In The Green Room with Patrick Rainville Dorn | Pioneer Drama

Politically Incorrect Plays and Characters

Thu, 07 Sep 2006 10:24:45 -0400

Theatre has always pushed the envelope when it comes to treating shocking and sometimes disturbing subjects.

“Oedipus Rex” is a tragedy about incest. “Tartuffe” satirizes religious hypocrites. “Fiddler on the Roof” takes on arranged marriages and the persecution of Russian Jews.

Playwrights and directors should be encouraged to stage productions that raise important social questions. Sometimes the arts can help people sort through controversial subjects and grow in their world view.

But shock value isn’t necessarily a gauge of quality. Sometimes changing tastes and sensitivities render a formerly harmless subject or character unacceptable to audiences. This is especially true with comedies.

Forty years ago, Jerry Lewis used to make audiences howl with laughter by playing a squinty-eyed, buck-toothed, heavily accented Japanese character. Nowadays, no one laughs at that kind of racial stereotyping. But sophisticated audiences seem to have no trouble enjoying the outrageously flamboyant, swishing and lisping homosexual characters in Mel Brooks’ “The Producers.” Why is that?

I can remember a time when no-fault divorce and “blended families” became all the rage, and any fairy tale with a “wicked stepmother” was considered politically incorrect. At one time there was a whole sub-genre of “hillbilly” plays, poking fun at uneducated, unwashed mountain folk. The makers of Disney’s “Pocahontas” went to great lengths to portray Native Americans in a positive light, but weren’t the least bit concerned about negatively depicting the British characters as hopelessly clichéd and offensive stereotypes. The Uncle Remus “Brer Rabbit” animal stories provide wonderful insights into human nature, but the use of a slave-based “negro dialect,” greatly praised when the stories came out in the 1880s, is problematic today.

Hopefully responsible directors will think twice about choosing a comedy about a “drunken Irishman” or a “promiscuous priest.” But what about “dumb blondes,” “gangsta rappers” and “surfer dudes”? Are they still fair game?

It all boils down to the play’s comedic spirit. Many, perhaps even most comedies get their laughs by degrading a person’s basic human dignity, by having supposedly adult people act like juveniles, by cutting people down, putting them in embarrassing situations or insulting them. It’s a cheap kind of laugh, and there’s really very little good that comes from that kind of humor.

My favorite kind of humor, which I like even better than puns, one-liners, and jokes, is the kind that comes from honest and respectful insights into human nature. Rather than shaming a character or turning someone into an object to be scorned, this kind of humor makes the characters more endearing, even with their faults and idiosyncrasies.

Will Rogers was an expert at this life-giving kind of comedy. Bill Cosby “gets it.” You can see it in some of Neil Simon’s plays, where comedic friction is developed between well-meaning people who are trying to work together or get along. In my new play “Babushka’s Gift,” now available through Pioneer, I have a character who is inept as a husband and father. But during the course of the play, he learns to compensate for his shortcomings, and can laugh along with others at his attempts to get it right.

Maybe it can all be summed up by asking whether an audience “laughs at” or “laughs with” the characters. Specific character types go in and out of fashion. Humane comedies don’t do anyharm, and often we’re better off because of them.

Early Stages: Beginning the Playwriting Process

Tue, 15 Aug 2006 12:17:59 -0400

Part Three

In my newly begun stage adaptation of "Rip Van Winkle," Knickerbocker enters an empty village looking for a story. A "dog" comes out and ignores her. (The dog later becomes a "player" in the Rip Van Winkle tale.) A female tavern keeper (work as many female roles in as possible!) appears suddenly, startling Knickerbocker. Just as suddenly, a host of villagers appear, ready and willing to act out the story of Rip Van Winkle's encounter with the 18th century equivalent of "The Twilight Zone."

All of a sudden I knew that the play would end with Knickerbocker alone again in the deserted village, realizing that all the villagers had been spirits, and that the collector of legends had been invited to participate in her own ghost story! This theatrical device "bookends" the Rip Van Winkle story, and opens the door for all kinds of possibilities, while making the actual process of laying out the story much easier. Actors can double roles easily, females could have a bigger part to play in the action, scene changes can be narrated and accomplished in full view of the audience, the Hudson ghosts didn't have to be actual ghosts (or dwarves), etc. Eureka! I'd found the key to adapting the story into a unified, entertaining play.

