Dramaturgy for TheatreWorks: "The Promise" by Ivan

Hello Ivan!

Thank you for completing your play. When I read it this time around, it came across as poignant and lyrical.

Here are my comments:

1) Scene 1, Page 1: Second to the Last Line: Change "It is dramatic!" to "It is melodramatic!' (Or tacky, or kitschy, or artificial, not dramatic).

2) Proofread your dialogue well. Some examples: You wrote "worst than" rather than "worse than", "loose" rather than "lose", and "Flashback to today" rather than "Flashforward to today".

3) In any script, don't write "What the f**?" Spell the word out. Otherwise the performer will pronounce the line as "What the F-Asterisk-Asterisk?"

4) In an early scene Andy says he is straight rather than gay. He was lying, then?

5) Scene 14 employs a flashback technique that does not go with the rest of the play. I suggest that you convert this scene to a video.

Additional comments:

1) You need highly credible performers for this play, but I am sure that your director will find them, because Singapore has many, talented actors and actresses.

2) The production is best held inside a cafe, with the audience seated round cafe tables and actually eating dinner. And with real waters going round between scenes.

3) This might be classified as an "Adults Only" play.

4) Your prospective producers could be groups like Pink Dot. HOWEVER, go over your play and decide what it is actually saying about gay culture.

If you are satisfied with the state that your play is in (I know that you mulled over it and reworked it several times), clean it up and submit it to TheatreWorks for a staged reading. While its audience is restricted, I found it very enjoyable, and I liked the interactions between the male characters and the one female character in your cast.

Dramaturgy for TheatreWorks Singapore: _Final Call_ by Timothy

Hello Tim! (Still unable to call you Yam because the name reminds me of purple yams, which I like for dessert.)

Congratulations on completing a brillant and insightful play! TheatreWorks wll certainly give it a staged reading, but if they won't give it a full production and if you have theatre friends in San Francisco, New York, or Melbourne, I urge you to test the waters in those places. Travel by air--and all kinds of human movement involving bureaucracy, for that matter--has become a worldwide nightmare. Your play pushes it over the edge and converts it to a devastating night terror.

I agree that the play takes on different dimensions depending on whether the AIRLINE REP is a man or a woman. The REP, to me anyway, is best played by a man in order to function as a counterfoil to JONES, who is a man. Having said that, the entire play is a director's delight: it can be played by clowns in costume, it can be played by marionettes, and the set could be anything from nothing to black-and-white to a high-tech affair.

Consider "I'm coming home soon" instead of "I'm coming home now" as the penultimate line of the play. It is more intriguing and suggests further unpredictability.

Do a final clean-up before submitting your play to TheatreWorks. Trim it as best you can. Like Nanda's and Danial's plays, your play is LONG, and the sad reality about theatre in the 21st century is that audiences (and producers) are less and less willing to sit through protracted productions. Indeed, gone are the days of the hao-kah, which played from sunset through sunrise.

Dramaturgy for TheatreWorks Singapore: _Two Halves Make A Hole_ by Danial

Hello Danial!

First of all, congratulations for providing the well-thought-out and well-located additions to your play.

I suggest that you rephrase passages that have question-and-answer dialogue. Characters speak because of a NEED to speak, not because someone asked them a question and they have to provide an answer.

Do a final trim before submitting this play to TheatreWorks. After they assign your play to a director, he or she will most certainly make cuts due to the constraint of running time. As I advised Nanda regarding his play, you might as well do the initial cuts yourself rather than disagree with what the director decides to cut later.

Other than those, good work!

I hope that I will be in Singapore to watch the staged reading of your play.

Dramaturgy for TheatreWorks Singapore: _Satamilla_ by Aswani

Hello Aswani!

You've done a substantial amount of work on your play. The scenes are more stageable, the characters are more real, and you have the gift of writing compelling dialogue.

Just a few more comments on this draft:

1) Scene 3 seems underwritten. Make an effort to have all your scenes balanced--in content and in length. You also need to justify YOUNGER SUSEELA's presence. The audience won't know what's going on.

2) The presence of YOUNGER SUSEELA in succeeding scenes is also perplexing and apparently unjustified.

3) Each of your scenes is dynamic, but always be careful not to push the dramatic to the melodramatic.

4) Scene 7 is disjointed because you wrote this in chunks rather than allow the scene to write itself. Never think in terms of fragments--you will only end up with Procrustean, stilted results.

