As playwrights, one of the most difficult tasks we face is “director-proofing” our scripts. How do we convey our vision without condescension? How do we impart the interior worlds of the characters without hampering choices, without unnecessary dialogue? Here I offer just four examples for you to ponder. What do these styles say about the playwright? What do they say about the play?
HIR: action and intent
I have enjoyed intensely the way Taylor Mac embeds action and intent into his character descriptions. This certainly lightens the load for directors and actors, allowing them to hit the ground running on page one. From his play Hir:
CHARACTERS
ISAAC CONNOR: 24. Cisgender son of Paige and Arnold. Brother to Max. Isaac’s main actions are to assess the situation, assert himself, convert, and keep things under control. The play is, for Isaac, one long attempt at squashing down a major PTSD explosion. At times he is more successful (meaning he can almost relax) than others, and he uses different tactics (including the slightly more fun action of teasing), but ultimately fails. There should be peaks and valleys, but a slow burn is what’s been crafted into this play.
PAIGE CONNOR: 55. Cisgender mother to Max and Isaac. Wife to Arnold. Main actions are to entertain, excite (with new information, she’s discovered), and tear apart the old regimes.
MAX CONNOR: 17. Transgender child of Paige and Arnold. Sibling to Isaac. Main actions are to excite (with new information, ze’s discovered), ward off attacks, showboat, raise hir status on the family totem pole, and stake hir intellectual territory. It’s important to me that the actor playing Max be someone who was a biological female and now identifies as transgender or gender-queer.
ARNOLD CONNOR: 58. Cisgender father to Isaac and Max and husband to Paige. Main actions are those of an old dog: eat, sleep and be comfortable. Arnold was an angry man but has had a stroke, which turned him into more of a clown. Rather like a slower/older Harpo. When he feels something, he feels it with no censors. He can easily switch from complete joy to complete sorrow and back again, in a heartbeat.
ALABASTER: a hybrid approach
Remember, character descriptions need not be confined to the character description area of the script. In my play Alabaster, the character of Weezy is more than just a narrator played by a goat played by a female actor. While developing the play for its rolling world premiere, my dramaturg Carolyn Messina and I spoke at length about Weezy’s totality and how to make it crystal clear to practitioners. Our solution was threefold:
A general note about the goats in the character description area:
CHARACTERS
ALICE – a renowned photographer JUNE – an Alabama outsider artist WEEZY – a goat (and daughter to Bib) BIB – a very old goat (and mother to Weezy)
Neither Bib nor Weezy should be dressed like goats. While they may have the occasional goat “feature,” mostly they walk and talk just like humans. The goats are not caricatures. They are as real as any human. They have their own goat language, which – in moments of joy and grief and everything in between – is genuine and specific. They bleat and bah as goats do, with intention, creating a real dialogue between characters. We should be able to see their faces, their expressions, etc. This is vital.
An author’s note contextualizing Weezy’s place in “this world”:
AUTHOR’S NOTES
This is not a friendly farm. Death is known to the inhabitants of this realm and to the creatures lured into its clutches in a way that changes them forever. In this story, which spans a single day, we are experiencing four “women,” each at a crossroads, each facing a wall of fire. Though at times it may seem like they are simply exchanging pleasantries, they are quite literally fighting for their lives. In “come to Jesus” moments like these, worn down by the never-ending savage blows of life, we are faced with our own mortality. We understand time as a luxury. Weezy is an all-seeing, all-knowing instrument of the Divine. She is of another realm and of a higher purpose. In this world. On this day. The time for pleasantries is over. Resist the urge to play things “nice.”
Use of stage directions:
ACT I
Scene One
(AT RISE: Saturday, mid-morning. WEEZY enters the light. She addresses the audience as she addresses nearly everyone else around her: with a neutral, no-nonsense, no-bullshit tone.)
THE FLICK: casual/traditional
Notice how Annie Baker’s easy style considerations color the perception of the characters in her play The Flick.
CHARACTERS
SAM, 25 - shaved head. Caucasian. He often wears a beat-up Red Sox cap. He used to be very into Heavy Metal.
AVERY, 20 - African-American. Bespectacled. He wears red, slightly European-looking sneakers. In love with the movies.
ROSE, 24 - Caucasian. Sexually magnetic, despite the fact (or partly because?) her clothes are baggy, she never wears makeup and her hair is dyed forest-green.
SKLYER, 26 / THE DREAMING MAN
WAITING FOR GODOT: unspecified
Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot is entirely free of character description; it is simply a list. But through its “austerity,” we see a sort of nothingness—an almost bleakness—something along the lines of “human uncertainty”—which is arguably the point.
Estragon Vladimir Lucky Pozzo a boy
Practice Questions
It’s worth asking what your character descriptions say about your vision of them in society. Does greater specificity suggest they are more universal or more singular? Does a lack of specificity suggest they represent something more? Or that you’re open to whatever the players choose to bring out in the characters? Would your script benefit from a note about such choices?
21 Things I Know About Playwriting I wrote my first play twenty years ago. I wrote my second play one year later. Here are 21 things I learned in the year between the two.
I think it matters WHEN you write the stage directions in terms of process. If I write the descriptions before know the character, I often fail to dramatize the characters. Or I assume the audience is in on the joke I’ve never clued them in to.
I prefer to express it through dialogue first. Sometimes I will get more detailed later if I fear actors will misunderstand or need some key information on how to proceed.
Personally, when I read plays, I love a simple “M/30s.” That excites me.
From playwright Jeremy Kareken:
I think it matters WHEN you write the stage directions in terms of process. If I write the descriptions before know the character, I often fail to dramatize the characters. Or I assume the audience is in on the joke I’ve never clued them in to.
I prefer to express it through dialogue first. Sometimes I will get more detailed later if I fear actors will misunderstand or need some key information on how to proceed.
Personally, when I read plays, I love a simple “M/30s.” That excites me.
Jeremy Kareken
Http://www.jeremykareken.com