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.

Do not stop at description. It is not enough. It is the uncut fabric, it is the unsewn piece, and it is far from the final product your readers can apply to their lives.

Organize your notes regularly. Otherwise, as in a weedy garden, your ideas will not flourish like the beautiful flowers they were meant to be.

The New Year's Happiness Raffle

In your foyer, place a bowl filled with rolled-up slips of paper containing personal messages and poems of your own composition, and ask each guest to draw one as they come in.

A writer keeps a notebook to flush excess thoughts and maintain a clear mind.

Write without guilt. Paint without guilt.

Write and paint on the first day of the New Year, for what you do on that day subconsciously sets a trend for the rest of your year.

A Writer's Year-End Exercise

If you are keeping a journal, reflect on your previous year, a month at a time, from January to your present situation. Write one important thing you learned each month, coming up with a list of 36 (or less). Which three things helped you the most to grow mentally, emotionally, and spiritually?

Draw a pyramid of squares (bottom row, five squares, middle row, four squares, top row, three squares) and arrange your 12 lessons accordingly with the three most important things you learned on top.

Then draw three blank squares to complete the pyramid. Write, inside those squares, what you hope to attain in 2018.

Every story has a beginning, middle, and end. Once you have written its end, do not dredge it up again at some other time in the future. Otherwise it is a sign that you ended your story too soon and failed to reflect on it.

If you feel that you must rewrite your work, do so. It is the equivalent of a painter adjusting his composition, color combination, contrast, and/or tone.

Write as though your life and other people's lives are on the line.

Never be concerned about being published. Always be concerned about being read.

Every writer enjoys sitting alone in a coffee shop and watching all kinds of people go by.

In-Depth Writing Exercise #8: Merging With The Elements

This exercise sounds easier than it seems.

1. Should you happen to have four, small, translucent glass containers with lids:

--fill the first glass with potting soil (earth),
--the second with incense dust (air),
--the third with ashes (fire),
--the fourth with sand (water).

Should you have two more:

--fill the fifth glass with sawdust (wood),
--and the sixth with iron filings (metal/iron).

2. Place the bottles on your writing desk--the more decorative they look, of course, the better.

3. Do this exercise not at whim but whenever you seem to be stuck on a passage or a scene that you are writing.

4. Take the bottles one at a time, holding each bottle in your hands, merging with the element and then re-visualizing or mentally re-composing the passage or scene in your mind.

5. You will find that each element will "write" the scene or passage for you in a different and distinct way.

6. Go with the scene or passage that resonates within you most, like an inner bell, an inner chime, or an inner tuning fork.

7. Your choice may determine the dominant element in your particular piece of writing.

We write things down because it easier to edit our thoughts on paper than inside our minds.

Don't trash the immature stories, novels, and plays that you began to write when you were young. Years later, long after you have matured, they will reemerge like shining spears of crystal quartz and illuminate your oeuvre with brilliant works. 

If you seem stuck while writing your work, consider the same scene in a different setting.

Never write or paint without a clear vision of your work in your mind and in your heart.

Know how much stamina your mind and your body are capable of. If they are easily exhausted, rest often. Do not force yourself to continue writing or painting--your work will suffer aside from your mind and your body.

Successful and effective contemporary writing does not hinge on "new techniques", "new ideas", "gimmicks", or "young blood".

It hinges on the writer's ability to take timeless truths and present them within contemporary circumstances.

A good writer never rambles, in writing and in person.

Do you expend all of your energy, spend the best part of your day, and set aside a lot of time to consult others while you are writing your piece--AND THEN sit back flabbergasted when another writer simply turns his wrist and produces a masterpiece?

That is because you are writing from another person's truth, not your own.

Write from your own truth. It is as unique as your set of fingerprints.

Knowing language, its craft, and its nuances comprises 30% of the requirements for writing. Your powers of observation, capacity for reflection, insight, memory recall, and emotional truthfulness comprise 69%, while 1% goes to your enjoyment of using writing instruments, whether pen or paper or electronic media.

