by Will Dunne
SUBJECT
• What are the most important topics that your dramatic story addresses? List up to ten topics that are discussed by your characters or dramatized through story events.
• What is the main topic, or subject, of the story? Look for a subject that can encompass other topics you listed and sum it up in a word or phrase—for example, “truth.”
• Words may have different meanings and connotations. How would you define your subject within the terms of your story?
• Why is this topic important to you? What is your emotional connection to it?
THEME
• Think about your subject in relation to your characters and story. What does your play demonstrate about this subject? List a few ideas, or themes, and express each one in a sentence that includes the subject word. If the subject is “truth,” for example, a theme might be “The truth shall set you free.”
• What is the main theme of your story? Sum it up in one sentence.
• Why is this theme important to you? What is your emotional connection to it?
• Who in your story most embodies the main theme, and how?
• Think about what happens in your story. What plot elements demonstrate the theme?
• What is the counter-theme of your story?
• Who most embodies the counter-theme, and how?
• What elements of the plot demonstrate the counter-theme?
• When the forces representing the counter-theme are equal to the forces representing the theme, conflict is intense and the end of the story unpredictable. What is the balance of power now between theme and counter-theme? Does either side need to be strengthened to make the balance of power more equal? If so, how might this be done?
• What message does the end of the story convey? Is this the right message for what you want to accomplish? If not, what changes will you make?
• What emotional response do you wish to elicit from the audience at the end of the play?
• Think about the other topics that your play addresses. What are some of the most important secondary themes that run through the script?
• Is there a connection between the main theme and any of these secondary themes? If so, how do these ideas relate?
DIALOGUE
Dialogue is what characters say as they interact with one another to satisfy their needs, address problems, or express ideas and emotions. In theatre today, the term “dialogue” is also loosely used to encompass any text spoken by a character, including monologues (long speeches to another character onstage), soliloquies (long speeches to oneself, the audience, or the universe), and asides (quick comments to the audience). Regardless of the form it takes, dialogue has a twofold purpose: to reveal character and to move the story forward.
Just as each character in a story has a unique manner of expression that arises out of his or her identity and life experience, the world of a story has a distinct voice that reflects the writer who created this world and the characters who inhabit it. This voice may be prosaic or poetic, delicate or coarse, reliable or unreliable. It may speed along in lean lines of dialogue that keep the characters interacting. Or it may move more slowly in monologues and soliloquies that isolate the characters in their words. In a realistic play, dialogue has the form and feel of everyday conversation. In a nonrealistic play, dialogue may be stylized. Either way, it is usually heightened speech driven by character objectives and shaped by conflict.
The language of the characters often includes terms that are indigenous to the culture of the story. In some cases, characters give special meanings to otherwise common terms. For most people, for example, Parnassus is a sacred mountain in ancient Greece. For George in Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?, it’s the house where Martha’s father lives. Characters may also use original terms to communicate with each other. In Warren Leight’s Side Man, “Club 92” is how jazz musicians refer to the 92nd Street unemployment office.
■ DOUBT: A PARABLE
Dialogue
Most of the characters in Doubt are educators in a Catholic school, and their language throughout the play reflects this. Topics center on school business and issues related to specific students and occasionally to other staff. Personal issues are seldom discussed.
Sister Aloysius, Sister James, and Father Flynn all speak standard English and are articulate in doing so, though James’s insecurity sometimes makes it difficult for her to find the right words to express herself. For Aloysius and Flynn, dialogue tends to unfold in complete declarative sentences. Aloysius often speaks in paragraphs to wield her authority and impart her wisdom. James, as a sign of her low status and lack of confidence, is more likely to ask questions and utter single lines or sentence fragments.
The formality of the language is reflected in the way characters address and refer to one another. Each has a title—“Sister,” “Father,” or “Mrs.”—that is always used in conjunction with his or her name. Even when Aloysius and James are discussing the possibility of Flynn committing vile and perverse acts, they still refer to him as “Father” Flynn.
In line with this formality, characters rarely interrupt each other and never use profanity or slang. During the heated confrontation between Aloysius and Flynn near the end, for example, no one interrupts, swears, or curses. This does not stop the characters from forcefully making their thoughts known, whether it’s Aloysius condemning Flynn (“You’re a disgrace to the collar”) or Flynn condemning Aloysius (“You’re insane”).
Mrs. Muller is the only onstage character who does not work at St. Nicholas. Her voice is equally forceful but less formal (“I thought I might a had the wrong day . . .”) and more colloquial (“My boy came to this school ’cause they were gonna kill him at the public school”).
Language rhythms vary throughout the story. Six scenes unfold interactively in dialogue, while three short scenes consist only of monologues by Flynn: two sermons to a congregation and a pep talk to the basketball team.
The general tone of language throughout the story is realistic and down-to-earth. Aside from Aloysius’s description of Flynn as a “wolf” and Flynn’s description of Aloysius as “a block of ice,” figurative speech is seldom used. The closest the dialogue gets to poetry is in Flynn’s sermons—for example, when he tells the parable of a shipwrecked sailor to illustrate the challenge of doubt and when he uses the metaphor of feathers scattered in the wind to make a comment about gossip. Otherwise this is a world where characters speak simply and directly, and say what they have to say.
