1. The Playwright and the Script
Chapter 6
The Playwright and the Script

2. The One Who Builds
The root word wright in playwright comes from the Middle Ages and means “one who builds.” A shipwright builds ships; a wheelwright builds wheels. A playwright builds plays.
Chris Bennion

3. The Primary Artist
Theatre begins with the playwright, the artist who conceives the theme, the characters, the dialogue, and the story. Playwrights are so important to the process that many theatre professionals call them the “primary artist.”
“The writer is the person who was there when the paper was white.”
-- Moss Hart, playwright

4. The Playwright’s Life and Words
Copyright
What are some of the basic differences between playwrights and screenwriters?
Closed shop union
Open show union
If screenwriters can make so much more money, why become a playwright?

6. Non-professional rights YF
FEE: $75 per performance. SPECIAL NOTE ON SONG: An additional fee of $5.00 per nonprofessional performance is required for use of the song "Shall We Dance?" SPECIAL NOTE ON MUSIC: A CD, "People and Nature in Harmony: Dong Folk Songs," containing music for this play is required for production. The cost is $20.00, plus shipping and handling. There is no additional fee for the use of this music.

8. The Art of Playwriting Dialogue Stage directions Parentheticals
AP Photo/Kathy Willens

10. The Theme in a Play
Themes are statements about the central ideas that generate the life of the play
AP Photo/Kathy Willens

11. The Theme in a Play
Themes that are revealed through action are theatrically more interesting than those that are explicitly stated.
Themes are often open to interpretation by the directors, designers and actors and by the audience as well.

12. Characters in Action
Characters come to life not by what they feel and think but by what they say and do.
Actions are the characters’ deeds.
SARA KRULWICH/The New York Times/Redux Pictures

13. Four Sources of Character Info
Dialogue
Stage directions
Parentheticals
Action (what the character actually does)
Clues given by playwright, but the actor does the action
Actions can be physical (external) or psychological (internal)

14. Conflict as Catalyst
Plays are about people with needs and desires and obstacles preventing them from what they want.
Desire + obstacle x lack of compromise = conflict
Photostage

15. The Art of Language
Dialogue begins with the need to talk. How is this realized by the playwright?
text
subtext
listening
imagery
music
a. rhythm
b. tempo
c. tone
Jennie Franks

16. Genre
A category of an artistic work that has a particular form, style, or subject matter
The rules of the world of the play

17. Plotting the Story
Many plays and screenplays follow a blueprint: Oedipus Rex, Romeo and Juliet, A Raisin in the Sun, and Star Wars.

18. Scenes are the building blocks to construct a plot
Introduction
Status quo
Inciting incident
Dramatic Question
Rising Action
Crisis, Turning Point
Or Climax
Falling action
Resolution and Conclusion

19. Formula Plots 1. Beginning Exposition or back story
Protagonist and antagonist
Event – unique moment
D. Status Quo and Disturbance or
Inciting Incident
Point of Attack – Protagonist makes a decision that results in conflict
F. Major Dramatic Question

20. Formula Plots 2. The Middle – path of most resistance Rising Action
Conflicts- Struggle of opposing forces
Crisis – events that make it necessary for protagonist to take action
Complications - obstacles
Dark Moment – “make it worse”
Joan Marcus

21. Formula Plots The End Enlightenment
Climax – protagonist can resolve their conflict
Denouement – resolution, new status quo

22. Exposition

23. Exposition

24. Status Quo

25. Event

26. Disturbance

27. Point of Attack – Luke decides

28. Complications

29. Conflict/Complications

31. Crisis – to take action

32. Dark Moment

33. Dark Moment

34. Enlightenment
Hans Solo comes back to rescue Luke
Use the force Luke

35. Climax

36. Loose end, lack of conclusion

37. Denouement

38. Denouement

39. Plots Outside the Formula
Writers who abandon formula often try to look at life the way it is, or as they perceive it, rather than fit it into a standard structure:
Waiting for Godot
‘night Mother
Pulp Fiction
Joan Marcus

40. What the Playwrights Say
“We’re one of the last handmade art forms. There’s no fast way to make plays. It takes just as long and is just as hard as it was a thousand years ago.”
Steven Dietz, playwright
“The very impulse to write, I think, springs from an inner chaos crying for order, for meaning, and that meaning must be discovered in the process of writing or the work lies dead as it is finished.” Arthur Miller, playwright

41. Curtain Call
In the theatre, the playwright is the Primary Artist. Yet, unlike the actors, director, designers, or producer, the playwright is the only member of the theatrical ensemble that can be long dead.
A playwright’s life may be difficult, but they know the joy of sole authorship and find great satisfaction in communicating their ideas without alteration.