by Will Dunne
Lane
Good life. When we meet Lane, she has a successful medical career, attractive spouse, and clean house. All we learn about her past, however, are a few details about her relationship with Charles. In act one, seven 12, she tries to rationalize why he has not telephoned to say he will be home late. She recalls their lives as young doctors who often worked long days and used special pager signals to say goodnight. Though trifling, this is one of her most personal memories about her marriage. Another occurs with Ana in act two, scene 10, when we learn how Lane and Charles met: in an anatomy class over a dead body. It is an ironic image for Lane to conjure up in her now lifeless marriage.
In act two, scene 9, as Lane and Virginia fight, we gain an important insight from Virginia about her sister’s approach to life’s challenges: “Since the day you were born, you thought that anyone with a problem had a defect of the will.” It is a succinct analysis of one who in her quest for success has failed to learn the value of compassion, a shortcoming that has contributed to the emptiness of Lane’s relationships with her husband and sister.
Matilde
History of laughter. The funniest man in his Brazilian village, Matilde’s father did not marry until he was sixty-three because he wanted a wife who was as funny as him. Her mother also waited to marry because she couldn’t stand the thought of laughing at jokes that weren’t funny.
Once they found each other, her parents lived a life filled with laughter. Then one day, on their wedding anniversary, after hearing a special joke that her husband had thought up for her, Matilde’s mother literally died laughing, perhaps choking on her own spit. Her father subsequently shot himself. Matilde reveals this backstory because she wants us to know why she came to the United States in search of a new life and why she wants to be a comedian.
Virginia
Bad life. In act one, scene 7, while getting to know her sister’s new housekeeper, Virginia confesses that her life has gone downhill since the age of twenty-two because she did not do what she wanted. For example, she did not follow her dream of becoming a scholar. She reveals this and other facts about her life as part of a strategy to convince Matilde to let her secretly clean Lane’s house and divert herself from the void in which she now finds herself. She recalls a summer trip to Europe with her husband when she was still studying Greek literature: “We were going to see ruins and I was going to write about ruins but I found that I had nothing to say about them. I thought: why doesn’t someone just sweep them up!”
Ana
Wild husband. One of the few facts we learn about Ana’s past is that she was married many years ago to a wild, alcoholic geologist who died of cancer at the age of thirty-one after finally giving up drinking at her request (act two, scene 5). Her reason for revealing this is to show that she is not accustomed to falling in love with married men and that her relationship with Charles was both unexpected and exceptional.
Charles
Good life. Like Lane, Charles appears to have enjoyed a good life that yielded a successful medical career, attractive spouse, and clean house. We learn nothing about this past except that he fell in love with Lane when they were twenty-two and remained faithful to her until he met Ana. This abbreviated backstory is revealed in act two, scene 3, when he introduces himself to the audience in an effort to say that he is a good man who simply became overwhelmed by love.
ANALYZING YOUR STORY
Think about how the past affects the present.
FOR EACH PRINCIPAL CHARACTER . . .
• What key facts from the character’s recent or distant past are revealed during the story?
• Is it necessary to reveal all of these backstory facts? If not, which can be cut?
• Do any important facts from the past need to be added, and, if so, what?
• Which facts from the character’s past are most important, and why?
FOR EACH KEY FACT FROM THE PAST . . .
• Who reveals this fact to whom, and what is the character’s reason for doing so?
• How has this experience affected the character physically? Psychologically? Socially?
• Are there any details about this fact that can be cut? Any that need to be added?
• Think about how the fact is revealed. Is there an opportunity to use a visual image, object, physical element, or action to reduce the need for words of explanation?
• Characters sometimes make mistakes, suffer delusions, or tell lies. How accurate is the revelation of this fact? If it is inaccurate, why has the truth been obscured, either by the character or by you, the writer?
• What is the dramatic purpose for having this fact revealed?
• How would the story be different if this fact were not revealed?
Steps of the Journey
Story is the series of events that occurs when a character pursues an important goal that is difficult to achieve. The pursuit of this goal is a dramatic journey that begins at a turning point in the character’s life and advances, step by step, through untried and often unexpected territory until a final destination is reached. With each new step, the character typically encounters greater obstacles and either succeeds or fails to overcome them. It is in the process of dealing with these obstacles that the character is revealed and, in most cases, changed.
POINT OF ATTACK
A play is the part of a dramatic story that the audience sees and hears onstage. While the story can include any number of characters, settings, and events over any period of time, the play presents a limited selection of these elements so that it is feasible for a theatre company to stage it and for an audience to watch it in one sitting. The dramatic writer has the task, therefore, of deciding which story elements to include in the script.
