by Will Dunne
Shanley grew up in an Italian-Irish neighborhood in the Bronx in the 1960s and was himself a product of the Catholic school system. An influential teacher at his grade school, St. Anthony’s, inspired the character of Sister James in Doubt and attended the world premiere of the play as his guest. While Shanley says that Doubt is not autobiographical, his experience at St. Anthony’s was a key source of material for the play. In an interview with the Houston Chronicle, he explained: “I’ve always remembered that church school, the way the Sisters of Charity dressed, the way people behaved, the demarcation between men and women, between the convent and the rectory, and where the power was.”1
■ TOPDOG/UNDERDOG
Topdog/Underdog explores the competitive relationship of two African-American brothers living in poverty with different visions of the American dream. One is a thief who wants to launch a lucrative three-card monte scam even though he has no skill at card hustling. The other is a reformed three-card monte dealer who wants to work within the system and earn an honest living even if the job is demeaning and underpaid.
The play received its world premiere at the Joseph Papp Public Theater/New York Shakespeare Festival in 2001 and moved to the Ambassador Theater on Broadway in 2002. Both productions were directed by George C. Wolfe. In 2002, the play received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Play and Drama Desk Award for Outstanding New Play.
Playwright: Suzan-Lori Parks
A playwright, screenwriter, and novelist, Suzan-Lori Parks is the first African-American woman to receive a Pulitzer Prize for Drama and in 2001 was named one of Time magazine’s “Time 100: Next Wave/Innovators.” Her plays include In the Blood, which was a finalist for the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Drama; Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom, which received a 1990 Obie Award for Best New American Play; and Venus, which in 1996 also received an Obie. Other full-length plays include The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World, Devotees in the Garden of Love, The America Play, Fucking A, Father Comes Home from the War, and The Book of Grace. She also authored 365 Days/365 Plays, the result of a year-long project in which she wrote a play a day. Her screenplay credits include the Spike Lee film Girl 6.
Parks is the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant as well as grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Rockefeller Foundation, Ford Foundation, Guggenheim Foundation, and others.
Talking with the Academy of Achievement about her writing process, Parks explained, “My writing all comes from listening. The more I can listen, the more I can write.”2 And, though she sometimes spends months or years developing a play, she found herself writing and completing Topdog/Underdog in only a weekend, an experience she described as magical. “I wrote for three days, or 72 hours,” she said. “Wrote, wrote, wrote, wrote, and I thought if I looked up, I would see someone pouring silver liquid into the back of my head. That’s what it felt like. It was just like ‘I know.’”
■ THE CLEAN HOUSE
Set in a “metaphysical Connecticut,” The Clean House centers on three women from different walks of life: a married doctor, a maid who would rather be a comedian, and a restless housewife. Things get messy when the doctor discovers that her maid has stopped cleaning, her husband has fallen in love with another woman, and her sister has been secretly cleaning her house so that the maid can have more time to think up jokes.
The Clean House received its world premiere at the Yale Repertory Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut, in 2004, and its New York premiere at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater at Lincoln Center in 2006. Both productions were directed by Bill Rauch. Among other honors, the play earned the 2004 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and was a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
Playwright: Sarah Ruhl
Sarah Ruhl’s work has been produced across the country and around the world. In addition to The Clean House, her plays include In the Next Room or the vibrator play, which in 2010 was a Pulitzer Prize finalist and Tony Award nominee for Best Play; Passion Play: a cycle, which earned the Pen American Award and the Fourth Freedom Forum Playwriting Award from the Kennedy Center; Dead Man’s Cell Phone, which received the Helen Hayes Award; and Demeter in the City, which received an NAACP Image Award nomination. Other full-length plays include Melancholy Play, Eurydice, Orlando, Late: A Cowboy Song, Three Sisters, Stage Kiss, Dear Elizabeth, and The Oldest Boy. In 2003, she received the Helen Merrill Emerging Playwrights Award and the Whiting Writers’ Award and, in 2006, a MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant.
A poet turned playwright, Ruhl has described her plays as “three-dimensional poems,” which often draw from ancient Greek tragedy and other mythic sources to explore “the interplay of the actual and the magical.” In an interview with playwright Paula Vogel, she explained, “I come into the theater wanting to feel and think at the same time, to have the thought affect the emotion and the emotion affect the thought. That is the pinnacle of a great night at the theater.”3
Her inspiration for The Clean House was a conversation she overheard at a cocktail party. A doctor was complaining about her cleaning woman, who had become too depressed to clean. The doctor medicated the woman in hopes of reviving her interest in her job, but the woman still refused to work. The doctor’s comment on the situation became one of the most memorable lines in Ruhl’s play: “I’m sorry, but I did not go to medical school to clean my own house.”
