So. I teach playwriting. Which means I harp a lot on Aristotle, ask a lot of questions, mention critical response techniques, and get out of the way.
Yesterday, I asked them to teach each other Poetics, as they remembered our discussions of it. Then we talked about the New Works Festival, where they'd spent a week seeing people successfully and unsuccessfully follow and break every tenet Aristotle put forth. Asked them to think about their own plays, and their classmates' plays, and the other plays they'd seen. Asked them to "play Aristotle" and come up with a list of rules for Good Theatre, based on their own experiences this semester. Below, a few examples of their responses (posted with permission):
CELSO'S RULES
Here are my definitive, undisputable, minutely researched rules for good theater, set in stone for all eternity. (But “good” is a very vague word. By “good” I mean captivating and intriguing – keeping the audience’s attention for the entire duration of the play. If you think about it, that’s not a lot, actually. I’d say it’s the bare minimum you can ask of a story that’s being told to you. Whether it’s easy to achieve, however, is a whole different ball of wax.)
1) The play must speak for itself. Elements whose meaning depend on footnotes, background stories or anything relative to the writing process may add some enjoyment to the mix, but if any of them are necessary to grasp the core meaning of the play, it has failed on a very basic level. Above all else, the author must never explain his intention – and never need to.
2) The play must establish the rules by which it is going to be presented and abide by them. Suspension of disbelief may be broken and any or all of its elements may contradict reality (as it is acknowledged by humanity) or storytelling conventions in any manner or to any extent, but that deviation from the beaten path must make sense as part of the play. This rule applies to content as well as form. When the play has no particular plot or aesthetic statement establishing an unusual language or setting, the audience naturally assumes, by default, that they are watching a play set in the real world as they know it, and it in the dramatic language they are used to – e.g., chronological order, clear enunciation, stories ending with some sort of resolution, etc (in other words, it is impossible for a play to have no rules – either it defines its own or the viewer will). The more elements contradict the play’s rules, the less coherent the play seems in form, content or both. If the central elements or too many elements of the play violate the play’s rules, it has failed on a very basic level.
3) All the elements of the play must be motivated by a need of the play itself. In Aristotle’s words, everything must arise out of probability and necessity. The classical example of a failure in this sense is the Deus Ex Machina – the arbitrary ending where a conclusion is reached not as a resolution of the tensions and relationships developed throughout the play, but out of a new, last-minute element. Both Aristotle and the expression Deus Ex Machina refer specifically to plots, but anything can be gratuitous: a character trait (or even whole characters), a soundtrack or a lighting choice may also be dissonant from the whole play to the point of drawing the viewer’s attention to it from a formal perspective. The more elements are dissonant, the less cohesive and meaningful the play is. If the play has more random elements than motivated elements, the play has failed on a very basic level.
4) At least one element of the play must draw an emotional response from its audience. More often than not a character (or more), but it may as well be the plot itself. If viewers love it – or hate it – the play has succeeded. If viewers are indifferent to it, the play has failed on a very basic level.
5) The play’s duration must feel necessary to the viewer. It mustn’t feel too short or too long, regardless of its actual length. Three-hour epics may feel insufficient, and ten-minute sketches may feel too long. If the play’s duration calls attention to itself during the performance, the play has failed on a very basic level.
6) The meanings of the play or of its elements must be limited. A professor I had when I studied Visual Arts once said that “what can mean anything means nothing.” That may have been the most important thing I learned in that major. If no interpretation of the play can be denied or discarded, the play has failed on a very basic level.
7) The more important elements of the play must have more than one meaning. All art must have some sort of poetry, and there’s no poetry in anything that has only a literal meaning. If the audience can grasp no metaphor, allegory, symbolism, humor, pity, risk or some other sort of added value in the play as a whole or in its central elements (whether in form, content or both), it has failed on a very basic level.As you can see, good theater is actually something very basic. Perhaps even more so: the more I think about it, the more I think rule #1 is the only one strictly necessary. Maybe #4 as well. It’s was in fact quite a struggle for me to fill up the 7-rule minimum. At any rate, these are the rules for good (not necessarily great) theater. There’s a lot more I find desirable in a play, but not necessary. If plays can still be good without it, I left it out.The rules above are operational from the moment of their publication. Infringement of said laws may lead to severe civil and criminal penalties.
