Tuesday night I attended a reading of a new play at Beowulf Alley Theatre. The play was called "Frozen Heart" and it was written by Dawn Sellers. The central event of the play involved a daughter and father who hadn't seen each other in fifteen years. They were the only characters. It was the second time that Dawn has had the chance to hear her play being read. I believe earlier it had an in-house reading at Old Pueblo Playwrights. There must have been about twenty-five of us in attendance and this was one of those occasions where afterwards the spectators are invited to give moderated feedback to the playwright concerning what they have heard. In this particular instance, Dawn actually had specific questions for the us to answer. The discussion was pretty lively and enthusiastic towards the script. The director of the reading even said he felt the script was "the emergence of a new theatrical form."
As a spectator, you always try to listen with an open mind and ear at these types of presentations and make what sense you can of the script as its read. Afterwards I usually find myself in the place of saying "o.k. if I was going to make a production from this script, how would I proceed? What do I see, hear, feel and imagine from this that I would want to turn into an action-behavioral event on the stage? And why?" Those are my fundamental instinctual questions to myself about any script.
I measure my answers and responses though with a kind of classic appraisal of the script. First I list out all the basic facts from the script. (This is very difficult, if not impossible, when you have heard it read only once and don't have the luxury of studying the darn thing. But lets assume I did have that luxury). The facts can only be what is apparent and overt in the script, nothing you fill in with your own assumptions or imaginations yet. Its kind of the who, what, when and where type of thing. But only if its present in the script. If the script does not indicate where things take place for example, you can't make it up right now that it all takes place in the park. So in Dawn's script for example it indicated it was Christmas Eve - Christmas, late night, early morning I believe. It's very, very cold outside. They are in the family owned butcher shop. They are daughter and father. This is the first time they have seen each other in fifteen years. Etc. It's natural of course for actors, directors and spectators to begin to imaginatively make assumptions from these facts, i.e., every place else is closed, there is no place else to go, no way out, whatever is going to happen is going to happen here in this either cozy or claustrophobic environment between these characters. But you can't do that yet! Or at least I try not to. We have to be good "detectives" and make sure we know and understand all the facts as they are presented. If there is conflicting information we have to note that too of course.
Next I try to articulate the basic story line of the script, again no filling in whys and hows or anything like that. For example, in Dawns script I would start like this with the very obvious. "The daughter shows up and knocks on the butcher shop door late on Christmas Eve. A man comes to answer the door and lets her in finally. They start to talk, she is asking questions. We find out they are father and daughter. She picks up a knife and starts to butcher some meat. We find out he taught her how to butcher when she was younger and that she still knows how to do it, but that she is never as careful as he wants her to be with the knives and the cutting. The daughter is asking about the mother. The father tells her that her mom died two weeks ago." That's the idea, to simply trace the story line, see if there is one. In Dawn's play, there is.
So then, I think what is or what was the initiating event, or beginning event - meaning what occurred somewhere in time in the story line, that if it had never occurred, this play would not be taking place. You can't make this up either. It has to be indicated in the script. Well, in this case, we know if the daughter hadn't had left and not talked to the father in fifteen years, if she had stayed, or had been on the phone with him weekly during all this time, this particular play wouldn't/couldn't take place. So her leaving fifteen years ago was, or was part of, the initiating event that sets this all in motion eventually. But here we have to start asking why or looking a little further to make sure this is correct. Did something happen that made her leave? In this case yes. The daughter got pregnant by her father. It was an incestuous relationship between the two, initiated and controlled by the father of course. This had been going on for some time. But once the daughter got pregnant, and found out she was so, she left. Therefore we would say, the daughter getting pregnant, finding out so, was the initiating event in the story line of Dawn's script. If she hadn't gotten pregnant at that time, she might never have left when she did. Things would be different somehow and the play couldn't take place as is.
Now that I have the initiating event, I try to determine what is the main event of the story itself as it happens in real time before the spectators. In Dawn's script it is a difficult one to decipher as there are lots and lots of incidents and plot lines that are revealed throughout. However, Dawn indicated to us in discussion that it is a play of "forgiveness and redemption" and therefore the characters forgiving each other seems to me to be the main event of the play. When and how does that take place? I will have to think about it for now.
If our appraisal of the initiating and main events is good, we should be able to see definite relationship and meaning in the two. Father abuses daughter, gets her pregnant, she leaves, comes back eventually, they forgive each other. I believe it makes sense in this case. I think the appraisal is a good one, so far. I see definite relationship and meaning in these two events.
Next comes the part where we have to be more critical in our analysis. When have to try and figure out how the playwright, via the characters, expresses these two connected events and why they are expressed in one particular way or another. And, we have to determine what the relationship and consequences of the other smaller events of the play are, how everything weaves together so to speak. One of the things we consider or course is the dialogue itself, the choice of words, number of words, etc. In Dawn's play, the characters speak in very brief sentences which indicate to the spectator what happened in their lives, and how they feel about it. Like a facts list. Or a list of psychological assessments of themselves. The sentences do not go into details at all. They are not subtle nor are they complex. They are sometimes vague, purposefully so. There are long sections where they say just one, two or three words, one right after another - the finishing the thoughts kind of thing. I can't do it now, because I don't have a good answer, but at some point we would need to determine why this is - meaning what are the characters thoughts, actions, feelings from which this this set and manner of words would arise.
I won't continue on with each bit of Dawn's play - but you get the idea. This is the beginning way of play analysis for me. This is what I learned from my teachers and mentors and what I have adopted into my practice over time. These were the things on my mind during the discussion afterwards - which I did not participate actively in - meaning I didn't say anything. Never the less, I was happy to be a part of the evening as a whole, thankful for Beowulf's sponsorship, the playwrights work, the actor's, director, and fellow spectators. I'm looking forward to the next one!
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