Same comment for Scene 12.

Whenever you are unable to follow a scene through, ask yourself whether the scene is evoking emotional truth within you. Go with the emotion; don't fight it off or block it. Remember our lesson on the defense mechanisms. You need to drop your defenses and allow yourself to be vulnerable in order to be an effective playwright.

5) Go through your stage directions again for clarity and economy. For instance, instead of writing "He returns back", just write "He returns". 

6) Scene 9 is static. You could bring it to life by giving cause for SANJEEVAN to have a breakdown. Externalize his internal conflict.

7) In Scene 10, well into the play, the presence of YOUNG SUSEELA is still unclear and apparently useless.

8) In Scene 12, for the first time the character YOUNG SANJEEVAN appears. Work him into the earlier scenes. Develop a dramatic, albeit metaphysical, relationship between YOUNG SUSEELA and YOUNG SANJEEVAN if possible. If you can swing this, your play will be truly masterful.

9) In the entire script, always identify YOUNG SANJEEVAN as YOUNG SANJEEVAN and not as SANJEEVAN.

10) Scene 13. I love your death meditation!

11) Scene 14 (B) is also underwritten. The symbolism of the peacock feather is lost unless a significant reference to it is made in a previous scene.

12) Scene 17. The ending of your play is too abrupt--almost as though you were afraid to touch it. Provide catharsis for your audience. You owe it to them. An elegy in which all of the characters (including SUSEELA) rise to address the audience is one solution. It is also the best time and opportunity for the voices of YOUNG SUSEELA and YOUNG SANJEEVAN to be heard. An alternative is to give the entire elegy to SANJEEVAN.

Be persistent, be tenacious, and always keep in mind that producing a work of literary art, like a huge tapestry, needs time and patience. Every color and every thread must fall in place.

I look forward to receiving the next draft of your play. 

Never fear rejection, for there will always be someone who will take you and yours in.

Rejection is always a manifestation of someone's withdrawal of friendship or good will, and never a manifestation of the quality of your work.

You write and you paint subject matter that is increasingly difficult to discover what your weaknesses are.

And you work on those weaknesses.

Never mistake melodramatic emotions as emotional truth. They are formulaic, mannered, derivative, and decadent.

Never stem the flow of creativity. It would be like trying to prevent a volcano from erupting.

Once you've found and estabished your original style, stop experimenting. Your own, individual style should be consistent through the rest of your life, though your subject matter may not be. That is how you will eventually be recognized as a major artist.

Writing is painting and painting is writing, and the twain often meet.

Every person is always in the context of his past, his present, his family, his occupation, and his dreams, and if you know none of that about a person, you really don't know that person at all.

Do you really know the characters you write about?

Do not deconstruct without good cause or rhyme or reason. A lot of material is best left not being deconstructed.

As such, never deconstruct on a whim. If you do, the work that results will be flimsy, derivative, and illogical.

Write and paint primarily because you love to, not because you need to in order to pay your bills.

Write to be read, and paint to be viewed, and that is really all there is to it.

I cannot think of better, far-reaching, joys than writing, painting, and magic.

Recalling Seasons And Occasions

Wake up in the morning as though you were waking up to Christmas Day, New Year's Day, your next birthday, your first day of school or work, or any special day of your choice.

Record first your feelings, then your immediate thoughts, then free-associations, then the persons you wish to share this day with.

Are you able to recreate this moment or this day with all five physical senses?

What are the body signals (tingles, buzzes, goosebumps) that come with your reflections? Can you activate these signals at will should you want to in the future?

What is the color of this day?

What is the symbol of this day?

What is the scent of this day?

What is your wish for this day?

You are never at a standstill as long as you continue being creative.

Writing is my passion.

Painting is my penance.

Create. Don't wait.

If you wait for a publisher to publish your books, an art gallery to showcase your exhibits, and collectors to buy your paintings, you will end up producing only 5% of your potential to unfurl the full magnificence of your works.

A masterpiece first comes into tangible being as a draft or a sketch on paper.

At the end of each day, before going to bed, write down everything you did and ate and said, everywhere you went, everyone you interacted with, and everything you thought from the time you woke up, and see how much you really remember.

This is an exercise in breaking down the defense mechanism repression, in strengthening your powers of observation, and in embracing both the pleasant and the unpleasant toward achieving inner balance.

Dramaturgy for TheatreWorks Singapore: _Malavika_ by Nanda

Hello Nanda!

