I recently completed a three-day workshop of my latest play. And it got me thinking about the usual developmental path new work takes in this country. Outside the sphere of developmental gatherings such as Seven Devils, Bay Area Playwrights, O’Neill and PlayPenn (to name just 4), most plays simply get a series of public or semi-public readings by professional actors until there’s an actual production and rehearsals begin. Once rehearsals begin with a first performance end date in place, there really isn’t the time for the sort of work we spent the last three days doing.
For me it was incredibly eye-opening, not only about how to better tell this particular story, but in general, about my craft as a playwright. I made one strange and wonderful discovery about myself as a writer. I think I have a mild form of Story Dyslexia. We found several instances in which the arc of a particular character’s journey had been expressed in a jumbled fashion. And there was more than one case where upon moving one scene before the scene that had originally preceded it, the story suddenly found a new clarity. This was something I may have noticed just hearing the play read again and again but I am convinced this discovery was hastened by having terrific actors moving in space, relating to each other in space.
Another discovery was perhaps less concrete but no less important. In discussing the script with these very clever people, I was able to see how certain theatrical devices were not always employed in a consistent way. If there’s one thing we can probably all agree on (regardless of our stylistic preferencs), it’s this. Once an audience grasps a set of rules of play for how a story is going to be told, switching approach midstream is generally not a good idea. There were a few details of nuance, the kind that could only be discovered by actually rehearsing, as opposed to just reading because when an actor starts to engage his entire body, his awareness increases.
Another interesting discovery came from switching up the casting as we went along. By having two actors swap roles, or casting across gender, the dialogue is put through a much more rigorous test as to its authenticity in bringing to life the details of character. Put another way, when you hear an actor who is the wrong age and the wrong sex reading a page or two of dialogue and you still feel the character come to life, it offers confirmation that you’re on the right track. Or vice versa.
Anyway, I could go on and on about this. Suffice it to say, it was a wonderful workshop. And I hope to have more opportunities to work this way in the future.
