Comments on: On “King of Shadows”

By: John Carter, Sad Hero of Mars « Threat Quality Press

John Carter, Sad Hero of Mars « Threat Quality Press — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 17:00:45 +0000

[...] and that apparently getting an MFA in playwriting from Yale doesn’t mean you know anything about writing plays. I am opinionated and narcissistic, and that is what qualifies me to be a [...]

By: V.I.P. Referee

V.I.P. Referee — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 19:47:51 +0000

Thank you, Corbin!

By: corbin

corbin — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 22:52:15 +0000

This is a response to a comment “V.I.P. Referee” left a while back on Daniel Day Lewis’s performance as Bill the Butcher in Gangs of New York. I am an actor and have read many acting books and what you wrote is better than 95% of all the books I have read in the past 2 years. You should consider writing about acting or various performances.

By: braak

braak — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 02:53:46 +0000

Ah, no, these are actually two different ideas that are described with the same term. A “beat” the way he uses it–as a measure of time–is the smallest measure of empty space on stage. But a beat as in “a beat change” can also mean the change in a character’s intention within a scene.

Contextually, there’s no reason these things should ever be confused with each other, though. He is definitely not talking about small but rapid changes in character orientation–he’s talking about very tiny pauses.

By: Carl

Carl — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 02:20:37 +0000

For the record, my studies outside of the confines of 206 have brought to my attention the raging debate that exists on the question of the length of beats. Whereas the Villanova people describe beats as you do here (the shortest length of measurable time in a scene), the Temple people insist that beats are much larger– what we were to refer to as ‘units’. I have a suspicion that the Temple folks are employing older method of scene-breakdown (though I have no proof). But if you were talking about ‘beats’ as these larger units, then you’d have cause to make use of ‘mini-beats’, I suppose. Who knows what they teach at Yale.

By: V.I.P. Referee

V.I.P. Referee — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 01:16:03 +0000

Audiences always know when a cast has been over-directed. When every tick and twitch is staged and manipulated by a puppetmaster’s hand, the end result often translates as hollow; you don’t feel characters living through an actor’s body. Fleshed-out reflections and nuances are lost for the sake of players acting only as vessels of the writer or director’s own perceptions of their characters. It gives the impression of talking parrots or dancing dogs; amusing, but there’s no sense of deeper understanding beneath the performance. Not fair to the actors or the audience.

Characters bloom when they’ve been filtered through the many perspectives of the whole crew—writers, director, actors, costumers, makeup artists, a set designer’s interpretation of the world the character exists in—and the final work is the result of real collaboration. Many human experiences coming together in one representation. Totalitarian control of characters on the part of a writer or director is about vanity, not producing a powerful work of art that people can relate to. Someone who wants absolute control over a work, should be leaning toward independent areas of art. Sort of like being suited to individual sports, rather than group ones. Theater, television and filmmaking are group sports.

By: Hsiang

Hsiang — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 20:33:56 +0000

So, not much of a theatre buff but I’ve read a few novels. Typographical tricks in dialog are okay with me but unless it’s a comedy they run the risk of being very twee. Even then, Discworld is rife with cutesy stuff like misplaced apostrophes and audible asterisks for profanity. Still, you can’t beat having Death speaking in Small Caps.

I appreciate the occasional italic to denote an emphasized word or to peppered through the conversation of a stereotypical campy queen. All Caps are of course quite the accepted thing for the rants of over-educated types with FAR TOO MUCH TIME ON THEIR HANDS.
How do we denote the things not left unsaid but muttered under one’s breath without attribution? I agree that parentheses look silly and reducing the typeface is often impractical. Em dashes?

By: braak

braak — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 17:53:40 +0000

(Headbutt)

You can go (left unsaid: to hell).

By: Jeff Holland

Jeff Holland — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 17:50:27 +0000

Interesting analysis (rolls eyes).

Crap, did he hear that?

By: deb

deb — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 16:52:38 +0000

Shaw wrote some amazing stage directions. So good, in fact, that a grad school professor we know tried to incorporate them into his production of “The Devil’s Disciple.” Predictably, it didn’t work. At all. To his credit, though, said professor admitted as much. This is because stage directions aren’t intended for the audience’s ears — even Shaw’s directions. They’re meant to be clues for the rest of the creative team — director, actor, designer — not the artwork itself. How do you play “spiraling dialogue?” Or parenthetical words? Or clever stage directions? I think a lot of this comes out of a sort of narcissism that has playwrights thinking that they are the be-all and end-all when it comes to theatrical production. (Think about Durang’s NINE PAGES OF NOTES to “Beyond Therapy.”) It’s kind of like that notion floating around that Shakespeare’s plays were intended as literature — to be read. That’s stupid. They were plays. Plays are not literature — when they are (Byron’s “Manfred,” for instance) literature they’re practically unplayable. Plays demand other artists to make them works of art.