First, your play was already cleverly conceived before our first meeting. You are one of those playwrights whose plays are written in full inside one's head so that, when they are ready to be written, they just flow onto hard copy. After our discussion session, electronic dramaturgy, the videotaped, informal reading that I watched with you, and our restructuring, your play is finally finished. It was interesting to dramaturge because it is the second of a trilogy, the first already written and staged, the third, yet to be written. Still, it must be able to stand up as an independent piece--and it does.

A few comments:

--I noted the additions you made to contribute to the sensual atmosphere of the play.
--All of the roles are vehicles for fine, ensemble acting. I wonder, though, whether a static, staged reading will diminish their impact.
--The play is too long. Act 3 seems to have the most tolerable length. I suggest that you read it aloud (or do so again with the help of your friends) and time each act. Tighten the play: make your cuts now rather than wait for the director to make cuts you might not agree with.

Then proofread your manuscript, make a clean copy, and submit it to TheatreWorks for a staged reading.

Well done!

Dramaturgy for TheatreWorks Singapore: _Mixed_ by Raemae

Hello Raemae!

It's been a long journey, but you've proven to have the constant passion and the tenacity to see your play through. After two rounds of dramaturgy and an informal reading I was fortunate enough to sit in five months ago, I am pleased to reread your play and see that you've made very judicious changes/additions.

Technically, each act in your play is really a cluster of scenes; you might want to reconsider calling your divisions not acts but something else, in case the definitive, post-production, version of your play finds publication.

Proofread your manuscript once again, especially for grammar, and clean it up before submitting it to TheatreWorks for a staged reading. Keep in mind that the staged reading will have a director and a professional cast, and be open to their suggestions. Theatre is teamwork after all, and the last thing you want is a director and a cast that will be unhappy rehearsing a play they don't feel comfortable with, night after night.

In the meantime, congratulations! If I'm lucky I might be in the audience for your staged reading.

Dramaturgy for TheatreWorks Singapore: "The Book of Mothers" by Eleanor

Hello Eleanor!

Thank you for writing this wonderful play. Here are my comments:

--Scene 5 is mainly exposition. Provide dramatic tension between the two men. While this is really a feminist play, you need to flesh out your male characters and render them as real persons. Give your male performers acting roles they can be proud to assume.
--Consider eliminating male characters altogether, rewriting the scenes that have them into monologues or reports.
--It is possible to envision the performer of CHILD as a young adult, rather than casting a real child. Casting children in plays usually creates production problems due to scheduling.
--Your real drama begins in Scene 7.
--I offer you two options:
1) Write a second act in which the events are repeated, but with a different, upbeat ending. It is then up to the audience to decide which is the real act and which is the fantasy act. This will elevate your one-act play to a full-length play.
2) Interweave the real act and the fantasy act, keeping the piece a one-act play. Explore your subject matter. Squeeze every bit of imagery out of it.
3) In one act, CHILD should be female. In the other, male. This will provide more dynamics to your message.

While further developing your play, put more of yourself (your selves, actually, since playwrights really have multiple personalities) in your work. Do not be ashamed or embarrassed to show your characters and their emotions inside out.

In all, though, well done! Persist and see this through.

Dramaturgy for TheatreWorks Singapore: _Kor Kor Cheh Cheh Di Di Mei Mei_ by Flora

Hello Flora!

Your play concept is interesting, and you should begin writing it along the following guidelines:

--First, know your four protagonists deeply and intimately before even bringing them onstage.
--Be mindful of points of attack for your two parallel plots.
--Allow both plots to converge not once but several times within the entire play.
--This play and its treatment verge on the cinematic and the melodramatic, so be careful to keep it a dramatic stage play.

Finally, do not be intimidated by the submissions and speed of progress of your co-participants. Focus only on yourself and your own work. Go into your fantasy writing room and shut out everyone and everything else.

Now, plunge into writing.

Dramaturgy for TheatreWorks Singapore: "Project X" by Adi

Hello Adi!

You've written a very interesting one-act play. This isn't the play you began writing during our workshop, though--that was longer, more complex, and more ambitious.

At this point, would you like to develop this particular play further as a one-act play? That is quite all right. We can go with this for now, but I advise you to write full-length plays afterward; this will propel you faster to become a major Singaporean playwright, which I know you can be, especially with your flair for characterization and dialogue.

