by Daniel Heath

The playwright's job can be summed up in two cardinal rules:

1. To write the best script that she or he can possibly write, and

2. To keep his or her actors well-supplied with whiskey

The second rule is self-explanatory; we'll focus on the first. Write the best possible script, for your actors, for your director, and for your audience.

WRITE FOR YOUR ACTORS

We have the benefit of writing our words in the dark where no one can see us. Our actors have to give a voice and a body to our words, and perform them publicly. We owe it to them to send them out on stage with the best tools we can give them.

Give your actor a good character. A good character makes sense as a human whole, but is not so predictable that she's boring. She needs to be recognizable ("Oh! She's a librarian...") without being a stereotype ("...who wears glasses and is nervous around people."). Maybe your librarian is actually having an affair with the biology teacher, and the two of them communicate entirely via photocopied sections of books and body parts slipped anonymously into each others' mailboxes. Even if the character is small, give the actor something to build on. A single line that suggests depths outside the scene can be enough for an actor to find a whole character. "For this relief much thanks; 'tis bitter cold, and I am sick at heart," says the guard in the opening scene of Hamlet. Shakespeare gives his actors something to work with even when characters are only on stage for eight lines in the entire play.

Give your actors characters, but don't tell them how to act. Let them do that--that's their job. They're better at it than you. Let your words, story, and situation guide your actor. So, to borrow from Shakespeare again:

DO:

Juliet: If they do see thee, they will murder thee.

DON'T:

Juliet: (Concerned:) If they do see thee they will murder thee! (Leans over balcony.) Romeo, really! (Folds hands, half-turn, and:) I mean it! I love you don't let them find you (points to him) here (indicates where here is, which is there, where she is.).

It also helps your actors when your characters want something--the higher the stakes for the character, the more your actors have to work with. Put your characters face-to-face with their worst fears and weaknesses, and your actors will thank you. However, there is an important exception to this:

Earn what you ask your actors to do. Do not send your actors out on stage and ask them to project raw emotion without backing them up. Do not ask them to convey suffering or heartbreak without also laying the groundwork to help them connect to the audience first. Along those lines, do not ask them to force a character to do something that does not make human sense--it breaks the connection they have worked so hard to build. Most actors I have known approach scripts with stunning good faith. They will try to make sense of what you have written, and they will do their best to make an audience believe in the path you have created for their character. An actor might, very literally, strip completely naked in front of a room full of strangers, because you have written that that's what a character does.

Playwrights should always seek to earn the sweat and trust of actors.

WRITE FOR YOUR DIRECTOR

The hardest question I have ever been asked by a director is, "What is this play about?" The question comes up a lot.

Playwright to playwright, don't obsess about that question before you start, or you may never write anything. Keep asking yourself, though, as you write. What interests you about your story? About your characters? What keeps happening? What themes are creeping up on you? See if you can figure out as you go what your play is about. Bear in mind that your play does not need to have the answers, it only needs the questions.

So, your play needs to be about something, and your director needs to be able to figure that out. The director also needs a story. That's easier. Not easy, just easier. Something should happen. For every scene in your script, ask yourself: What happens to the characters? What changes? If nothing happens and nothing changes, why is this scene in the script? Telling us stuff about the world of the play does not count as something happening. How does Shakespeare introduce the conflict between the Capulets and Montagues? Okay, okay, with the prologue, but that's just a sonnet. How does he really introduce it? With a string of filthy sexual innuendo and a giant sword fight.

Once again, don't try to do the director's job in your script with excessive stage directions. "They fight." is plenty. The director will decide if it will be kung-fu with wires and smoke bombs, or Greco-Roman thumb-wrestling. Leave your director with room to make meaningful choices; you do not have to figure everything out. If your play is about something and something is happening in your scenes, then you've given your director what she needs to turn your script into a play.

WRITE FOR YOUR PRODUCTION TEAM

Or, rather, don't write for your production team. Focus on character and story and making the play about something, and leave set and costume design to the set and costume designer. Leave music to the composer. Your job is hard enough.

This is not to say you can't rely on costumes, or set, or music to tell your story and move your play--you can. Most people who work in theater love challenges--is a certain song a critical element of a key scene, and absolutely must be wonderful to make the play work? Your composer will love that--let your composer work. Don't micro-manage, just provide raw material.

The division of labor in theater is one of its great pleasures; don't fight it.

WRITE FOR YOUR AUDIENCE

When the enormous collaborative effort that transforms a script into a play is complete (or, as complete as it ever gets), your audience will sit down in the dark to watch. Keep that final moment in mind as you write. Your audience will be responding intellectually to your work, but also viscerally and emotionally. They are willing to go to wonderful or horrible places with you--respect that willingness and make every effort to keep them with you on the journey.

Do not ask your audience to care until you've earned it. Don't show us A Mother and Her Child that are In Distress. Show us this particular mother (is she a lapsed Catholic? is she a huge ABBA fan? all of the above?), show us this particular child (bites when touched on the head, hates ABBA), and then put them in distress (a humid Saturday afternoon with her brother the priest). Give your audience time to absorb moments and feelings, but never linger too long. Not too little, not too much--of every scene, character, emotion, theme, knife fight, and sight gag. Striking the balance is one of the things we'll spend our whole careers trying to get exactly right.

THE PLAYWRIGHT'S JOB

This article is full of exhortations which are obvious:

"Something needs to happen..."

(Yeah no $#!% I know something needs to happen). But then, suddenly:

"Uh oh. Nothing has happened for ten pages. Nothing has happened this whole act. This whole play. Why am I writing this? Why am I writing? Why am I even alive?"

That is the story of every play I have ever written--terrible struggles to meet goals that sound childishly simple when explained. But it helps to remember to ask these questions as we go: Who is this character? What does she want right now? What is happening here? Why am I telling this story?

Note that there is a section missing here: WRITING FOR YOURSELF. That's because you're doing that already. Of course you must write a story you want to tell. You must write something that is true to how you see the world. If you're not writing something that feels true to you, it will probably not feel true to anyone else. And by true I mean something vague but important--not literally true, obviously, but true to something about the human experience. Which includes true love, sacrifice, and tragedy, but also laughing at people falling down and making up stories about strip poker in hell.

So, write true things, but don't get caught up in worrying about yourself: worry about your story and your characters. A play starts with you, but as soon as it goes into rehearsal it becomes bigger than you and that is what is magnificent about it. Your actors bring energy, bodies, and voices; your director brings leadership and human understanding. Your audience gives their time and their emotions. None of this can happen without you, so get started, and do your best.

Seriously. Stay up late.

Daniel Heath is a three-time winner of the PlayGround Emerging Playwright Award (2007/08/09), a recipient of the PlayGround Fellowship full-length play commissions (2009 and 2010), and a winner of PianoFight's Shortlived short play competition. His full-length comedies FORKING and FORKING II: A MERRY FORKING CHRISTMAS were produced by PianoFight in 2008 and 2009 in San Francisco and Los Angeles. His short plays have been produced at numerous venues and festivals across the country and even in the lawless wilds of Toronto, Canada.