Plays
When I was 17, my school’s head of drama narrowly agreed that I could have one slot at about 10pm after the
main school play to put on my own piece of writing, and only because some friends of mine who he trusted a lot
more agreed to produce it.
It was extremely chaotic: we did all the rehearsals in two weeks, one of the actors was my recent ex, and our AV
dropped out so I had to fill in on the night. But it worked! Afterwards, I went with some friends to a park, and
one of them told me that he was genuinely surprised because the play had been actually fun to watch. We recorded
the whole thing on an incredibly grainy camera.
I wrote two more plays in university, plus a musical which was accepted to the Royal Mile of the Fringe. But then
the Fringe was cancelled because of the pandemic, and I graduated, and it’s a lot harder to put plays on
when you’re not a student. These days I mostly write prose of some kind.
I learned a bunch though, and it was a lot of fun. I’d recommend giving it a go to anyone who likes telling
stories. Here are some of the big takeaways:
Ferrari Steel
In which three frineds create a fake person to take the fall for their misdeeds, then try to control him when he
becomes a folk hero, then kill him when they lose control, and so on.
- Ultimately, what you’re trying to is entertain people. That’s the real goal, don’t let the fact
that you’re writing a play distract you.
- I really like the satire structure: start with something familiar and comprehensible, and have it gradually
build into something deranged
- For the actual writing I would come up with the climactic moment and then work backwards to explain
how people would end up there
- You are going to put people on stage, so they can’t be static. Keep to at most four people and give them
things to do, woven into their lines, or the audience will get bored.
- While you’re writing the script, think about props, visual cues, ways to do exposition and development
other than people talking. You have a rich medium and you should use it.
- Lighting is unreasonably powerful. You can
- Delineate separate spaces by lighting them differently (outside/inside, different rooms)
- Move focus across the stage by moving the lights, picking out specific characters and so on
- Control transitions: scenes can fade out or cut out or just shift to something else
- etc, play around with it
- It helps so much to have a producer that is organised
- Telegraph the payoffs, make every couple of lines actually count for something: jokes, plot development,
good characterisation. Cut the fat.
- Directing is mostly
- Blocking
- Making sure the actors get the tone of the script (trust their execution and delivery, but make sure
they aren’t missing what a line actually means)
- Frantically editing the script
- Working on a play is an intense bonding experience and there is always drama
HisPol (1+2)
Blatant pandering to my new university cohort, sending up the university’s strange traditions. Enough of a hit
that
we did a second run with a sequel.
- Write for specific people, for yourself even. Trying to write for everyone is boring, and it seems like most
people like things that are written for someone, even if that someone is someone else.
- Good marketing sets up a good crowd
- Plays are a bit ramshackle, nobody expects the props to be perfect, so you can make a joke out of having
terrible representations
- Seriously, everything is hit or miss, and it varies so much between nights what lands and what doesn’t,
so try to take a lot of shots
Hero-Man: Champion of Justice
Musical satire of hypermasculine saturday morning cartoons. Flew too close to the sun with this one, never got a
chance to rewrite it, but man, it was fun.
- Keep the plot simple. The audience can’t check over the previous page, so if you want to have twists and
mystery, keep hammering home the clues, and expect to tweak a lot
- Make sure the opening is easy to grasp, and get people into the swing of the play as soon as possible
- The amazing thing about plays is that you get to work with people who are way better than you at all kinds
of stuff. Actors, set and wardrobe, music: you can build a foundation for something way more interesting
than you could make on your own.
- This does come with some costs: our costume designer decided she wanted somewhat revealing outfits,
and I got a bit of flack from a reviewer who figured this was my casual misogyny
- It is also hard to keep things coherent, and you need to be able to overrule people who know more
than you about their piece if it won’t fit in the whole
- Take more pictures during rehearsals. Plays are ephemeral. All I have now is the scripts, a few scattered
pictures and recordings, and a couple boxes of props I saved.
- Savour the moment.