Technical Considerations
A dramatic script reflects certain technical decisions that the writer makes about how to present the story. Such decisions center on genre, style, and dramatic focus, as well as the rules governing how this particular story will be revealed to the audience. Other considerations include the play’s framework—its division into acts and scenes—and the stage directions that run throughout the script to communicate the writer’s vision of the play to those who will be involved in its production.
GENRE
Theatrical works can be organized into different genres, or categories, that reflect the writer’s point of view about the story being presented. Knowing the genre can help the writer make more informed writing and marketing decisions. Genre can also help producers and audiences find the types of plays they prefer. There are two basic theatrical genres:
Comedy, a humorous story about a normal person in laughable circumstances or a laughable person in normal circumstances who experiences a significant rise in fortune. The story typically moves from unhappiness to happiness. Common characteristics: fast pace, funny situations, exaggeration, incongruity, and matters of rebirth and renewal. Examples: The Odd Couple by Neil Simon, Chinglish by David Henry Hwang, Becky Shaw by Gina Gionfriddo.
Tragedy, a serious story about a good person, usually an important and powerful one, who suffers a significant downfall due to his or her own flaws and missteps. The story typically moves from happiness to unhappiness. Common characteristics: extreme and sometimes dangerous situations, painful emotions, inevitability of failure, catharsis, and a moral lesson. Examples: Hamlet by William Shakespeare, Fences by August Wilson, Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller.
Through the ages, other theatrical genres and subgenres have evolved as blends or subsets of these two basic types of plays. For example, while the term “drama” is used broadly to describe works written for the stage, it is also used more narrowly to indicate a genre of play:
Drama in this sense is neither a comedy nor a tragedy. It is a serious story about one or more characters at a time of flux and crisis in their lives. Common characteristics: intense conflict, strong emotions, and personal themes. Examples: A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry, Buried Child by Sam Shepard, The Night Alive by Conor McPherson.
Other common genres include:
Tragicomedy, as the name suggests, is a mix of sad and funny story elements. It may be a series of tragic events with a happy ending or a series of comedic events with an unhappy ending. Examples: Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekhov, Angels in America by Tony Kushner, Betw
een Riverside and Crazy by Stephen Adly Guirgis.
Farce, a form of comedy, is designed to evoke laughter but relies more on buffoonery, physical humor, and ludicrously improbable situations. Common characteristics: extreme exaggeration, repetition, and two-dimensional characters entangled in frequent and elaborate plot twists. Examples: The Miser by Molière, What the Butler Saw by Joe Orton, Noises Off by Michael Frayn.
Melodrama is a story about good triumphing over evil. The story typically moves from happiness to unhappiness to happiness again. Common characteristics: strong plot, archetypal characters, exaggerated conflict, sensational elements, and a protagonist who is a victim of circumstances. Examples: Desire under the Elms by Eugene O’Neill, The Mousetrap by Agatha Christie, The Bells by Theresa Rebeck.
Issue play is a story organized around a social or political issue and the author’s ideas about how to address it. The purpose is to arouse the audience emotionally, teach them a lesson, and provoke them to take certain new actions in their lives. Examples: Keely and Du by Jane Martin, The Laramie Project by Moises Kaufman, Fires in the Mirror by Anna Deavere Smith.
These genres can be adapted in various ways to create countless other genres and subgenres, such as black comedy, romantic comedy, satire, docudrama, historical drama, courtroom drama, fable, science fiction, fantasy, mystery/thriller, experimental drama, and more.
■ DOUBT: A PARABLE
Genre: Drama
Doubt depicts the efforts of a Catholic elementary school principal to expose and expel a suspected pedophile priest. Because of the serious subject matter, intense conflict, emotional themes, and mixed outcome, the play can be classified as drama.
■ TOPDOG/UNDERDOG
Genre: Tragicomedy
Topdog/Underdog explores the competition between two brothers who have been forced by social isolation and poverty to share a single furnished room. Because it combines humor with a serious theme and unhappy ending, the play can be classified as tragicomedy. According to playwright Parks, “Comedy and tragedy can exist side by side, and can exist in the same moment, which is what this play is all about.”1
■ THE CLEAN HOUSE
Genre: Comedy
The Clean House introduces us to a pair of married doctors who met in anatomy class over a dead body, a Brazilian cleaning woman who would rather be a comedian, a restless housewife who secretly cleans her sister’s house, and an exotic older cancer patient who falls in love with her surgeon. Because of the play’s light approach to serious issues, humorous characters, and uplifting ending, The Clean House can be classified as comedy.
ANALYZING YOUR STORY
Define and explore the genre of a play that you are writing or have already written.
STORY CHARACTERISTICS
• How serious is the subject matter and theme of your story?
• How simple or complex are your characters? For example, do they consistently display the same dominant traits or do they undergo changes and embody contradictions?
• How simple or complex is the plot?
• What primary emotional response do you want from the audience?
• Does the story have a happy ending, unhappy ending, or mixed ending?
• How would you define the genre of your play?