In one day, I wrote the "set-up" for the Rip Van Winkle story/play, and got the villagers onstage. I keep the short story open next to my computer, read and re-read paragraphs, picture how it might work onstage, and then let my inner voice start dictating the dialogue as I watch the play unfold in my imagination. I instinctively sense when a joke or piece of comical business is needed, and when a scene has gone on long enough. Each sequence has its own rhythm.

As I write, I keep a running tally of how many lines each villager has. Pioneer wants a minimum of 10 lines per actor. So I started with five villagers, and I'll keep adding more once they've reached the quota. Named characters will emerge from the group, so a narrator may become Rip's daughter for a scene (and also have 10 lines), then go back to the ensemble. This means a director can add extras or double up parts, depending on the size of the available cast. This worked really well for "Blather, Blarney and Balderdash," which can have a cast of 15-60!

So far I've written three pages of dialogue, which is a little less than six minutes. I've established the context of the show, and introduced the Rip Van Winkle character in relationship to the environment and the townspeople. In the next scene we'll meet his nagging wife, then it's off to the hills for his ghostly encounter with Hudson. I usually write 2-3 pages per day, and when I'm in the "groove," I write about 6-10 pages per week. "Rip Van Winkle" will be 30 pages or less (closer to 20), so after revision and editing, it'll be ready to workshop in about a month.

But before I get into all that, I think it's time for a nap!

Early Stages: Beginning the Playwriting Process, part 2

Mon, 24 Jul 2006 15:23:39 -0400

Once I'd decided to take a crack at adapting the "Rip Van Winkle" story into a play, it was time to do a little research.

I searched the Pioneer Drama Service online catalog, and found that they do not currently carry a "Rip Van Winkle" adaptation. I ran a search at www.findaplay.com and discovered that only four publishers had versions. So on the one hand, I identified a potential "hole" in the Pioneer offerings (don't try to send Pioneer a "Cinderella," they've got 10 different versions!), with a well-known story and title, and a little but not too much competition with other publishers, so I felt the market was ready for a new, hip "Rip."

I read the story, which is only about 20 pages long (a good length for a one-act adaptation!) very carefully, noting the locations, the principal characters, the plot and the thematic arc of the story. I ran an online search for "Rip Van Winkle" and came up with a study guide, biographical information on the author, illustrations from various printed versions of the story, and even a download of a 1906 silent film version filmed at Thomas Edison's studio and starring the legendary 19th century mega-star Joseph Jefferson!

In the original story, Washington Irving provides an interesting lead-in to the actual tale, introducing a fictional Diedrich Knickerbocker, a collector of folk tales and legends, who purportedly had recorded and verified the Rip Van Winkle story. The Knickerbocker character (who I immediately changed into a female "Diedre") was going to be my "outsider," the one who goes looking for a story, and finds a play.

Since the villagers "tell" (and act out) the story of Rip Van Winkle for Knickerbocker, I knew I would add numerous gender-neutral townspeople as narrators/storytellers, and maintain a theatrical element that allows for my broad style of physical humor, quirky characters and fast dialogue.

Now I felt ready to begin writing. I created the file with all the proper formatting, wrote out the set description so I'd have a clear mental picture on which to stage the show in my imagination, and began listing the cast of characters. I wrote a quick sentence outline listing the "scenes" or "encounters" for the story, and key characters.

I decided to make the "liquor" into enchanted (non-alcoholic) cherry cider dispensed from a flat, cut-out "barrel," thereby downplaying the drinking element. So now all the barriers to writing "Rip Van Winkle" were down, and I was ready to get to the real work, which is writing the play itself.

In The Green Room with Patrick Rainville Dorn | Pioneer Drama

Politically Incorrect Plays and Characters

See Also

Early Stages: Beginning the Playwriting Process

See Also

Early Stages: Beginning the Playwriting Process, part 2

See Also