Discussions, Readings, & Exercises

Aug. 27

Readings Due Before Class:
--Purchase Naked Playwriting ASAP (as in yesterday)!
--The first play we will read is Six Degrees of Separation (a fascinating realism-oriented play that uses meta-theatrical techniques)

Assignments due before class:
1. 

Lee's Additional Lecture Notes:
1. Play writing format: http://www.vcu.edu/artweb/playwriting/format.html. 

Sept 1

Pitching Your Play--Is It "Half-Baked"?
Readings Due Before Class:
--Naked Playwriting forward, ch. 1
--Handout (on-line): Lee's Lectures/Reactions to NP ch. 1
--Handout: a few sample pitches
--Be reading Six Degrees of Separation (this should only take you 3-4 hours or less to read; it includes Author's Preface and Production Notes; also take a look at the set design on the last page).

Assignments due before class:
1. Two play pitches (or pitch 1 & 2, but read NP ch. 1 first; we started making comments in class on the student sample pitch dealing with scope--space, time, plot--plausability, sympathy for characters, conflict/tension, and overall theme--the LARGER meaning of it all; Naked Playwriting does a great job of critiquing 12 pitches; see my notes about these general criteria).

Lee's Additional Lecture Notes:
1. Playwriting Vocabulary (in progress)
2. Prose/fiction vocabulary to know.
3. Where did your pitches come from? "Germinal Ideas" p. 1
2. Freytag's triangle, in media res, and elements.
4. Making writerly reactions.
6. A few sample reading reactions.
3. More on Texts of Bliss, and Jouissance and Edge

A Pitch Workshop
Readings Due Before Class:
--Handout: Outside Play Reaction Assignment (you should attend 3 plays, or movies, preferably at the Sundance Festival coming up)
--On-line: Read Act 1 of A Doll's House
--Be reading Six Degrees of Separation

Lee's Additional Lecture Notes:
1. Henrik Ibsen's "realism" and A Doll's House
2. A Doll's House from 1959; The opening scene of A Doll's House from 1973...around the burgoning women's movement);
3. Anton Chekhov the Hyper-Realist (or is he a modernist?); Tolstoy hated his plays; Read/See Checkhov's plays here: The Seagull (text); The Seagull--a scene from Act III; The Seagull on another stage (a play within a play? meta?)

and Daily Writing
Readings Due Before Class:
--Naked Playwriting ch. 2
--On-line: Act 2 of A Doll's House
-- Finish Six Degrees of Separation
--Handout: Lee's Lecture/Reactions to NP ch. 2

Assignments due before class:
1. Daily Writing/Journal/Playbook (what shall we call it?): Guare tells us to write down everything in the hope that we will eventually see "patterns of truth" (see intro. to Six Degrees)
2. In Blackboard Vista read and give helpful feedback on your peer's pitches based on some of the ideas from Ch. 1 (see my list of pitch advice from NP) .

Lee's Additional Lecture Notes:
1. Reading of and discussion of Six Degrees; play-on-the-page vs. movie
2. More 1959 A Doll's House (Act 2; foreshadowing; character flesh; themes)
2. A quick lecture on linguistics and why you are dead (Re-presentation vs. creation)
11. More arguments against Subjective Reader Response--when you use your identity laundry list to judge a text or make meaning with a text, you run into the problem of dismissing it, or liking it, because you can, or can't relate...
3. Alienation, Epics, and Bertolt Brecht ; the dada art movement (and absurdity; and the meta questioning of what art should be--see Duchamp's "Fountain" etc.)
4. Absurdists like Samuel Beckett
5.Quick intro to Barthes' Texts of Bliss vs. Text of Pleasure; G. Stein's Tender Buttons as Text of Bliss.1

Sep. 15

"Schools" of Playwriting, Structure and the restorative 3 act play
Readings Due Before Class:
--Bring Guare's Six Degrees of Separation (...
--On-line: Act 3 of A Doll's House (there is a DVD in the library too)
--Before RR2, Watch Six Degrees--there is a copy on reserve in the Library.
--Be drafting a 10 minute play from one of your pitches...