All of those combined constitute your talent.

A long as you have that, you need not copy other people's "styles". Your individual experience is your truth, and your truth is your writing.

Every work should present new challenges, unique ones that you've never encountered before. If you tend to produce the same work over and over, it means that you never met up to the old challenges to begin with and are still trying to master them.

Like painting, writing must be done in successive layers and glazes.

Write for the world because you write for yourself, keeping in mind that your own country and your family also read you.

There is really no such thing as lack of inspiration. As long as you are alive, you learn at least one interesting story everyday that can be developed into exciting, visual art or literature.

Dramaturgy for TheatreWorks: "Make Sure" by Clara

Hello Clara!

You submitted a well-written draft. If _Birth Days_ was a dramatic essay, "Make Sure" is a dramatic commentary. That these forms emerge in your oeuvre is definitely a result of your journalism. Here are my comments:

--The initial repartee between the GUARD and the DOCENT comes across as unreal, unless your intention is to write an absurd play a la Eugene Ionesco, which your work actually verges on.
--You are much better at writing in pure, straight English rather than mixing in Malay words for the GUARD's dialogue, unless you are intentionally portraying racial disconnect.
--Review your dialogue in favor of the spoken word, especially in your first few pages. I will give you only the first example I encountered: In Scene 1, Page 1, 9th Line from the Bottom, the GUARD says, "Please make sure you wear and display your sticker on your shirt at all times, while in the museum". If you omit the words and phrases in brackets--"Please [make sure you] wear [and display] your sticker [on your shirt] at all times[, while in the museum]", you will come up with "Please wear your sticker at all times", which is how it will be delivered in real life. I realize, of course, that your title is "Make Sure", so you could perhaps retain that.
--Exercise economy. Your play has too much art; it is almost like name-dropping.
--Your characters are not pleasant persons, so consider how that can actually alienate your audience.
--Your audience will be engaged only as late as Scene 5.
--The twist in Scene 8 is clever, but, after watching the play for the first time, will the audience want to watch it more than once, knowing that there is a twist in Scene 8?
--Over all, make up your mind as to what your play is focusing on: Absurdity of social norms? The value of breaking rigid rules? Authoritarianism and rebelliousness? Racial disconnect? The play dips in and out of those topics. As a result, the premise is unclear. For this one-act play, either go totally Absurd or totally Aristotelian.

Your work is promising, but ask yourself how many producers would actually take it and put it onstage. Otherwise it might be better off as a prose article.

Dramaturgy for TheatreWorks Singapore: _Birth Days_ by Clara

Hello Clara!

You did a wonderful job doing work and polishing your play after our session in Singapore. Your biggest advantage as a playwright is that you have unusually keen powers of observation, and are able to translate the information acquired by your senses to vivid poetry.

Here are my comments:

--Your work is not so much a play as a dramatic essay. Keep that genre in mind as you proceed to prepare it for reading.
--Always be mindful of the spoken word as opposed to the written word. Read your play aloud, audiotape yourself, and listen. For example, in Act 1 Scene 1, Page 1, Line 5, you have a line that goes "I'd stated that I was right". Delete "that" so that the line reads "I'd stated I was right". Say those two lines aloud. Isn't the second easier to project and to listen to?
--Act 2, Scene 1, Page 24 is set in an airport, and your character is on a travellator. Your producer will not spend money to construct a travellator onstage just for this one, transitory scene. Avoid cinematic visualizing. Be kind to your director and your production designer; make their jobs as easy for them as possible. Directors and production designers do not like working on problems the playwright creates for them--rather, they like taking a playwright's simple, straightforward work and challenging themselves by creating complex problems off it.
--Act 2, Scene 2, Page 33, Michael's entrance is contrived and seems out of a TV sitcom. The sound of a flushing toilet that precedes his entrance will only elicit laughter from the audience. Michael is only one man in a play filled with a bevy of women. I suggest that you cut him out and reveal his affair with Leng via exposition--either in a monologue or in dialogue between Sabine and her mother. As written in this play, Michael is a mere prop or cardboard cut-out. If you can't give a performer a substantial role, don't even write it. I have the same comment for the children Aiden and Isaac, who appear in only one scene and will only incur the production two additional talent fees. If you MUST have children there, though, change them to girls, thereby giving your play an all-female cast.
--All monologues: Study them carefully. A monologue isn't just a long-drawn speech to be delivered onstage. EVERY monologue must have a premise (conforming to the premise of the entire play), rising action, a climax, and a denouement. Note that any monologue that does not have these will tend to be boring and can actually be deleted--because anything that does not push the premise of the play forward should be deleted.
--Your wrap-up and ending are effective. However this will work only if, from the beginning of the play to the very end, ALL characters are seated in a circle round the main playing area. As such, there will be no entrances and no exits.