Indigenous terms
• Altar wine. Wine blessed and used by a priest during the celebration of Mass. This is the wine that James may have smelled on Donald Muller’s breath after his visit to the rectory.
• Mental reservation. A principle of Catholic doctrine that allows one to make a misleading statement without technically telling a lie because the statement has another, unexpressed meaning that is true. In scene 8, when Flynn denies that he gave wine to Donald Muller, Aloysius accuses the priest of mental reservation, suggesting that he interpreted the words to suit his needs. If he didn’t physically place the bottle in Donald’s hand, for example, he could mean that he didn’t “give” it to him, even if he had made the alcohol available to the boy.
• Monsignor. A senior position in the Roman Catholic Church, usually conferred by a pope. In the chain of command, Monsignor Benedict is Aloysius’s only recourse for reporting problems.
• Rectory. The residence of a parish priest. If Flynn’s alleged abuse of Donald actually occurred, this is the scene of the crime.
• Sacristy. A room in a church where a priest prepares for Mass and where liturgical vestments and other items used in worship, such as altar wine, are kept. Flynn claims that the caretaker, Mr. McGinn, found Donald drinking altar wine here.
• Second Ecumenical Council. Established by Pope John XXIII in 1962 and known as the Second Vatican Council, or Vatican II, the council redefined the role o
f the Catholic Church in modern society, eliminating the Latin Mass and increasing lay participation in the Church. Flynn embraces the council’s message, while Aloysius dismisses it.
• Vows. The solemn pledge to enter a religious order and live a life of poverty, chastity, and obedience in accordance with Church dictates.
■ TOPDOG/UNDERDOG
Dialogue
As a result of parental abandonment, Lincoln and Booth in their teens were exposed to life on the street and drawn into a world of crime. Their language reflects this history. Topics center on illegal exploits, worldly pleasures, and, most importantly, their parents and the past.
Both brothers speak in an African-American vernacular with vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation that differs in many ways from standard English. Slang terms, double negatives, dropped initial and final consonants, and the use of nonstandard words such as “ain’t” are common. Sentence construction and verb usage is systematically dissimilar to standard English. Parks often uses phonetic spelling to suggest the dialect being spoken: “the,” for example, becomes “thuh,” and “your” becomes “yr.” Punctuation is streamlined, with commas and apostrophes omitted.
The speech of both brothers is robust, colorful, and laced with profanity, but each has his own voice. Booth’s gritty language soars with poetry, as when he describes the power of Grace’s allure: “She walks on by and the emergency room fills up cause all the guys get whiplash from lookin at her.” Another example of his lyricism can be found in his description of how much Grace loves him now: “She wants me back so bad she wiped her hand over the past where we wasnt together just so she could say we aint never been apart.”
Lincoln’s speech tends to be more matter of fact and analytical, as when he offers advice to Booth, who has decided to change his name: “You gonna call yrself something african? That be cool. Only pick something thats easy to spell and pronounce, man, cause you know, some of them african names, I mean, ok, Im down with the power to the people thing, but no ones gonna hire you if they cant say yr name.”
Language rhythms suggest a stream-of-consciousness flow of ideas, a product perhaps of the playwright’s fast writing of the script. Monologues and soliloquies occur regularly throughout the text—scene 4 is nothing but soliloquy—and often contain images of the past or offstage world. In scene 3, for example, as Lincoln describes his job at the arcade, he creates a vivid image of a metal fuse box on the wall where he sits in his Abraham Lincoln outfit and waits for customers with toy guns to enter from behind: “Its got uh dent in it like somebody hit it with they fist. Big old dent so everything reflected in it gets reflected upside down. Like yr looking in uh spoon. And thats where I can see em. The assassins.”
A recurring element in the dialogue is the three-card monte patter that Booth tries to learn and Lincoln tries at first to resist. By scene 6, when the brothers face off over the cards, Lincoln has recaptured his mastery of the spiel: “Lean close and watch me now: who see thuh black card who see thuh black card I see thuh black card black cards the winner pick the black card thats thuh winner . . .” As the patter continues, its repetitive and hypnotic rhythm explains how the dealer can distract customers from tracking the money card among the three cards being shuffled before them. The lack of punctuation in the script adds to the hypnotic effect of the spiel.
The general tone of the dialogue throughout the play is emotional and intensely personal. These are characters who speak from their souls, even when they are trying to hide their true feelings from each other.
Indigenous terms
• Boosting. Stealing. This is Booth’s primary means of acquiring merchandise.
• Dealer. The one in a three-card monte operation who controls the cards and plays the game directly with customers. Lincoln is a master dealer.
• Lookout. The member of a three-card monte crew who watches for the cops while the dealer plays the game on the street with passersby.
• Mark. A sucker who is easily cheated out of his or her money. Any customer in a three-card monte game is a mark.
