Playwriting MP1 Test; 3-Person Play Draft; The Baltimore Waltz

Lab:

After completing the MP test, please continue working on your 3-person play drafts. These drafts (and all missing work or revisions) must be completed by Thursday, Nov. 9.

Start moving toward an ending moment/scene for your play draft. Consider some of the following tips:

• Make the obstacles tougher and tougher. Be sure the setbacks your protagonist has to deal with are not easy and that they get tougher as the story progresses.
• Create a cause and effect structure. Each moment and scene should lead to the next. (Although they happen in life, random events and particularly convenient coincidences aren’t dramatically satisfying in plays.)
• Create a climactic moment that brings together your protagonist and antagonist in one final showdown. The entire play builds toward this moment when the protagonist meets his fate and the story line, if not the play, is concluded.
• Come to the earned conclusion. The conclusion should be justified by the events that came before. An earned conclusion is a relevant and plausible ending that’s appropriate to the story you’re telling.
• Avoid cheat endings. The deus ex machina ending involves a person or thing that appears suddenly and out of nowhere to provide a contrived and convenient solution to the problem of the play. Audiences don’t like this “cheat.” They expect the protagonist to find (or not find) her own way out of the situation.
• Tie up loose ends in the resolution. The resolution, which comes just before the curtain falls, provides the opportunity for the audience to see the landscape in the world of the play after the climactic storm, big or small. This is where you should tie up any unresolved strands of the story.
• Leave your audience with an interesting stage picture. The last image of the play should be interesting or startling, burning its memory into the mind of the audience.

Classroom, Period 2:

Paula Vogel on The Baltimore Waltz. For a full master class discussion on playwriting by Paula Vogel, check out the Dramatist Guild's video. (120 minutes...)

Plot forms:

• Linear: plot is told from a beginning point to an ending point. The most common type of narrative.
• Shakespearean/Epic form: episodic scenes that culminate in the traditional plot structure...
• Circle: beginnings become endings, that become beginnings that are endings...
• Pattern: a repeating pattern is formed to frame the narrative...
• Generic synthetic form: text is comprised of a variety of hypotexts (texts that come before) that function as models or a structure for the new text...(so Star Wars was a hypotext for Family Guy's Blue Harvest, for example; The Odyssey was a hypotext for James Joyce's Ulysses, etc.) 

Paula's advice: Steal. Pay homage. Read as much as you can. Write away from the subject you most want to write about but can't.

Scenes from the play: The Baltimore Waltz
The film noir film: The Third Man (1960), The Ferris Wheel Scene from The Third Man (1960)

HOMEWORK: None. Please prepare and turn in any missing work or revisions Thursday. Your 3-person play scripts will be due Thursday as well. Please bring back your Baltimore Waltz scripts.