Assignments due before class:
1. Reading Reaction #1: do a 600 word, double-spaced writerly reaction to something thought provoking from Naked Playwriting (try to focus on things you are learning in terms of writing).

Lee's Lecture Notes:
1. High Concept vs. Low Concept works
2.   The personal is political (Carol Hanisch, 1969)
8. Barthes: the third term and the idea of a continuum of bliss...p. 55--laughter and subtle subversion (a little bit of representation)
7. Absurdist Works—God is dead; there is no such thing as tragedy…the ideal (Ideal) is a lie (vs. traditional comedy/tragedy plot lines)

Sep. 17

Structure Part 1 - Plot vs. Character-Based works
Readings Due Before Class:
--Naked Playwriting ch. 3
--Chekhov's Uncle Vanya Act 1 and 2 (or go watch it in the library)
--Handout: Lee's Lecture/Reactions to NP ch. 3
--Be drafting a 10 minute play from one of your pitches...

Lee's Lecture Notes:
1. High vs. low concepts (action vs. character); foreground vs. background
2. Arthur Miller on structure: "The structure of a play is always the story of how the birds came home to roost."
4. Joseph Campbell's Monomyth structure (; a summary of the monomyth of the hero; All Sci-Fi movies follow the hero monomyth; 
5. Northrop Frye's 4 Mythoi structures (are they still valid for texts of bliss or more contemporary literatures?)
6. Realism as construct (the desire for "authenticity" combined with the fantasy of epiphany and problem solving)
7. Lee's -ism lecture...
8. A Doll's House penultimate scene; ending

Sep. 22

Character, Student Samples, and yet Another Freytag's Triangle
Readings Due Before Class:
--Naked Playwriting ch. 5, & Appendix B
--Chekhov's Uncle Vanya Act 3 (or go see it in the library)
--Handout: Lee thinks about possible screewriting structures
--Handout: Lee's Lecture Notes on Character
--Be drafting a 10 minute play from one of your pitches...

Assignments due before class:
1. An extended "Freytag's Triangle" grid (see NP ch. 3 p. 75, and/or my ch. 3 notes) for A Doll's House --in other words, fill in the "event" grid with what you think most corresponds to the events/moments in A Doll's House as well as you can remember it.  Try to also compare the written text to the some of the scenes on YouTube if you notice any key structural differences.  See my grid notes on Six Degrees for more ideas (and questions that might help you fill in your own grid).

Lee's Lecture Notes:
9. Uncle Vanya--Serebreyokov
10. Waiting for Godot 1; a stage scene
1. The 10 minute play should be about 10 pages of play script long; have only one main event or epiphany or change that happens to only one or two characters; usually one scene or less (a few French scenes; very little props, and a very simple set
2. set up Twilight...based on interviews with people who were involved with or close to the 1992 LA race riots after Rodney King's police beaters were acquitted.
3. Watch Tomlin's monologues in Search for Intelligent Life
4. Unkle Vanya--lines that zing: "his liver bursting with jealousy"; ASTROFF. Is she faithful to him? VOITSKI. Yes, unfortunately she is; .perhaps you will be so good as to
notice that I dine with you every day; A fine day to hang oneself.; Because men are too lazy
and stupid to stoop down and pick up their fuel from the ground; the doctor was right, you
are all possessed by a devil of destruction; you have no mercy on
the woods or the birds or on women or on one another.;

Lee's Lecture Notes:
1. Deveare Smith interview, and a snippet of Mrs. Young-Soon Han from Twilight; 4 American Characters (including Han);
2. inhabiting the Other--Smith doing a rodeo rider "Toughness"

More Dialogue, and the 10 minute play
Readings Due Before Class:
--Be reading Twilight Los Angeles (and bring it to class)

Assignments due before class:
1.Make comments on peer character sketches in Blackboard
2. Marie and Jake, and who else will bring 14 copies of their play for workshop?