BOWMAN'S RULES
This time there are RULES - rules for good playwriting (or "playwrighting", as I was taught to spell it on an earlier occasion):
A play should never take itself to seriously - it must be self-aware to some extent and justify its own existence through its content.
A play's first job is to entertain.
A play must compel people to continue to watch the whole way through.
Any play longer than two hours must have an intermission roughly every hour.
Any play longer than three hours must mandate catering during said intermissions in the stage directions.
Any play longer than four hours ought to be seperated into multiple plays.
If your play is short enough, you can do whatever the hell you want. Bizarre experiments are always more acceptable when they only last a few minutes.
If there is no dialogue, the stage directions ought to be pretty intricate.
If there are no stage directions, the dialogue ought to be pretty intricate.
One should always be able to glean more from performing the play than from simply reading it.
One should always be able to find something interesting in reading the play that they didn't necessarily glean from a performance.
Be specific; if something in the play matters to you, feel free to describe it in intricate detail - an accent, a prop, a set, a light cue, a costume, a speech pattern, anything.
Don't specify everything; leave enough room so that a production team can keep its job. Once the director picks up your play, consider yourself dead - the play is the living work, not you. Don't direct from beyond the grave.
Specifically forbid directors in your text from doing anything stupid and dumb that you hate. If something is really important, write a few guidelines right into the stage directions. God knows you're more brilliant than them.
Clarity is essential; the audience must know what the hell was going on at all times.
Leave anything unimportant to the imagination - this includes the fantastic elements of the play which the audience must lend to disbelief or what was actually in the briefcase or whatever.
Include elements that don't move the plot forward but create a stronger sense of the world of the play. Before it can move, it must be established. Or by moving, it can establish.
Surprise and intrigue.
Your title will usually be much more memorable than your dialogue: make it good.
If your play is a tragedy, some parts must be funny.
If your play is a comedy, some parts must be VERY funny.
Embrace the cliché. These are tried and tested. Every written work ever is the most cliché, overdone drivel in the history of the universe, and is completely unnecessary. Until you actually read it.
Your play can fit a certain format criteria, but never must fall into one genre.
Have a beginning, a middle, and an end.
Always break all of every one of the rules, all of the time in every way.
ASHLEY'S RULES
1. You do not talk about the PLAY.
2. You DO NOT talk about the PLAY.
3. If someone says "stop," goes limp, or taps out the PLAY is over.
4. Only two guys to a PLAY.
5. One PLAY at a time.
6. No shirts, no shoes.
7. PLAYS will go on as long as they have to.
8. If this is your first PLAY, you have to...write?
Okay, so number 8 was pretty lame. But I'm loving number 3.
Fight Club aside, here are a few rules I came up with:
1. The material and performance must challenge the audience in some way. It must cause the audience members to reflect on themselves (i.e. beliefs, character traits/flaws).
2. There should be a character that the audience either: a) loves to hate or b) hates to love.
3. I think a good script calls for the performers' own interpretation and improvisation. Not just that there's room for it, but really requires that each performer bring something to the table.
4. Not every play needs to end with resolution. Of course, the path from the play's beginning to end still needs to make sense even if the play doesn't wrap up nicely.
5. A playwright should not answer EVERY question. The audience should walk away wondering a little, thus giving them the opportunity to fill in their own stories. SOME loose ends are okay.
6. I think all playwrights/actors should incorporate the idea of GROWTH into their scripts/performances. There has to be a challenge, a feat, an exploration, a discovery.
7. A least one scene in a play should challenge the actor(s) mentally, emotionally, and vocally. Referencing Joseph Pilates and the lovely Andrea Beckham, I want to see the actors using their girdle of support, squeezing their juicy peach, and really speaking from their core.
8. There should be at least one character that reminds me of someone I know.
9. Sort of getting into spectacle, I think there should be some quality in the play or performance that causes audience members to avert their eyes or blush or shift in their seats. Whether it's simple costume choices or props, or maybe a sex scene or drug use. It can even be two characters discussing a controversial subject like war or abortion. Acting is reacting and I think theatre itself is a series of actions and reactions. It creates this unique dialogue between collaborators and the audience. Again, it's all about growing.
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