Re: scripts/punctuation
Camille Scaysbrook (c_scaysbrook@yahoo.com)
Fri, 20 Aug 1999 10:36:49 +1000
Colin Pink wrote:
> Maybe different approaches can work equally as well? One
> could go from one extreme to another, the 'script' of say a Theatre de
> Complicite (they're really big in Europe have you seen them in
> Australia?) play is really just a summation of what has evolved in
> rehearsal and performance. With their improvisatory approach the script
> is something you arrive at as a result of the performance rather than
> something given at the beginning which determines the performance.
In my experience, this hasn't been the case so much. I've been involved in
a lot of group-devised theatre and I've always found that unless strictures
are imposed on the content (something almost impossible given the nature of
the play's development), you end up with that bugbear of theatre - a play
that there's actually no reason to go to or stay through because there is
no beginning, middle or end. There's a very egalitarian heart beating
inside these pieces - the idea is that everyone contributes equally, that
there's no supremacy of the playwright, etc etc - but I've found it usually
just ends up being a dictatorship under the director.
> At the other extreme you could take a script by say Edward Albee (one of
> my favourite playwrights) where the script is like a score of music,
> almost every line of dialogue contains instructions as to the delivery
> and for Albee the punctuation is intended to be interpreted almost as
> precisely as a metronome marking. Samuel Beckett (not just a writer
> more of a God) of course is famous for being very precise about his
> punctuation. It is punctuation, after all, that creates the pacing of
> the piece. Changing the pauses can radically alter the meaning and
> impact of what is being said. In short, the pauses are as important as
> the words in a script.
Again, it depends on what kind of theatre you are aiming at. For myself, I
would be wedged somewhere in between. I always used to warn my playwriting
students against `She stops, smiles, laughs, stops laughing then moves
three inches to the left' type of stage directions - but the examples you
cite are something altogether different. The `don't do this!' I used to
offer them was a George Bernard Shaw play which began with TWO SOLID PAGES
of stage directions! (:
> The transition from words on the page to words in performance is a
> fascinating one and, I think, one of the things which makes writing for
> performance so exciting/interesting. I'm always very interested in what
> an actor brings to the words when they embody them in a performance but
> at the same time I feel I should try and be as clear as I can about what
> I'm trying to achieve in a script. I think it's a delicate balance; one
> wants to try and write a script which will generate performances that
> bring out what one is trying to say while at the same time not unduly
> inhibiting the performer.
Of course. But I must say, the most interesting performances of my work are
the ones where they manage to get the most out of the text that I didn't
actually know was there. That, to me, is the true excitement of theatre.
Watching your words metamorphose, become infinitely re-animatable; take on
a life of their own.
Camille
verona_beach@geocities.com
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