Overall, great work, and congratulations! This is a play that should be watched not only by every woman in Singapore but by every woman in the world.

Dramaturgy for TheatreWorks Singapore: _A Commitment_ by Ivan

Hello Ivan!

Your draft promises an interesting play. Be mindful, however, that the subject of gay marriages and gay partnerships has been tackled by other playwrights before; your play will shine only if it offers new, 21st-century insights. Here are my comments:

--Page 1, Line 5, Stage Direction, Top of Page: "at the bottom right corner" = "at the bottom right corner of the mirror"
--Always proofread your work. For example, Page 1, Line 1: "thought" = "taught". There are many other examples all throughout your work. A play with a lot of typos is like a photograph that is out of focus.
--You begin your play with parallel scenes depicting flashbacks and the present time. This is unfair to the persons performing the flashbacks. Their roles are not acting roles. The information they provide the audience is better off relayed as exposition.
--Consider visualizing the play without sets and props.
--Scene 10 is an abrupt flashback. How will the audience know this change in time if the players are the same players and of almost the same chronological ages as they are in the present time?
--Scene 11 is under-written and creates an aesthetic imbalance. Remember that you are writing a play, not a movie script that can employ long shots, close-ups, cut-to-cut shots, and a sound track.
--Finally, Scene 12 is the real beginning of the play. It is when the real dramatic crisis occurs, and it is as close to the climax as possible.

Do NOT be discouraged, Ivan. Mull over Scene 12 and see if you can propel the play from that scene onward without the use of flashbacks.

I look forward to the development of your play.

Dramaturgy for TheatreWorks Singapore: _Between the Lines_ by Danial

Hello Danial!

I enjoyed reading the draft you sent me. Here are my comments:

--A problem is dramatic only when something big is at stake, otherwise it is merely melodrama. You manifest unusual maturity in your writing, though, and I am certain that you can elevate the domestic issue you are writing about to a higher level. Depth in characterization is one way to do that; I can tell from what I have read so far that you are capable of doing it.

--Page 6, Line 13. ANDREW states that he gets to see his father only twice a year. Yet, on Page 9, Lines 12 and 19, SANDRA and MOTHER indicate that Danial gets to see his father on "weekends" and "some weekends".

--Page 12, First Stage Direction, Top of Page. In real life, a person administering a drawing test gives a subject a minimum of 30 minutes to complete his drawing. This gives allowance for the subject's anxiety and subconscious resistance--especially a subject who claims that he does not know how to draw.

--Page 12, Line 4. A 15-year-old boy will not draw a heart in the presence of a female psychiatrist, unless he has a crush on her. At that age, masculine power symbols (or broken power symbols, indicating impotence or frustration) would be more appropriate.

--Page 12, Line 9. ANDREW's narrative using the third person comes across as artificial or insincere.

--SANDRA is a mere foil. Do you intend to develop her character further? Other than being a psychiatrist and friend, what is her emotional investment in this play?

--Do we get to see the father at all, or will he be absent all throughout the play? If you intend to work him in, he should make an appearance as early as possible, in order to balance your orchestration of characters.

Overall, your point of attack is good and your dialogue is also excellent.

I very much look forward to the completion of your work.

Only when you proofread your work does it become a precious gem.