During this process, the writer faces the question of when to start the play in relation to the story. For life to be in progress when the curtain goes up, the play cannot start until the story is already under way. For example, the story of Rabbit Hole by David Lindsay-Abaire begins when a four-year-old boy is killed in an automobile accident outside of his home. The play does not begin, however, until eight months later, when his mother has reached the point in her healing process that she can let go of her son’s things and donate them to Goodwill. As the play begins, she is in the kitchen folding and sorting the boy’s laundry while she visits with her sister. It is not until later that we will discover the significance of the neat piles of clothes on the kitchen table.
The moment the play begins is sometimes called the “point of attack.” It may occur early in the story so that most important events take place onstage, as in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, which begins just before the title character’s thirst for power is aroused by a trio of witches. Or the point of attack may occur late in the story, with certain critical events having already happened before scene 1, as in Tracy Letts’s August: Osage County, which begins decades after a family’s web of betrayal and secrecy was first spun.
Deciding when to set the point of attack is a critical step in the storytelling process. In plays with an early point of attack, little of the past, or backstory, needs to be explained, since it is not relevant to the dramatic journey. In plays with a late point of attack, the critical events of the past must be revealed so that we know what happened. A play with a late point of attack relies more on exposition, that is, information about the offstage world.
Regardless of when the point of attack occurs, it is surrounded by a set of given circumstances that influence how it happens. Ideally, the play begins when something important is going on in the world of the story. At least one character wants something, is dealing with a problem, and has something at stake. Yet the conflict is not so intense that it repels the audience before they have time to get to know the characters and become emotionally invested in them.
■ DOUBT: A PARABLE
Point of attack: A sermon
The point of attack is the moment Father Flynn begins to deliver a sermon in St. Nicholas church on the subj
ect of doubt. We hear the sermon from beginning to end and imagine the congregation to whom it is being delivered. In the next scene, we will learn that the offstage listeners include Sister Aloysius, who is disturbed by Flynn’s descriptions of feeling confused and lost. Why would a priest dwell on such dark subjects?
This point of attack occurs early in the story of Aloysius’s campaign against Flynn. That story began two months before, on the first day of school, when she saw something that bothered her: the priest reaching out to touch a boy’s wrist and the boy pulling away. Though there was nothing more to it, the incident aroused in Aloysius a mistrust of Flynn. The sermon now reminds her of what she saw that day and prompts her to take steps to learn more about the priest. Because it triggers Aloysius’s campaign against Flynn, the sermon is not only the point of attack for the play but also the inciting event that launches her dramatic journey.
Immediate given circumstances
At the moment he begins his sermon on doubt, Flynn has been at St. Nicholas for about a year. The exact time period is not specified, but we later learn that this is his third parish in five years. In addition to his priestly duties, he is the school’s gym instructor and a popular figure among the students. His relationship with the school principal, however, is tentative for reasons that he does not understand.
We will learn later that his ideas for sermons grow out of his daily life and are recorded in a little black book that he carries with him. The circumstances surrounding his idea for a sermon on doubt are never disclosed. Is this the advice of a compassionate priest with a troubled parishioner? Or is it an expression of guilt from a man who preys on children? Such unanswered questions foster the doubt that is central to the story.
■ TOPDOG/UNDERDOG
Point of attack: An imaginary shell game
The play begins with Booth practicing to be a three-card monte dealer. He is alone in his rooming-house room playing against an imaginary mark. Booth’s moves and patter are “studied and awkward.” He is clearly a novice.
This point of attack occurs late in the story of two brothers who were abandoned as teenagers by their parents and as adults by the women in their lives. The brothers now live together in a barely furnished room without running water, a private bathroom, or a working phone. Because so many relevant events have preceded this point of attack, the past will play a frequent and important role in the present tense of the story. The script will rely heavily on exposition to fill in the blanks.
Immediate given circumstances
Booth has scored a date for tomorrow night with his beautiful ex-girlfriend Grace. In celebration of his victory, he presented her today with a stolen ring that is slightly smaller than her actual ring size, so that she cannot easily remove it.
Believing that his earlier failure with Grace was due to a lack of funds, Booth has devised a scheme to get rich quick. He will become a three-card monte dealer like his brother once was and rake in so much money that Grace will come crawling back to him. As a first step, he has gathered the tools necessary for the shell game—three playing cards, a cardboard board, and two milk crates—and set them up in his room so he can practice.
