Image Maker: The Playwright A play in a book is only the shadow of a play and not even a clear shadow of it. . . . [It] is hardly more than an architect’s blueprint of a house not yet built or built and destroyed. —Tennessee Williams

The Playwright The playwright envisions the play’s world, its people, words environment, objects, relationships, emotions, attitudes, and events: Playwright = “play builder” Playwriting is a creative act that enlarges our understanding of human experience. Playwriting enriches our appreciation of life.

Aspects of playwriting Drama is a form of literature and as such many consider it to be a literary activity Although the words write and wright are homonyms, their meanings differ A playwright “makes” plays as a wheelwright makes wheels or a cartwright makes carts So, although a literary art, playwriting is much more than an arrangement of words, rather it is a blueprint for a play

The Play and the Audience Experience of watching a play divided: Emotional involvement Aesthetic detachment Empathy for characters draws us into world of play. Awareness that it’s a play keeps us at a distance. Catharsis: A cleansing or purging of strong emotions. Empathy for fictional characters inspires emotions such as pity and fear, but at a comfortable distance.

The Play and the Audience Most playwrights encourage empathy in audience for characters: An exception: Bertolt Brecht a German poet, playwright, and theatre director. The Caucasion Chalk Circle The Three Penny Opera

Bertolt Brecht Alienation effect (Verfemdung) Distance encourages judgments about social and economic issues in play "which prevents the audience from losing itself passively and completely in the character created by the actor, and which consequently leads the audience be a consciously critical observer."

The Play: “A Blueprint for a House Not Yet Built” Playwright: Writes a play to express some aspect of human experience Shapes a personal vision into an organized, meaningful whole Script: Blueprint for a specific dramatic experience Play attains finished form only in performance.

The Playwright’s Beginnings Modes of playwriting: Start with idea, dream, and/or image, then work out an action to express it Start with character or real person then develop action around him or her Start with a situation, then let it unfold No two playwrights use the same approach

The Playwright’s Beginnings Examples: Bertolt Brecht: Started with outline, then summarized social and political ideas before building a story based on the outline Sam Shepard: Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1979 for his play Buried Child Handwrites draft, then works out revisions in theatre before writing final draft

Some of the Masters Samuel Beckett

playwright, novelist and poet. Samuel Barclay Beckett (1906 – 1989) -an absurdist Irish playwright, novelist and poet. The Theatre of the Absurd is a designation for particular plays of absurdist fiction written by a number of primarily European playwrights in the late 1950s. Their work expressed the belief that human existence has no meaning or purpose and therefore all communication breaks down.

Career Moved from Ireland to Paris and was a teacher World War II, Beckett remained in Paris, even after it had become occupied by the Germans. He joined the underground movement and fought for the resistance until 1942 when several members of his group were arrested and he was forced to flee with his French-born wife to the unoccupied zone In 1945, after it had been liberated from the Germans, he returned to Paris and began his most prolific period as a writer

Career Beckett was the first of the absurdists to win international fame works translated into over twenty languages continued to write until his death in 1989, but the task grew more and more difficult with each work until, in the end, he said that each word seemed to him "an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness."

Theatrical Concept, Style Beckett's theatre is stark, fundamentally minimalist, and deeply pessimistic about human nature and the human situation Explores his themes in increasingly cryptic and attenuated style Trades-in plot, characterization, and final solution, which had hitherto been the hallmarks of drama, for a series of concrete stage images

Theatrical Concept, Style language is useless, for he creates a mythical universe peopled by lonely creatures who struggle vainly to express the unexpressable characters exist in a terrible dreamlike vacuum, overcome by an overwhelming sense of bewilderment and grief, grotesquely attempting some form of communication

Dramatic Works Eleutheria (1940s, first published 1995) Waiting for Godot (first published 1952) Endgame (published 1957) Happy Days (published 1960) All That Fall (radio play, 1956) Act Without Words I (1956) Act Without Words II (1956) Krapp's Last Tape (1958) Rough for Theatre I (late 1950s) Rough for Theatre II (late 1950s) Embers (1959) Rough for Radio I (radio play, never broadcast, 1961, rewritten as Cascando) Rough for Radio II (radio play, early 1960s) Words and Music (radio play, 1961) Cascando (radio play, 1962) Play (1963) Film (film, 1963) The Old Tune (radio play, adaptation of Robert Pinget's La Manivelle, published 1963) Come and Go (1965) Eh Joe (television play, 1965) Breath (1969) Not I (1972) That Time (1975) Footfalls (1975) Ghost Trio (television play, 1975) ... but the clouds ... (television play, 1976) A Piece of Monologue (1980) Rockaby (1981) Ohio Impromptu (1981) Quad (1982) Catastrophe (1982) Nacht und Träume (television play, 1982) What Where (1983)

Act Without Words I Whereas the characters in Beckett's plays usually exist in terms of pairs, Act Without Words I has a single figure upon an alien, desert landscape.  There is, of course, the sense of another presence which is controlling "The Man's" actions, but we are never made aware of the nature of this other presence. Act Without Words I - is purely visual. It has no spoken word nor any sound effects except the sound of a whistle.