My comments on your manuscript:

--Always be aware of stage business. What are the characters doing? If they are sneaking into a room and spying on someone they would be huddled most of the time and their use of stage space would be restricted. They would also have to be speaking in whispers.

--You have a single walk-on toward the end of the play. Is this necessary? How challenged would a performer be to do this walk-on? Would he even include this project in his portfolio? Always think of your director and your performers and how their talents can shine.

Consider several walk-ons that would compel your characters to have a variety of reactions and a variety of movements.

--Keep in mind that it takes thousands, if not millions, of dollars for a producer to stage a play. Producers will bank on financially viable projects. Ensure that your play, no matter how short or how long, has a new, unique, and non-whimsical message for your prospective audiences.

Dramaturgy for TheatreWorks Singapore: _FInal Call_ by Timothy

Hello Timothy!

Your play flowed so well that I was disappointed to see that your manuscript ended, unfinished, on Page 41. I hope that I can read your entire play very soon.

All of your dialogue is witty and sparkling, and every line contributes to characterization. The genre you seem to have chosen for this piece is Theatre of the Absurd, which emerged in the 1960s from industrialization, mechanization, and the subsequent de-humanization of relationships in well-developed countries. In Asia, this works very well in Singapore, Japan, Korea, and China, not due to industrialization and mechanization but to giant leaps in technology.

You have an incisive, Kafkaesque mind that endows your protagonist with a unique point of view that, at the same time, comes across as valid social commentary. Your second act seemed too short in comparison with the first, but that, of course, was due to the fact that your manuscript is unfinished. Keep in mind that both acts should be balanced--bring back the other characters even if they must appear as yet other characters played by the same performers. This will keep your play well-structured.

Even in its present state, your play is already very well-polished. Be sensitive, however, to nuances in language. On Page 1, Lines 3, 19, and 20, for instance, the line "We bring you to where you need to be" is more correctly stated "We bring you where you need to be". also on Page 1, the Airline Rep's line "...passengers of Flight 1949 to..." is usually, in airports, "..passengers of Flight 1949 bound for..."

Well done!

Dramaturgy for TheatreWorks Singapore: "At The End of the Road" by Pearlyn

Hello Pearlyn!

I commend you on following through with this play from our recently concluded workshop. It is currently a one-act play as you envisioned it to be, but it can and should be developed into a full-length play, not necessarily divided into acts. Otherwise every event that transpires after Sarah's accident is abrupt and functions as deus ex machina. Between Scenes 2 and 3, for example, you need to go deeper into Sarah's mind and how she comes to her decision to be a martyr for her husband's cause.

Your play swiftly generates conflict, which is a good thing. Like a clever musical composer, though, you should be able to carry it through the play and take it to the climax that it deserves. You can do this--I perceive it from reading the dialogue that you wrote between man and wife and from the psychological dynamics between them. If you succeed, you could even very well be on your way to be Singapore's modern Strindberg.

Before proceeding any further, explore the genre of noir. Read all of Cornell Woolrich's novels, beginning with The Night Has A Thousand Eyes. Your public library should have them. And then, flesh out your play.

Do not be concerned with time constraints. Enjoy what you are writing. Even if it takes you a year or more, the most important thing is that you come up with a stage-worthy, dramatic play. 

Dramaturgy for TheatreWorks Singapore: "Ah Ma Goes Home" by Michelle

Hello Michelle!

Your play is still undeveloped as it was before, but its subject matter is very interesting. If you feel that you are having a difficult time advancing, first ask yourself the following:

1) Have you chosen the best medium for your message? Is your story better suited to a novel or a movie rather than to a stage play?
2) Which language is your play coming out more consistently in?
3) Who will come out as the real protagonist of the play, Ah Mah or the Narrator?

Your premise is not yet clear, but your draft is promising. I hope that you can work on it some more.
So far, if this were a novel, the structure is after Boris Pasternak's Dr. Zhivago, and if this were a play, the structure is after Tennessee Williams's "The Glass Menagerie".

Dramaturgy for TheatreWorks Singapore: _Satamilla (Without Sound)_ by Aswani

Hello Aswani!

Your manuscript is mature and lyrical, and reflects a creative sense of staging.

Here are my comments:

1) Your title should either be Satamilla OR Without Sound. Do not include translations in parentheses.

2) Proofread your work carefully. Do NOT take stage directions for granted--they guide not only the director but also the performers and your readers. On Page 3, 7th Line from the Bottom, you have "SANJEEVAN closes the door to exit", which should read "SANJEEVAN exits and closes the door behind him".