Dramaturgy for TheatreWorks: _WFTH_ by Yvonne

Hello Yvonne!

Your play is very refreshing and very intriguing.

My comments:

--Develop the first scene completely. Until you do so, your play will proceed with fits and starts.
--Page 5, End of Page: Marlon's dialogue is missing.
--Page 6, Third to Last Line: Is one X missing? Since your play is not yet fully written I have no idea what these Xs mean. Are these literally dialogue Xs or are they variables for something you still have not decided on?
--Page 7, Line 3: Are two Xs missing? The reader will tend to view all this as a cryptic puzzle.
--Page 8, Top of Page: Marlon's dialogue is missing.
--Settings are not clear. By Page 8, Ana should already be under arrest and Marlon should already be working deep into the case--this is what will propel your play forward rather than everyone waiting in agony for things to happen.
--Thrust your characters and their premise in the faces of your audiences. They will not know what is going on if, well into the scenes, they still do not know who the characters are and why they are there. 

Dramaturgy for TheatreWorks Singapore: _The Book of Mothers_ by Eleanor

Hello Eleanor!

You have a wonderful beginning for an interesting, feminist play. I wish you the stamina to carry the whole thing through.

Here are my comments:

--Scene One, Line 7: Unless your male character is offbeat, I find it inappropriate that he volunteers to tell someone about his wife's pregnancy. It is usually the woman who hogs that privilege. As a general rule men do not announce their wife's pregnancy to anyone because, psychologically: 1) he has a subliminal sense of guilt about the pregnancy; 2) he will initially be in denial because of the concomitant responsibilities implied by the pregnancy;  3) he will subconsciously ask himself whether he will make a good father; and 4) it is another goodbye to a comfortable, predictable life, the first goodbye being to bachelorhood and the second goodbye to being only a husband and not yet a father.
--When you write a play, you tend to think in terms of scenes you like; this will result in a disjointed play. Write the first scene as thoroughly as you can with your premise constantly in mind--afterward, allow the play to write itself from there without having to conform to the zinger lines and scenes that play themselves in your mind.
--This is the kind of play that hinges on the right balance and orchestration of characters. Otherwise it is better written as a complex monologue that employs supporting roles that revolve like satellites round a single protagonist.

Dramaturgy for TheatreWorks Singapore: Untitled by Eve

Hello Eve!

The draft you submitted promises to be an intense, emotional drama.

Here are my comments:

--It is interesting that in all the four scenes that you wrote so far, there is a box-like item that represents death and life: a coffin, a box on a trolley, a cardboard box of discarded treasures, and a TV set.
--Avoid cinematic treatment. Did you make a makeshift model of your stage? That is meant precisely to prevent cinematic treatment, by forcing you to visualize the action on your makeshift model.
--Avoid very short scenes. Why are short scenes unfair to the performer? Because he cannot step onstage and adequately develop emotional truth in a trice. By the time he achieves truth you are already calling a blackout and a scene change.

I look forward to the completion of this work.

Dramaturgy for TheatreWorks Singapore: "Duet" by Wisely

Hello Wisely!

Your manuscript is a complete vignette in itself.

Here are my comments:

--The play came out as a vignette rather than as a one-act play because the subject matter, although charming and successfully engaging, can go no further once the act of consummation is over.
--You have an excellent ear for dialogue. Develop it.
--Avoid cinematic treatment. Remember that you are writing for the stage.
--Do not write for a school audience.
--Discipline yourself to write longer pieces with more depth. Go for the one-act play, for starters. Vignettes are mere curtain-raisers or entre'-act fare. Write not only for yourself and people your age but for a wider audience range as well. You can do this and rivet your audience even if your characters are young--as young as the playwright or even younger--as was done by Rumer Godden in Battle of the Villa Fiorita. Ask yourself, what makes a play about young characters come across to the world as mature work?

Dramaturgy for TheatreWorks Singapore: Untitled by Wisely

Hello Wisely!

You submitted an interesting beginning for a play.