Lee's Lecture Notes:
1. Unkle Vanya and dialogue and "realism"
2. scenes from Twilight (PBS)
1. Karl Jung on the Shadow part of character: "Unfortunately there can be no doubt that man is, on the whole, less good than he imagines himself or wants to be. Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual's conscious life, the blacker and denser it is."
1.More dialogue mimesis--avoiding plot progression, setting details, motivation explanations, backstory, total focus on the drama at hand ("But Henri, I've loved you since we were black children selling our bodies on the streets of Paris in 1983!"); soap opera as postmodern excess (vs. realism)

 

Oct. 6

Monologues and Workshopping
Readings Due Before Class:
--Finish Twilight Los Angeles
--Read and write comments on peer plays
--Handout: Playwriting Vocabulary sheet (can help you use more technical terms to focus your peer comments).

Assignments due before class:
1. Brian, Joe B., Joe F., Travis who else will bring 14 copies of their play for workshop?

Lee's Lecture Notes:
1. Prose/fiction vocabulary to know.
2. "Garbage" from Sex, Lies, and Video Tape (and character neuroses)
3. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf (or Elizabeth Taylor and character nuances)

Workshopping
Readings Due Before Class:

Assignments due before class:
1. Whitney, Allison, Megan, and who else will bring drafts?
2. Make intelligent comments on peer plays (pacing, character uniqueness, plausability,

Oct. 13

Workshopping
Readings Due Before Class:
--

Assignments due before class:
1. Heidi, ?? will bring drafts?
2. Make intelligent comments on peer plays (pacing, character uniqueness, plausability etc.
3. Reading Reaction 3 to Twilight: Los Angeles (600 words) emailed or physically turned in (what do you learn about dialogue, about character, about pacing? and do tell me which version you read). Post these to Blackboard so we can have a conversation (make replies).

Quotes on Playwriting--Arthur Miller

Workshopping
Readings Due Before Class:
--Megan and Heidi

Assignments due before class:
1. Jeff and Tyler? Sarah??? and who else will bring drafts?
2. Make intelligent comments on peer plays (pacing, character uniqueness, plausability etc.

Oct. 27

Workshopping
Readings Due Before Class:
--Read and comment on Jeff and Sarah's play drafts (Be sure to open and print Sarah's from Blackboard Discussions)
--Naked Playwriting ch. 9
--Handout: Workshop Guide
--Be reading Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

Assignments due before class:
1. Tyler?? will bring 14 copies of a play (and upload it to Blackboard).
2. Make workshop comments on your peers' drafts
3. Journal: 30 minutes of eavesdropping--listen in on conversations, take notes on what and how they speak, but you should also write down descriptions of things that seem significant.

Lee's Lecture Notes:
1. 6. Dialogue parody
7. New York Eavesdroppings
2 see the writing options on the syllabus for more information on what the writing options you can choose from this semester
1. Watch interviews with Anna Deavere Smith (trying to find the American Iamb)
2. Slug Lines in screenplays
1. Arthur Miller: "Well, all the plays that I was trying to write were plays that would grab an audience by the throat and not release them, rather than presenting an emotion which you could observe and walk away from."
suggested: The IT Crowd

Workshop Comments on Sample Drafts
Readings Due Before Class:
--Online: Mel Gibson's Hamlet (part 1; part 2; part 3; part 4; part 5; part 6; part 7; part 8 (the players); part 9 (revenge?); part 10; part 11; part 12; part 13; part 14; this synopsis may also be useful. The library has Laurence Olivier's brilliant Hamlet PR2807.A2 O45 )
--Be reading Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

Assignments due before class:
1. A very short monologue from one of the "characters" you eavesdropped on last time (or a new character from new eavesdropping)...force yourself to empathize! If you need to see a monologue first, try August Strindberg's The Stronger