3) Scenes 2 and 3 are underwritten, as though they were mere transition scenes in a movie or TV episode. Give both scenes dramatic substance. Both scenes should demonstrate your premise more clearly.

4) I love your juxtaposition of past and present. It is as though your play were really about reincarnation and the flashbacks are not scenes from the immediate past but scenes from a previous lifetime. (Although, in a sense, they are.)

5) How do you visualize the seduction in Scene 6: Is SUSEELA 2 performing onstage alone? If the MAN is physically absent in this scene, won't the audience infer that this scene from the past is merely a figment of SUSEELA's imagination?

6) Be aware of frequent scene changes that require complete set-ups of furniture and props. I have yet to see a revolving stage at TheatreWorks.

7) Scene 7: This is SUSEELA 2 on the stage, not SUSEELA, but you neglected to indicate so.

8) On Page 12, Last Line, YU LING says, "...I know that Mother Mary is around you..." Then on Page 13, Line 5, she says, "I'm from a Buddhist family..." The audience might laugh out loud, unless that is your intention.

9) Always keep in mind that both SANJEEVAN and SUSEELA must have well-developed characters. One should not merely be a sounding board for the other.

Do proceed with this play along the above guidelines. I look forward to seeing how it develops and how it ends. 

Never rush writing a play "for a production deadline" or a painting "for an exhibit". You will surely be sorry that you did, and your slipshod work will be a reflection of your integrity as an artist.

When having to wait too long in a public place, study the colors of two walls and, in your mind, convert that combination to names of a unique salad or viand.

Emotions normally prevent you from thinking clearly, but if you are a playwright, practice speaking aloud and as eloquently as you can whenever you are alone and in an emotional state. You will find that this enables you to spontaneously produce sparkling dialogue.

When starting out a novel, write your first two pages, set them aside, and come back to them a day later to see if your lines sound right. If they don't--if they are stilted and the lines don't flow--it is because you are writing it in the wrong language. Switch to another language, such as Chinese, Bahasa, Hindi, or Tagalog.

If you INSIST on writing your novel in a preferred language, talk to yourself in a running monologue in that language while you are alone in your room. When you think your thoughts, think in that language. Only then should you resume writing your novel.

Write a disastrous day in yoiir life as a sad story.

Rewrite it as a riotous comedy.

Every web site is a mansion, and there are many mansions.

As a writer, inhabit cyberspace rather than bookshelves.

Every journal and notebook cover attracts specific energies.

Always use ink in your favorite color.

Also use its complementary.

It always helps to have an idea what your climax will be. It is the bull's eye to your bow and arrow. As long as you hit any spot within its immediate area, your work will be good.

The duty of every playwright is to discover new emotions and combinations of emotions, for these, like fingerprints and snowflakes, are unique and never the same for every individual character.

Dramaturgy for TheatreWorks: _Malavika_ by Nanda

Hello Nanda!

This is a good, first draft not only of your play but also of your projected trilogy as we discussed it the last time we met.

1) First, read Agatha Christie's The Secret of Chimneys--not that it has anything to do with your play but because of her expert handling of presenting clues and masking identities.

2) Your mysterious showcasing of the character Malavika is commendable. Ensure, however, that she is spiritually present even when she is physically absent in scenes.

3) Is the character Ira necessary? How does she embody the premise? Her presence in the first scene might lead the audience to believe that the play is all about her. Remember that your play is about being a man and being a husband, not being a parent.

4) In the TV scene and the birthday scene, which you tend to overdevelop by making everyone talk of trivialities, your story stops moving forward. Be aware that your genre is poetic realism, not realism.

5) Eliminate unnecessary subplots. Your focus is Agni-Malavika.

6) In a mystery play (not in the medieval sense), a playwright will always allow his audience to be ten steps ahead of the storyteller. No surprises should be sprung.

7) No matter what the subject matter, begin your play as close to the climax as possible.

Take a rest and mull over your play before rewriting it.

Diagram your trilogy on a piece of paper and write, under each play title, what you need to achieve in each play. You will find that the less characters you have, the more substantial your work will be.

You may not be able to rewrite this draft in time for my arrival in Singapore. However, I will be happy to meet you anyway, to discuss what difficulties you may be having. 

Singaporean playwrights: I instructed all of you to resubmit your manuscripts and highlight your changes, additions, and revisions in a distinct color. If there are no highlighted passages I will assume that no changes were made, and I will not bother to reread your manuscripts.

