the monkey manifesto: adventure

information removal

An idea posited, a venue explored.
So the majority of plays out there are chock full of important, relevant design clues. Stage directions as it were. Sometimes, this information comes to us directly from the playwright, sometimes it's the Stage Manager's notes from the very first production. It tells us place and time. Who the characters are and what they do. It can tell us lighting cues or scenic touches, costume colors and fabrics. What the kitchen looks like or the garden or the night sky. Strange effects and colorful projections. Scene titles or what the act should evoke. Some writers fill this out like a novel; they see a clear picture in their head and they write it out word for word. Some Stage Managers fill this out like a manual; they copy the look of the set, lights, costumes, and blocking verbatim.
Manual
Novel
A play is neither of these.

What if the playwright, after finishing the play, removed every bit of extraneous information outside of the dialogue. If it isn't dialogue, take it out.

Instead of this opus of information that Eugene O'Neill gives us in Ah, Wilderness!:

TOMMY -- (calls back pleadingly) Aw, I'm full, Ma. And I said excuse me and you said all right. (His FATHER'S VOICE is heard speaking to his mother. Then she calls: "All right, Tommy," and TOMMY asks eagerly) Can I go out now?
MOTHER'S VOICE -- (correctingly) May I!
TOMMY -- (fidgeting, but obediently) May I, Ma?
MOTHER'S VOICE -- Yes. (TOMMY jumps for the screen door to the porch at right like a sprinter released by the starting shot.)
FATHER'S VOICE -- (shouts after him) But you set off your crackers away from the house, remember! (But TOMMY is already through the screen door, which he leaves open behind him.)

(A moment later the family appear from the back parlor, coming from the dining-room. First are MILDRED and ARTHUR. MILDRED is fifteen, tall and slender, with big, irregular features, resembling her father to the complete effacing of any pretense at prettiness. But her big, gray eyes are beautiful; she has vivacity and a fetching smile, and everyone thinks of her as an attractive girl. She is dressed in shirtwaist and shirt in the fashion of the period.

(ARTHUR, the eldest of the Miller children who are still living home, is nineteen. He is tall, heavy, barrel-chested and muscular, the type of football linesman of that period, with a square, stolid face, small blue eyes and thick sandy hair. His manner is solemnly collegiate. He is dressed in the latest college fashion of that day, which has receded a bit from the extreme of preceding years, but still runs to padded shoulders and pants half pegged at the top, and so small at their wide-cuffed bottoms that they cannot be taken off with shoes on.)

MILDRED -- (as they appear -- inquisitively) Where are you going today, Art?

Now look at it again with all of O'Neill's Stage Directions removed.

TOMMY -- Aw, I'm full, Ma. And I said excuse me and you said all right.
MOTHER'S VOICE -- All right, Tommy
TOMMY -- Can I go out now?
MOTHER'S VOICE -- May I!
TOMMY -- May I, Ma?
MOTHER'S VOICE -- Yes.
FATHER'S VOICE -- But you set off your crackers away from the house, remember!
MILDRED -- Where are you going today, Art?

Now, personally, I think the second scene is much more evocative. There's nothing wrong with the dictations of O'Neill, but the second scene conjures up a better scene. I read the first version, and I see the stage in one way with the characters in one way. I may see the screen door Stage Right or Stage Left, but there's still a screen door. In the second reading, Tommy might swing away on a rope or scale a giant ladder. Mother and Father's voices could be recordings, as they sit on stage. Perhaps Mildred is there from the beginning, perhaps she isn't there at all. There are greater design and acting possibilities with the second reading. The first is too stifling. But perhaps that's just me. I have been steeped in the works of Robert Wilson for the last month

I think I'd like to try something like this. In fact, I've already scripted out a short ten-page two-hander (read: a play with only two characters) called The Two Claudes. I may put it up here in the next few days. As the playwright of the piece, with this concept in mind, I fixated on the dialogue. I attempted to create a situation in a void; a situation with limitless design opportunities.

Any interested parties?