It's not the size of your play

I had a generally good experience reading these four plays. I am a huge fan of sketch comedy, which is basically a series of very poorly written short plays. This makes legitimate short plays a real treat because they are usually pretty well written. Of the four plays, I liked each of them for different reason (except for A Bowl of Soup which I didn’t like and thought was a crock of something else). The plays were generally good representations of the writing tenants that we have been learning about in class.

I really liked The Man Who Couldn’t Dance because it gave us little bits of the plot at a time. It started out with an odd and strained relationship that gradually opened up to become a huge and romantic picture. The characters were immediately likeable, and there was no point that I didn’t believe their words. Oddly enough, I performed the “I can’t dance” monologue for a class, but I can’t remember for what class and when. I don’t think it was at U.P.S., but as I was reading the play I knew something was familiar and when I came across the monologue I was really enthused to read it. The Man Who Couldn’t Dance also had a good build and plot that was interesting and fairly easy to follow. Like we have been learning, each line of dialogue both furthered the plot and increased the characterization rather than taking two lines to do the same thing. I really liked Gail’s line near the end of the play, “I remember thinking how strange it was to be in this wedding gown. On my wedding day. Dancing with you. And you weren’t my groom.” This line gives a lot away without doing anything too overtly. In all a little sappy, but a nice short play.

The Roads That Lead Here was definitely my favorite, and I have the least to say about it. I guess this play was a concept that I found immediately very interesting. I thought the brotherly relationship was well done, and I liked the quasi-absurdist nature of the play. I found myself very easily picturing all the characters and the action.

That Midnight Rodeo was a good piece along similar lines as the dancing play. This was a very strong character play, and once the relationship and situation was established, the play just rolled itself out. I was happy with the play because it wasn’t obvious at any point. Every line was realistic, and I found myself taking a side I don’t normally take on children. It was nice not being force-fed the plot, and even though it took a long time for me to catch on to what was happening, I would prefer to not know rather than to know and be disappointed by it.

I was not a fan of the Bowl Of Soup play. I read it as something of a monologue play, and always found myself losing interest. I kept thinking that perhaps Eddie might have killed Rob, or some other plot twist, but there wasn’t really any of that. Even the part about AIDS sounded forced without any other characters to help it out. I guess soup seemed like a monologue masquerading as a play, and I wasn’t really buying it. This could stem from my liking realistic dialogue, and monologues almost always sounding forced.

I think the thing I am taking away from these readings is the slow and gradual reveal of the plot. The plays that did a great job of this were That Midnight Rodeo and The Man Who Couldn’t Dance. If the plot comes out all at once, it is almost certainly because it is forced out. I think making strong characters allows them to fend for themselves for a while before the audience catches up with the plot, and once they do they will appreciate the characters all the more. Maybe there is something inherent in really good characters that audiences recognize immediately and understand. Perhaps writing a character as compelling and realistically as you can will allow the audience time to fully comprehend what they are seeing regardless of how slow you let the plot out.

The things that I liked about fences were the characters. I liked the fact that they seemed so real. I often find myself wondering if a character I am writing for would really say any of the things I am forcing him or her to say. August Wilson did a good job of writing legitimately for his figures because I didn’t get the sense that any of the characters would have felt wronged in Fences. Even through their aging, the characters maintained what made them unique. Unlike Eurydice, almost every line of dialogue seemed wholly realistic, yet the characters continued to be somewhat interesting for the entire play.

In a play like Fences, the characters are the only things capable of driving the plot. There weren’t a large amount of deadlines or impending circumstances or devices that would push the plot in a new direction, so the characters had to do it themselves. I guess this was another example of a play whose work was done after a serious evaluation of the character list. I am not sure how I think about that style because I have always been a fan of a journey or the introduction of a new and strange character, but this play is a realistic and everyday kind of play. It is useful to think about plays that don’t have constant action because they help to develop your ability to write dialogue that propels a story rather than plot points.

Fences has an interesting structure. The best way I can think to describe it is as a set of yearbooks stacked together. We get to see a few interactions and characters before we have to look at the next yearbook. This structure fits the characters really well, but I wonder how hard it is to write such a play. As soon as Wilson finished discussing whatever he wanted the characters to say he would just move onto a new yearbook and leave the audience wondering.

The thing I am left wondering after reading this play is how does one go about creating the characters that will essentially dictate the plot of your story. Do you begin with a vague idea of plot and then go? Did Wilson start with Troy, then create Rose, then Lyons and Cory, and then added in an affair, then Bono for support, then Gabe to spice things up? I would like to learn how to do create a character string that can completely support a story before the story is written.