Lincoln, his brother and roommate, is currently coming up the street in full Abraham Lincoln regalia, the outfit he wears for his job as a human target in a shooting gallery. Having conned a rich kid out of twenty dollars on the bus ride home from work, Lincoln stopped at a Chinese takeout place to pick up tonight’s dinner. He also stopped at the local bar, Lucky’s, to blow the rest of his loot on drinks with his buddies. Lincoln is now inebriated.
■ THE CLEAN HOUSE
Point of attack: An untranslated joke
The Clean House begins with a woman in black telling the audience a dirty joke in Portuguese. This point of attack introduces Matilde, one of the three protagonists, and sets the tone for comedy. Since the play is written for an English-speaking audience, the untranslated joke also lets us know that we are in store for unusual events, such as more jokes in Portuguese and characters who speak directly to the audience as if there were no “fourth wall” between them.
The point of attack occurs early in the story of Matilde’s career as a cleaning woman who enters the lives of Lane and Virginia. Most of the key events of this story, therefore, take place during the here and now of the play with a minimal need to reveal events of the past. The main exception is Matilde’s need to recall her parents in Brazil through dialogue and through living imagery that depicts what she envisions in her mind.
By introducing Matilde in the context of joke telling, the play establishes her not as a disgruntled cleaning woman but as a skillful comedian. This first impression will color our view of her struggle to escape her housekeeping duties and use the time instead to think up jokes. We are more likely to sympathize with her plight if we see her as a comedian trapped in the wrong job.
The untranslated joke that begins the play also ties to Matilde’s vision at the end of the play of heaven as “a sea of untranslatable jokes. / Only everyone is laughing.” The ending thus includes an echo of this beginning and the unexplained mystery it evokes.
Immediate given circumstances
The stage directions do not specify where or when Matilde tells the opening joke. The fact that she is dressed in black suggests only that it is after the death of her parents and that she is in mourning. Her use of Portuguese shows how closely she associates humor with her life in Brazil. We will find out later that Matilde once saw herself as the third funniest person in her family and that, when her parents died, she became “the first funniest,” a burden that she could not bear and that motivated her move to the United States to start life anew.
ANALYZING YOUR STORY
Explore how the onstage action of your play begins.
POINT OF ATTACK
• Where and when in the story does the play start? Who is here now? If two or more characters are present, what is their relationship?
• Are there any important physical circumstances—environmental or personal—that affect the point of attack? If so, what are they?
• What psychological circumstances contribute to how the play begins?
• What social, economic, or political circumstances contribute to this beginning?
• What is the opening image of the play?
• Why is this point of attack the best moment to start the play?
• Think about what’s happening in the opening scene. Who wants what from whom? What is the problem? What’s at stake?
IMPACT ON AUDIENCE
• What emotional response might the point of attack produce in the audience?
• What questions or expectations might it trigger?
• Is enough happening at the point of attack to engage the audience? If not, you may have raised the curtain too soon. Is there a later time in the story that would work better?
• Is so much happening at the point of attack that the audience may not want to get involved? If so, you may have raised the curtain too late. Is there an earlier time in the story that would give the audience a better chance to get to know the characters before their lives erupt into crisis?
• Ideally, the play will immediately grab the audience’s attention. How interesting is the point of attack now? Do you see any way to increase its grabbing power?
INCITING EVENT AND QUEST
Every story is a quest. It centers on a character who is after something important and faces obstacles that will make it difficult to attain. The quest is triggered by an experience that somehow upsets the balance of the character’s life. It may be a turn for the better—an insecure writing student becomes the protégée of a famous author (Collected Stories by Donald Margulies)—or it may be a turn for the worse—a merchant in dire need of money discovers that a wealthy widow will not pay the debt her deceased husband owed him (The Bear by Anton Chekhov). Whether positive or negative, large or small, this turning point typically grows out of the backstory and stirs something new i
n the character: a burning desire to restore the balance that has been upset.
The experience that sets the quest in motion is sometimes called the “inciting event.” It may be something that the character does or something that happens to the character. Whether it takes the form of a decision, discovery, action, or external development, the inciting event is often the first important thing that happens in the story. It tends to have the most power dramatically when it occurs onstage during the play rather than offstage before it begins.
The quest translates technically into an all-important overriding goal, or superobjective, that is triggered by the inciting event and drives the story. In Collected Stories, for example, as a result of her new relationship with an established author, an insecure writing student sets out to become a successful author herself. In The Bear, after his polite attempt to collect a debt fails, a desperate merchant decides to do everything possible to get his money from the debtor’s widow.
Once the character’s superobjective is aroused, it typically remains in place until one of two things happens: the character achieves the goal or fails to achieve it. Either way, the story is over.