• Med-sin. Whiskey. Like medicine, it is often a cure for what ails Lincoln and Booth.
• Sideman. A three-card monte shill who pretends to be winning the game in order to encourage passersby to play.
• Skrimps. A shrimp dish from the local Chinese takeout place.
• Stickman. A three-card monte dealer’s partner who poses as a passerby and gets others to play the game. A stickman is similar to a sideman but knows the game inside out.
• Three-card monte. A shell game in which a player watches the dealer shuffle three cards face down and has to pick a certain card to win. Thanks to sleight of hand and a mesmerizing patter, the outcome of the game is always under the control of the dealer, who sometimes lets the customer win at first in order to encourage larger bets.
• Three-card monte setup. Three playing cards on a cardboard board atop two milk crates, one stacked on top of the other. The setup is designed so that it can appear quickly on the street and disappear even more quickly if the cops are approaching.
• Throwing the cards. Dealing three-card monte.
■ THE CLEAN HOUSE
Dialogue
The cast includes two doctors, a cleaning woman, a housewife, and a cancer patient. The diversity of their needs is reflected in the topics they discuss, from housecleaning to joke telling to death. With Ruhl coming to playwriting from a poetry background, it is not surprising that her approach to such subjects tends to be lyrical.
As in poetry, big ideas are often communicated with few words. In act one, scene 2, Lane’s sense of self-importance and class privilege is established in a single line: “I’m sorry, but I did not go to medical school to clean my own house.” In addition, the speech of the characters is frequently heightened by poetic comparisons, as in act two, scene 6, when Matilde uses a metaphor to describe humor: “The perfect joke is the perfect music. You want to hear it only once in your life, and then, never again.”
While the play is contemporary, the language has at times a formality that echoes an earlier era. Modern slang is almost entirely absent, and profanity is rare. The dialogue in interactive scenes tends to be lean, but the play also includes a number of monologues, which account for more than a quarter of the play’s scenes and isolate the characters in their words.
The dramatic journeys of the characters are often revealed by their speech. For example, Lane, in act one, approaches the world in a controlling and methodical manner that is reflected in terse language, such as “The house is very dirty.” In act two, however, as life gets messy, her voice takes on a more emotional quality, as in act two, scene 9, when she attempts to acknowledge that she cannot compete with Ana for Charles’s love: “You—glow—with some kind of—thing—I can’t acquire that—this thing—sort of glows off you—like a veil—in reverse—you’re like anyone’s soul mate . . .”
Matilde and Ana, both from South America, speak English as a second language and occasionally address each other in Portuguese, which separates them from the others and fuels the intimacy between them. From a storytelling perspective, Matilde’s name becomes a simple tool to advance the story. While Matilde uses the Brazilian pronunciation “Ma-chil-gee,” for example, Lane uses the American pronunciation “Matilda,” a distinction that highlights their cultural differences.
As a housewife, Virginia is most likely to use household references to express herself, as in act one, scene 10, when she describes married life to Matilde: “My husband is like a well-placed couch. He takes up the right amount of space.” Charles, on the other hand, speaks with a voice that reflects his medical background, as in act two, scene 5, when he tries to convince Lane of his love for Ana: “It’s as though I suddenly tested positive for a genetic disease that I’ve had all along, Ana has been in my genetic code.”
Indigenous terms
• Bashert. A traditional Yiddish term for a soul mate. Though Charles is not Jewish, he uses this term to d
escribe Ana and to justify his decision to leave Lane.
• Biopsy. Removal of sample tissue from the body to test for disease.
• Bone marrow. The soft tissue inside large bones where new blood cells are produced.
• Bryn Mawr. An exclusive college for women in Philadelphia. This is where Virginia went to school, studied Greek literature, and dreamed of being a scholar.
• Chemotherapy. A treatment for cancer in which chemicals are used to kill cancer cells.
• Lumpectomy. Surgical procedure to remove a tumor in a breast.
• Machu Picchu. An ancient Incan fortress city in the Andes mountains in Peru. Charles imagines visiting exotic places like this in order to “live life to the fullest.”
• Mastectomy. Surgical procedure to remove a breast as a treatment for breast cancer.
• Microtubules. Microscopic tube-shaped structures found in the cytoplasm of cells.
• Radiation. Anticancer treatment in which high-energy rays are used to destroy cancer cells.
• Taxol. Commercial brand name for an anticancer drug made from yew trees.
• Yew tree. A fir tree. The bark of the Pacific yew contains a chemical called paclitaxel, which stops the growth of certain cancer cells and can be used in chemotherapy to fight cancer. Matilde, who speaks English as a second language, at first interprets “yew tree” as “you tree” and thinks that Charles is planning to invent a “you medicine.”
ANALYZING YOUR STORY
Besides evaluating dialogue line by line during revision, you may gain new insights by looking at the overall language of the script to see how it contributes to the experience of the story.
DIALOGUE
• How would you describe the style of dialogue in your script? Is it primarily prosaic? Poetic? Formal? Informal? Technical? Contemporary? Historical?