Lee's Lecture Notes:
1. Arthur Miller: "I'm the end of the line; absurd and appalling as it may seem, serious New York theater has died in my lifetime."  That's spelled E-G-O-T-I-S-M, but what do you think he's lamenting?
3. Blind Dates...and Christopher Durang's Beyond Therapy; another Beyond Therapy
4. other monologues: The Flood part 1 and part 2; another The Flood; crooked braid;

1. Grades in Blackboard

Meta Hamlet
Readings Due Before Class:
--Be reading Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

Assignments due before class:
1. Outside Play Reaction #1 (600 words) writerly reactions to the live play you attended (good, bad, ugly; pacing, dialogue, characterization, set, MDQ, traditionality vs. postmodernity). If you have to, you can also watch videos in the library: Waiting for Godot; A Raisin in the Sun; The Crucible (directed by Hytner); Unkle Vanya; Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf; Angels in America Part 1 and 2; One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest; Equus; Rhinoceros (Ionesco--part of a collection of plays American Film Theater Collection 1); The Glass Menagerie; and screenplays like Pulp Fiction, Napoleon Dynamite etc!

A Postmodern Play
Readings Due Before Class:
--Finish Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
--Handout: Lee's notes about Ros and Guil and Postmodernism

Assignments due before class:
1. Choose a character or two from one of the plays (or movies) we've read (or seen) for class, and begin writing a monologue or short dialogue, a scene, a moment that focuses outside the play (or movie) you choose. You can keep it realism-oriented, though I would like to see you play with postmodern elements.

Lee's Lecture Notes:
1. Pomo Laundry list

The Postmodern Play, And Scenarios (Another Structural Approach)
Readings Due Before Class:
--Naked Playwriting Ch. 4
--Handout: Lee thinks about Scenario Building
--Watch the DVD Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (it's in the library)

Assignments due before class:
1. Read and annotate comments on Tyler's play...
2. Reading Reaction 4: 600 words to R & G (play and movie)...

Lee's Lecture Notes:
1. notes on ros and guil
2. oops...film was made in 1990!
3. R & G--alienation effect? certainly not letting us suspend our disbelief, but also not giving us a desire to change the world (as with Brecht; p. 49-50 NP)

Pomo, Magical Realism, and Screenplays
Readings Due Before Class:
--Read either Being John Malkovich or Napoleon Dynamite

Assignments due before class:
1. Marie, Allison, ? will bring 13 copies of a play for workshop...

2. optional for extra credit A Scenario/plot points/outline due for another of your previous pitches or a new pitch (upload these "plot points" to Blackboard Vista).  I would like the focus to be for a second 10-15 minute play (or screenplay that has dialogue), thus the scope, scenes, characters, set etc. should be restricted (see NP p. 105-108 for a sample scenario, and my lecture notes).

Lee's Lecture Notes:
1. 

the fantastic (T. Todorov):
the uncanny vs the marvelous; the uncanny is when supernatural things happen in a story that can then be explained by "natural" law (R. Bass); the marvelous is when supernatural things happen in a story without explanations, yet they give off the feel of being "normal" (G. Garcia Marquez)

Screenwriting: High concept : (A. S.) started with Star Wars in terms of demand—where plot is everything, the foreground story is central—pulls us forward in a linear fashion

• If you have no character, you’ll end up with something that doesn’t bring the viewer in…how audiences want to somehow relate
• Perhaps special effects can get around this, but not usually
• Be careful of predictability problems?

• low (or soft) concept—focuses on character, focuses on background story or emotionality; perhaps can also focus on atmospherics…powasquatsi

avoiding predictability is easier when there’s a focus on the internal space of a character…something less obviously linear, so there’s more room for discovery (surprise)
• of course, if you have less focus on plot, your dialogue better be incredibly witty, or smart, or fast, or revealing, or shocking
• run lola run
• my dinner with andre

Nov. 19 

Lee's Lecture Notes:
resevoir dogs: high concepts meet low concepts--violence with a focus on character

???.  26

???.  28 

I will have consultations MWF - email mortenle@uvsc.edu for times.