The Baltimore Waltz

Theatrical Conventions:

• Masks
• Cross-gender (costume/casting)
• Asides
• Soliloquy
• Stillness/silence/pauses
• Use of a narrator (seen in "memory plays" like The Glass Menagerie or Brighton Beach Memoirs
• Synecdoche (part represents the whole)
• Suggested scenery (consider the set in Driving Miss Daisy, for example)
• Costumes & props
• Multiple casting (one actor plays several roles)
• Lights or lighting changes
• Soundscapes/sound effects
• The fourth wall; Breaking the fourth wall (addressing the audience)
• Flash forward, flashback, slow motion, freeze
• Tableau
• Montage
• On-stage deaths; stage fights
• Physical theater; mime
• Unities of time, place, or action
• Transformation of time, character, place, or through props
• Songs
• Choruses
• Heightened language; unrealistic speaking patterns
• Placards, signs, and multimedia

Look for some of these conventions in the following short play: The Play That Goes Wrong.

Paula Vogel's The Baltimore Waltz.

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: Complete The Baltimore Waltz if you did not finish it during class. Complete a play analysis sheet for The Baltimore Waltz. See the links above for details about the play and Paula Vogel.