Ben Musgrave won first prize in the Bruntwood during the first competition and his play PRETEND YOU HAVE BIG BUILDINGS went on to be produced at the Royal Exchange. To read more about Ben, click here.
Some of the most marvellous experiences in theatre are those that happen on the level of the scene – those moments when we’re lost deep in the play, when the lights are burning down hot on actors, when we can feel their hearts thump. And then a character does something remarkable. Something awful, something wonderful, something entirely unexpected. Some action occurs: she kisses him, he forgives her, she plucks his eyes out. Sometimes the purest kind of writing doesn’t care about the ‘overall scheme’ of the play, it cares only about the moment it is in. The purest kind of theatre doesn’t plan, doesn’t need graphs depicting diagonals of rising tension – instead it responds instinctively (viciously, carefully, shockingly) to what has happened in the previous instant.
Exercise: Flow
- Choose two characters from your play. They are going to meet. This need not be a scene from your actual play.
- Where are they?
- What are they carrying?
- What was the darkest dream they had last night?
- What would they like to do the other character?
- Now write 20 lines of dialogue, very fast, beginning a scene in which your characters meet. Write very fast – write the very first thing your brain throws up, even if it’s rude or boring or rubbish. A physical character-action in stage directions counts as a line of dialogue.
i love this tip, its great and works well! Too true and quite eerie to be so exact, the third idea stayed!