenge the murder of his father (Hamlet vs. Claudius) and the B story is about a man seeking to avenge the murder of his father (Laertes vs. Hamlet).
How they go about this reveals their values and the problem of the story but essentially the B story informs and affects the A story – as well as reflecting it. The resonance of the B story into the A magnifies the emotional impact on the audience. When the writer uses a strong literary conceit such as ‘The Wheel’ intelligently, the results are outstanding. Why isn’t this seen more often? Because it’s hard to do  -  well without seeming contrived.