Hello playwrights! Ready to jump into the next challenge? If you need a refresher on what we’re up to this month, check out the challenge description. I will post the daily writing exercises or play discussions each morning, but if you are an even earlier riser than I am or want to work out of order or work ahead, I will also post the exercises ahead of time here.
So without further ado, here is the first exercise in our Week 1 Beginner’s Playwriting Workshop:
Day 1 – Setting: Explore several settings, at least one public and one private. Also try to find one setting that is unfamiliar to you. Concentrate on the physical setting; filter out any people or activities. Using all five senses, jot down as many details as possible. Now do this again, from memory, for a setting from your past. From the lists, write two short descriptions, one for a setting you observed and one for a setting from your memory. Adapted from The Playwright’s Handbook, by Frank Pike and Thomas G. Dunn (Revised Edition, 1996).
Some thoughts on this. Remember that theater is a collaborative art. Keep your setting descriptions lean, including only the essential details. If you describe every last thing, you deprive future set designers or theater companies the ability to interpret what you have written in their own ways. You’ll notice the setting description in this week’s reading “Death of a Salesman” is only a page long. It is also the only setting description in the whole play. The details are chosen carefully. (“As more light appears, we see a solid vault of apartment houses around the small, fragile-seeming home.” … “On a shelf over the bed a silver athletic trophy stands.”)
[updated]
Here are the two settings I came up with:
Present Setting: The Arrowhead Café
A small coffee shop, door in front, counter in back. Against one wall is a worn leather couch and battered coffee table. A large sign spells “COFFEE” in old-fashioned round lightbulbs. Half a dozen tables for two with mismatched chairs are scattered around a long studio table with reclaimed pews for benches. A tinkling bell over the door can be heard over the growl and sputter of the espresso machine. A newspaper is snapped open. There is a dull roar of conversation, the soft flurried keystrokes of someone typing on a laptop, and the clink of spoons and cups against saucers. In a bowl by the register are craft items for purchase, some hats and scarves knitted from yarn thick as macaroni noodles. The place smells of fresh-ground coffee, ginger and turmeric tea. The sugared tops of scones on a footed plate sparkle in the light above the cash register.
Past Setting: Home for the Holidays
A dark paneled living room is crowded with furniture: a worn sofa and La-Z-Boy chair joined by a dozen or so stools, ottomans, and folding chairs. The carpet is an old remnant, in a busy pattern that matches nothing. The dual focal points of the room are a small wood-burning stove in one corner, framed by two dozen or more red stockings, and, next to it, a squat fir tree loaded with vintage ornaments and lights and dwarfed by piles of presents. On a little Formica bar rest a jug of eggnog, a metal nutcracker, and assorted finger foods: bowls of nuts, cocktail shrimp and sauce, toothpicked party wieners, heaping platters of Christmas cookies under tight-wrapped cellophane. There is laughter in the kitchen next door. A dog whines to be let out. The door to the kitchen, just visible at the edge of the stage, opens and closes with a whoosh. Clinking six-packs of Coca-Cola bottles are produced and distributed to squealing children. It’s almost time to begin.