The ten Chinese hells await us in Haw Par Villa, where I am conducting two short workshops for beginners on top of the main workshop for TheatreWorks Singapore. I can't wait to see these, they remind me so much of scenes from my favorite Judge Dee books.

Haw Par Villa is the venue for Singapore's 2018 24-Hour Playwriting Competition.

Premise: You begin a play with a protagonist in conflict with an antagonist over something BIG that is AT STAKE. The play ends with the protagonist not where he has always been but in a completely different position, as far away from his original position as possible. That is the ONLY meaning of dramatic change.

You may begin a movie or a teleplay with someone setting a kettle of water on a lit stove.

But, in theatre, you begin a play with the water already boiling.

Point of attack: Grip your audience by the balls as soon as the curtain rises, and don't let go until the curtain falls. That is why you need to begin your play as close to the climax as possible.

Dramaturgy for TheatreWorks Singapore: "Home" by Ivan

Hello Ivan!

Interesting play--since it will have a niche audience, I see it being performed in a bar, a living room, or backstage of a theatre with an invitational audience seated at small tables and in chairs and having drinks and light snacks. There are no exits for the performers; they simply sit with the audience until their next cue, a la Grotowski. Everything can then be filmed at the same time with multiple cameras.

The play you have chosen to submit is not "drama" by the definition we discussed in the workshop, in the sense that nothing "big" is at stake. It is, however, an interesting vignette and commentary, although the subject matter is not something that has never been addressed before. Its success rests greatly on ingenious staging.

Proofread and polish your manuscript. Cast your friends as characters. Let us have a reading when we meet.   

Singaporean Playwrights: Are you able to electronically resubmit your complete plays to me by June 15, 2018? If possible, in our next meeting, your manuscripts should be read, casting your friends as the characters, so that we become engaged with your plays as enunciated and as heard, and no longer as written.

Please pass to those who are not in my Friends and Followers Lists.

Dramaturgy for TheatreWorks Singapore: _Two Halves Make a Whole_ by Danial

Hello Danial!

Very good work on your play. A question, though: Your manuscript title is Two Halves Make a Hole, but your file name is Two Halves Make a Whole. Which is which? (Both actually make sense to me.)

It's quite wonderful that you changed the protagonists' race to Malay from Chinese. It means, to me, that you have become emboldened to come closer to Truth. As I told everyone in the workshop, writing a play is an emotionally violent act on the self. Truth causes pain--but then again so does resistance to truth.

Your play is a wonderful example of a story being told purely through the spoken word. It is verbose but effective because of your adept handling of language. You are actually so good at it because of two things: 1) your dialogue creates excellent acting vehicles, and 2) the story is so clearly told through dialogue that it can be performed against only a backdrop of a solid color with no sets.

To answer the questions you posed to me in the middle of your manuscript:

--To an adolescent, examples of power symbols are cars, weapons such as guns and swords, implements of extreme sports, and the like.
--Broken power symbols, therefore, would be crashed cars, and dismantled or damaged weapons and implements of extreme sports.
--Power symbols change depending on the developmental stage one is in. To an older male, these would include bags of money, alcohol, seductive women, et cetera.

It is all right to add all of those scenes you are planning to write in, keeping in mind that every scene must be a clear demonstration of the premise. Do not worry about whether your play will be too long--the director will trim and cut where necessary.

Proofread your work. A lot of pronouns keep getting inserted in the wrong places because you may have misused the "Find and Replace" function.

The second slap in Act III, Scene 1 might elicit laughter from the audience.

Finish and polish your play now. As it is, it is almost reading-ready.

Dramaturgy for TheatreWorks Singapore: _Folie a Trois_ by Sarah

Hello Sarah!

The most remarkable thing about your manuscript is that, although incomplete, it has all the elements that we discussed in our workshop: specifically a clear premise, the right point of attack, and conflict. Your dialogue is crisp and economical. The action is as swift as the action in the Gospel of Mark. The drama is unfolding properly. The play promises to be a wonderful case study of incest. Strangely, it is also Brechtian in treatment.

Please continue to work on and complete this play. Be sensitive to cultural references--for example, is the Wheel of Fortune game within the collective unconscious of Singaporeans, or is there a Chinese game of a similar nature that we can connect more comfortably not only with the protagonist but also with her father?

