Dramaturgy for Theatreworks Singapore

Beverly's Play: "Letting Go"

Dear Beverly,

I enjoyed reading the first draft of your play until the last scene, which I found dark, disturbing, depressing, perhaps a trifle perverse. I felt that you may have been bored with your manuscript at that point and wanted to give your play an unusual, off-beat ending. It was, however, out of character for your protagonists. Go through your play in your mind again and allow your characters to author their story for themselves.

Also consider that no one in the audience should ever leave the theater with an unpleasant aftertaste. They will probably say that they shouldn't have paid all that money just to go and watch a play that let them down.

Other than the ending, you have a diamond in the rough that can be cut and polished to perfection. Your dialogue is smooth, lyrical, and witty, and you were able to achieve excellent tension between your characters. There were times when your play flowed like a discussion play by George Bernard Shaw or Oscar Wilde, the difference being that your play is not about social norms but about relationships.

Here are my suggestions, which I believe you should work on:

1. Your title is a paradox. It is really not about letting go.

2. Overall structure: This is really a long, one-act play like August Strindberg's Miss Julie rather than a play in four acts; the main characters go through only one, major, dramatic change, and that is at the end of the play.

Consider having ALL characters onstage ALL OF THE TIME rather than using entrances, exits, and blackouts. The performers can "revolve" around the stage as though on a carousel; whoever is not in the scene remains physically on the scene, in the background, rather than offstage.

3. Your point of attack: Consider cutting Act 1, Scene 1 and begin, instead, with Scene 2.

Scene 2 can also segue directly to Scene 3 rather than having both as separate scenes. This is applicable to many of your scenes, such as Act 2, Scene 1 and Scene 2A; and Act 3, Scenes 1 and 2.

Do NOT break up your scenes with too many changes and too many blackouts--this manages only to ruin the dramatic tension that you've already created.

4. One slap is enough; more than that is abusive.

5. Make three copies of your manuscript and ask two men and a woman to actually read your script aloud. You may record their reading or take notes. You will find that each reader not only will change the rhythm of their dialogue but also certain words, which is a good thing. Although you write excellent dialogue, your characters tend to speak too much alike using the same vocabulary.

6. Cut the video clip, Act 2 Scene 2B. It is an unnecessary, technological intrusion that will alienate your audience and destroy their suspension of disbelief.

7. Why name the husband DAN rather than HUSBAND if you are naming the woman GIRL and the ex-boyfriend MAN?

8. In the scenes where the MAN agonizes due to his illness, are you sure that you have your cancer symptoms right? Cancer of what? The MAN could be having an influenza attack for all the audience knows.

9. Avoid jump-starting a scene with questions such as "How was your day?"

Do not work too many questions into your dialogue--the entire scene will sound too much like an interview.

10. Cut Act 3 Scene 3 in toto. The death scene is best done offstage because it is too melodramatic. The MAN can simply exit from the stage to indicate that he passed away.

11. You have too may quotations from other people's poetry and from The Little Prince. Retain only what you feel is sufficient to establish what you mean to impart.

Similarly, once you have imparted something, do not repeat it elsewhere--your audience then receives superfluous information. Practice economy--cut and cut until every word is "un-cuttable."

12. Check whether your telephone scenes actually work. Telephone scenes are most undramatic--and shut out other characters onstage.

13. Should you wish to develop this play into a full-length play, you have the option of adding the fourth, absent, character--the MAN's WIFE.

14. A rule of thumb to follow: In this kind of play, all of the characters are protagonists. Your audience should sympathize with all of them. No one should suddenly turn unexpectedly "evil" in the end; that might work for a horror short story, but not for your play.

15. Trim, trim, trim. Example, you could cut all of the following opening of Act 4, Scene 1:

DAN (Looks up from reading a magazine). You're back.

GIRL. Yeah. (Leaves trolley bag luggage at door. Stands there awhile looking at DAN. Not sure what to do with herself.)

DAN. You must be tired. Why don't you sit down...

GIRL. (Walks slowly and sits on a chair. Looks lost, doesn't try to make conversation with DAN.)

Instead, why not just begin the scene with your next line:

DAN. (Drinks from a can of beer.) Here, have some, you probably need it.

I hope that these comments are useful to you. Don't act or react immediately. Mull over everything I've said for a few days. And then make an effort to re-read your work through my perspective.

Please, send me your revision to my e-mail address as a Word document attachment on short-size paper format.