GENRE
• How closely does your play match common characteristics of your genre? If you are writing tragedy, for example, are the characters fleshed out enough for the audience to empathize with their plight? If you are writing comedy, is it funny?
• Think about the type of producer and audience your genre will attract. What expectations might they have? Does your play work toward or against those expectations, and how?
• Think about the desired audience for your play. Do you need to target your characters or story more to this audience? If so, how?
• Are there any “rules” of your genre that you wish to break? If so, how and why?
• In promoting your play to theatre producers or audiences, what elements of your story will you stress to stir their interest? How do these elements fit your genre?
STYLE
Style is the manner in which characters and story events are depicted in both the writing and the staging of a play. Style encompasses all of the play’s elements, including sets, props, costumes, light design, sound design, and acting. There are two basic types of style:
Realistic, or representational, style uses empathetic characters, everyday speech, “slice of life” situations, and emotional themes to create the illusion of real life without acknowledging the audience, as in most plays by Henrik Ibsen, Lynne Nottage, and David Mamet. Writers who favor this approach need to decide how lifelike their plays will be. For example, ’Night, Mother by Marsha Norman closely mirrors the real world by setting the story in one place, a country home, and by letting the dramatic action unfold in real time. As a result, there are no set changes or scene breaks to undercut the illusion of real life in progress. Edmond by David Mamet also strives to imitate real life but does so more selectively. Because the play spans a period of months and unfolds in more than twenty different settings, the storytelling has been compressed and composed to fit a playing time of less than ninety minutes on a single stage.
Nonrealistic, or presentational, style may use archetypal characters, exaggeration, distortion, fragmentation, repetition, symbolism, or other imaginative devices to create an artificial reality that—in its contrast to the real world—illuminates the human condition. Such techniques are often designed to keep the audience emotionally detached enough to remember they are watching a play. Settings may be strange or otherworldly, with lighting and sound designs that enhance the unreal atmosphere. The events of the story also may be unusual and the speech of the characters stylized. Characters may speak directly to the audience. For example, plays by Bertolt Brecht, Eugène Ionesco, and José Rivera tend to be presentational.
Nonrealism can take many forms, such as magic realism, expressionism, surrealism, impressionism, romanticism, postmodernism, verse drama, musical theatre, and more. Writers who favor a presentational approach need to decide how nonrealistic their plays will be. In some cases, an ordinary world gives rise to supernatural, dreamlike, or other fantastic beings or events, as in Caryl Churchill’s Cloud 9, where time shifting and gender bending are routine matters, or Rajiv Joseph’s Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, where Baghdad during the Iraq war is transformed into an unpredictable realm of ghosts. In other cases, objective reality is replaced by a new world, often an absurd one, as in Samuel Beckett’s Endgame, where the last survivors of an apocalypse live out their last days in a bleak shelter at the end of time.
While a play may be fully realistic or nonrealistic, many writers combine elements of the two styles. Arthur Miller, for example, in After the Fall combines the representational—emotional depictions of real-life events—and the presentational—a character who addresses the audience directly and a setting composed of three platforms without walls or conventional furniture except for a chair. Whether a play is realistic, nonrealistic, or a mix of both, it has its own specific style created for it by the writer and reinforced by the theatrical artists who bring their talents to a production.
■ DOUBT: A PARABLE
Style: Realism
The style of Doubt is realistic in that it depicts settings, characters, language, and story events that mirror everyday life. There are no presentational elements.
■ TOPDOG/UNDERDOG
Style: Hyperrealism
The style of Topdog/Underdog is hyperrealism in that it depicts real-life settings, characters, language, and story events, but does so in a heightened manner. While everything that happens could conceivably occur in the natural world, the story features extremely unusual elements, for example, an African-American man named Lincoln whose job is to dress up as Abraham Lincoln and be shot at in an arcade by would-be assassins with phony pistols. References to this job include strange details, such as a “Best Customer” who shows
up regularly and whispers profundities into Honest Abe’s right ear before shooting him on the left. The play also includes presentational elements, such as inner-life monologues that let us hear a character’s thoughts.
■ THE CLEAN HOUSE
Style: Magic realism
Though much of the plot centers on the mundane tasks of housekeeping, The Clean House presents a world where the boundaries of time and space are occasionally blurred so that an apple tossed off a balcony overlooking the sea, for example, can drop down into a white living room far away. It is also a realm in which characters can speak directly to the audience and share visual images from their imaginations, where it may snow in a living room, and where a perfect joke can cause someone literally to die laughing.
Because it weaves fantastic elements into an otherwise ordinary environment, the style of the play is magic realism, which has roots in Latin American fiction. This style choice may explain why two of the play’s characters are from South America and why they sometimes speak in untranslated Portuguese. In keeping with common characteristics of magic realism, the play explores the mysteries of everyday life, but tends to do so in a matter-of-fact way, implying that the magical is normal and does not, therefore, require special attention or explanation.
ANALYZING YOUR STORY