Like Rae, you have a good ear for dialogue, but give more texture to the other characters' speech (except for the father, whose dialogue is properly Singlese) to avoid making them sound like one another.

Your management of time is clever, but the changes should be made clearer to the audience.

On the whole, good work. Keep it going. I hope you can do more pages, if not the entire play, in time for my arrival in Singapore. Write at least two hours a day--whether on this manuscript or not. Just write.

When you re-submit your work, kindly highlight the passages you changed or added, in a bright color. If nothing is highlighted, I will assume that you did nothing to change the work.

Dramaturgy for TheatreWorks Singapore: _The Fundamentalist Father_ by Helmi

Hello Helmi!

I remember the first few pages of your draft for this play, which you read to us in last year's workshop. This is a delightful addition to your last two plays, and they bring you to the fore as a social activist playwright commenting on current issues the way Oscar Wilde did in his Mannerist plays. Try to get this and the previous play on stage. If no producer will take them due to the controversial subject matter, stage them in houses with invitational audiences. You can then come up with definitive versions of the play and try to have them published in another country. Barring that, post them in cyberspace, where I have been publishing my works for more than ten years now.

We discussed the disadvantage of casting children, but I can see adults performing the role of the children in this play.

Scene 3 is cinematic and underwritten, but it will work because all it requires is a lighting change.

There is a passage of years after Scene 6 and after Scene 11. Try to make this more evident than by means of passing remarks and references.

Proofread your work. In many sentences you have missing verbs and prepositions.

Is the painting of portraits and landscapes acceptable to a fundamentalist Muslim? My understanding is that Islamic artists are allowed to paint abstractions and patterns only, but this could not be the case in your community.

Toward the end of the play the father becomes more a representation of bigotry rather than fundamentalism, and those two are not the same. You might want to rethink your title, which blatantly announces what the audience will expect, or change more of the issues being addressed in the play to religious ones.

I am looking forward to how you will decide to end this play. It is the premise, of course, that will tell you how.

When you resubmit your work, kindly highlight the passages you changed or added, in a bright color. If nothing is highlighted, I will assume that you did nothing to change the work.

Dramaturgy for TheatreWorks Singapore: _Mixed_ by Rae

Hello Rae!

Your play requires a lot of reworking but, if you handle the material carefully and prodigiously, it will end up being stage-worthy. For starters it is about the juxtaposition of relationships, which is always of universal value, while addressing issues of racism and discrimination.

The real drama begins in Act 3, Scene 1, the penultimate scene in your play. This is the best point of attack. Something big is at stake, the audience immediately knows it, and the premise is loud and clear. Your choices are now between two directions: 1) proceed writing from this scene, which will entail developing new protagonists, and 2) use it as a springboard for a flashback.

Before proceeding with restructuring and revising, be aware that sexuality has always been problematic subject matter for all playwrights. There is only one playwright in this world who attempted several times to write about it--that was Tennessee Williams, and, even to this day, many drama professors look upon those works as immature.

Strive to give architectonic balance to the entire work. In every Act, therefore, it would be more sound to have the same number of scenes. Otherwise one or two Acts will end up lopsided.

On the whole, your play seems to have been written for the medium of television, employing close-ups and fades. Remember that, for that medium, many scenes are written for transition, for mood, and for entertainment. On the stage, every scene must push forward the premise and must therefore be complete.

Your ability to establish characters without lengthy exposition is one of your remarkable assets. You also have a good ear for dialogue, but avoid trite passages such as on Page 6, Line 3, where someone says, "We've got to stop meeting like this".

Are you able to redo your work in time for my arrival in Singapore?

When you re-submit your work, kindly highlight the passages you changed or added, in a bright color. If nothing is highlighted, I will assume that you did nothing to change the work.

I dramaturge works not only as stage plays but as dramatic literature, which it must be long after the curtain falls.

To every playwright, emotion is a science, an art, and a craft.

The emotions, not merely the words, tell the story in a play.

Emotions are the astral fuel that propels drama.

If your desk set is made of bakelite or lucite, it has value. Do not perceive it as inexpensive plastic, and do not throw it away.

Every writer in the present is possessed by a writer in the past.

Every painter in the present is possessed by a painter in the past.

The choice of possession is made not by the writer/painter in the present time but by the writer/painter who is deceased.

It takes all kinds of writers, as it takes all kinds of persons, to make a world.

Like satin-stitch embroidery, a painting should be made up of deliberate, parsimonious, and carefully placed brush strokes. Anything superfluous makes it trash.