Here are my comments based on what I read:

--As I advised everyone during the workshop, try to avoid writing dialogue in terms of questions and answers. A character speaks because he NEEDS to, not because he wants information or wants to give it.
--The entrance of a new character should never be employed simply to provide exposition either for the audience or for the characters who are already onstage.
--Your pair begins with two pairs of characters with apparently two different sets of problems. It is not yet clear to me whether the two pairs of characters and their problems will illustrate one premise or two premises.
--I will not discourage you from pursuing the theme of sexual experience or exploration. A writer really learns from trial and error. Let me just mention here that seasoned playwrigtss like Tennessee Williams and Eugene O'Neill have tackled the subject matter in the light of the psychology of Sigmund Freud, but some of their works come across as intellectually immature.

Keep on writing. I will be there and guide you through it all.

We marvel at writers' recorded experiences and insights, but every writer has secrets he will never put into words and that he will take with him to the grave.

Mens Sana In Corpore Sano

Do not avoid activities associated with mesomorphs. Take up a sport, exercise daily, or go regularly to gym. A healthy body promotes a healthy mind--one that you need to continue producing creative works.

Never dash off a poem or a painting and attribute them to flashes of inspiration. Every work you create, no matter how long or how short, must be well thought out and laid down as perfectly as possible. In a manner of speaking, every work should not only contain the esthetic foundation and philosophical spine of your oeuvre, it should also contain the entire essence of your life from your birth to the present time.

When a writer does not articulate his thoughts in written words, his mind explodes.

Every epic novel begins with a single sentence, and that is what you should dare to write.

When not writing, read.

Never go with cardboard or plastic folders for your personal use. Your creative writing is not for an office or school, and you deserve better than those.

Know this, that a writer's voice is always heard, even if the whole world shuns him.

Old athletes can be replaced by young athletes, but old artists cannot be replaced by young artists.

Be able to distinguish between a theater piece and a play.

The former is visual art, the latter literature.

Stainless steel pen nibs are wonderful. They outlive their users and last for generations.

Writing and painting are seasonal activities for many, so do not get distraught during the times that you are unable to do either or both.

A fountain pen is a magic wand and can be used as such, other than for writing.

Be thankful to be a playwright. You will tend to outlive directors and performers due to the comparatively minimal physical stress your work demands.

It is more productive to write and to paint than to sulk and to play solitaire.

Every writer obsessed with psychology discovers words within words.

Always master yourself, your subject matter, your medium, and your audience--in that particular order.

To improve your penmanship, think word by word as you write rather than of an entire sentence or paragraph.

Before writing, consider the entire sentence or paragraph, then descend from the macroscopic to the microscopic level.

Since a playwright is a thinker of society, he/she must always be inclusive and never exclusive.

If your readers cannot comprehend your first few sentences, they will read no further and abandon you.

We write and we paint to partially describe, with each work, the dream life that we have, hoping to complete its description with our oeuvre before we die, and hoping that it will be a good legacy to leave to those who can step back and comprehend all of it in its entirety.

When writing a play, don't just write. Visualize.

A vision is nothing if it is not put into words or pictures.

Writing from The Heart Workshop For TheatreWorks Singapore (May 29 - June 4, 2017)

https://www.facebook.com/pg/tHEATREwORKS.Sg/photos/?tab=album&album_id=1943590879221429

Never write, rewrite, or revise a play before bedtime. It will give you insomnia

It is always difficult to rewrite and revise a play because, in doing so, you go through all of the emotions in the play all over again.

A playwright must always write from a state of emotion, because emotion is the foundation of dramatic dialogue.

That is why in a workshop, after an emotional truth exercise, I immediately lead the participants into a writing session.

Everyone who is prone to road rage should try it. It is an effective way of taking emotion to a higher level by means of the defense mechanism sublimation.

The writing on the wall can always be revised.

When inflamed with anger and you want to calm down, write with a blue pen.

The literal has no meaning until you look beyond it.

A writer without passion is a beautiful kite without wind.

There is nothing like black ink, especially very black ink, though you should keep other colors in reserve for stimulus and for variety.