A novel comes into completion, and a life becomes replete with experiences, as surely as a bucket fills up with water under a leaky faucet.

If you want to write but feel that you are never in the right mood to do so, all you have to do is detach yourself from everything else, go to a place  where no one can find you, sit at a table, open your notebook, and pick up your pen.

Never luxuriate in your verbiage, or else your readers will eventually abandon you.

Sometimes it is a bad idea to write or paint to music, because the music will inadvertently bring associations that are superfluous to your subject matter.

Try writing and painting in silence. Allow the novel or play and the painting to make their own music. 

Imagination is an unstructured mass of images, words, memories, associations, and feelings that need to be siphoned through consciousness in order to exist as a comprehensible work of art.

Sometimes it is comprised of concepts and ideas from extraterrestrial sources, which also need to be siphoned through consciousness.

Dramaturgy for TheatreWorks: _Make Sure_ by Clara

Hi Clara!

You worked very hard on rewriting this play. It is tighter; every scene pushes the premise forward; and the play ends in a delightful turnabout. Your strongest points are an ear for dialogue as spoken in the streets (as opposed to poetic dialogue) and a sense of humor, both of which I found absent in your other play, Birth Days.

Make Sure verges on theatre of the absurd. It is a comment on the tension between authority and the individual (or the individualist). The only suggestion I can make at this point is perhaps link each artwork in the gallery to a particular playwright or a play (as you did the first installation with Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie. That would add a dimension to the parallelism you are drawing between theatre and visual art.

This play seems more reading-ready to me than your other play. 

Dramaturgy for TheatreWorks: _Birth Days_ by Clara

Hi Clara!

Again I enjoyed your handling of language. Your journalist's obsession-compulsion helped; your thorough proofreading and concern with the usage of correct idioms and spelling ensured good reading.

My comments on your manuscript remain the same as before. Since you did not make changes other than add more poetic imagery in the monologues, my dramaturging remains at a standstill.

This close to the staged reading of your play, try to consider the following:

--The overall style is poetic realism. The monologues are interspersed, however, with a melodrama. If you stripped off all the monologues that is what you merely end up with.
--The premise seems to have much to do with distrust, rather than love, or woman as co-creator and man as traitor. As such the play might be more appropriately titled Birthing Days rather than Birth Days.
--Act 2 Scene 3 onward comes across as an epilogue to the entire play. The character change of SABINE is abrupt, and the audience will feel deprived of everything that led to this change. Character change must be shown as coming from within, not as a result of a vehicular accident or of mellowing with age.
--On Page 39, the disembodied voice of the INTERVIEWER is quite out of syncopation with everything else. You've been showing all the minor characters onstage so far. Why not the INTERVIEWER?
--LENG and MICHAEL are not real characters because they do not undergo dramatic change, they are there simply as props for SABINE. The false closure you give them in the end are inexplicable.

As a general rule, when I dramaturge a play, I am unable to proceed if the playwright takes no action on my suggestions. It is pointless to keep resubmitting to me practically the same manuscript over and over again, hoping that I will see things differently.

I usually don't.

Dramaturgy for TheatreWorks: _Waiting for Marimekko_, revised play for staged reading, by Pamela

Hello Pamela!

I enjoyed reading the polished version of your poignant play. There is only one comment I have on your manuscript, which is the stage direction on Page 7, Lines 11 - 12 ("SARAH sits on the bench, holding his right hand and leaning against him"). "Him" can refer either to RASUL or to TAXI UNCLE. Specify ALEX.

Although a playwright may feel that her manuscript is final, keep an open mind during the rehearsals. You will find that your dialogue will adjust to the speech rhythms of your performers, and that they will spontaneously change words, split or merge sentences, and even skip lines altogether. When they do that, analyze whether there is valuable truth in the changes that they make. You have the option of incorporating them in your work.

Your overall theatrical treatment is impressionistic:

1. The important action occurs before a scene and after a scene and is never shown to the audience.

2. What the characters DO NOT SAY is more significant than what they say that comprises the true drama.

3. There is no explicit closure given to any of the characters.

Your director needs to cast brilliant performers in order to make a staged reading (as opposed to a performance with costumes, blocking, lighting, and music) work. I wish you all the best of luck.

It was a pleasure having you in my workshop. I saw your wedding pictures--yet another act in your life, and I congratulate you on this new act in your life as a young Singaporean playwright.