So, to be completely honest- I'm not really sure what I learned about playwriting from reading these dialogues. I guess as a newbie to plays in general, dialogue is the one part of a play that everybody knows about already.
However, I did notice a few things- one of which being how differently actors are required to speak off of lines written for them, compared to how we speak every day. Just in the scene from Importance of Being Earnest, the first line asks"do you allude me...?"
Not once in my life has it occurred to me to pose a question like that.
Furthermore, I think that the humor in these scenes is well thought out and planned. As the majority of these scenes are based off of life experiences, I did spend my time wondering if they HAD happened- how would we have actually spoken it? And- is it a good thing that we strive to change the way that we talk in front of an audience or does it open up a larger question of our society? Now I know that if we did speak 'normally' in front of an audience it would probably be dead dull- but why do we listen to each other then? We must be saying something of interest. I know that I'm beginning to get a little off topic, but while I was reading these were a few of the questions I was asking myself.
I have to admit that while I chose a scene from Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, a favorite of mine- I enjoyed reading Below the Waist the most- absolutely bizarre and entertaining. Maybe that's a secret to writing dialogues...
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Bizarre and entertaining as the secret to good dialogue is an interesting suggestion Susan. Surely it works if you are writing a bizarre and entertaining play. Usually you probably aren't though. You ask an interesting question: why, if our ordinary speech to one another would be so boring on stage, do we even listen to each other? It's a funny question, and there are lots of answers about stage realism vs. real life, but I think the simplest answer is because you care about the "characters" in real life -- one is you and the others are loved ones -- whereas until they make you do so, you don't care about or even know about the characters on stage. So one of the goals of dialogue is to give you all that history and backstory, or at least the feel of it, so that you care about the people in the play too.
ReplyDeleteAside from all that, The Importance of Being Earnest is 100-plus years old, so that's at least some of why they don't talk like you.
Bizzare and entertaining is the secret to my life. I agree with Laurie's comments on ordinary life in plays onstage. I wonder what would happen if someone out of the blue wrote a play told exactly how we talked. Would anyone go to it? Would anyone care? But in real life do we listen to each other? Again a poignant message that you portray. I always wonder when people ask others, "How are you doing," do they really care the answer? If the answer is good than that's great but if it isn't we don't really want people to talk to us about their crappy days. Or when someone says, "Sup?" Answer is always not much. Boring
ReplyDeletei really liked how you conquered the idea of people speaking in real life versus people speaking on the stage. it is interesting because the most successful plays consist of dialogue which we wouldn't normally use in real life, however,when we are watching these plays we never once think "oh that sounds fake" Instead we are completely immersed in the scene. however, if a play were to put up dialogue which people actually say in real life (for example what Laurie said about taking a tape recorder and recording conversation between two people) it would come across as completely boring and unrealistic on stage. so.....the moral of the story being: one must use dialogue which is not real in order to make a play realistic on stage.
ReplyDeleteWhile characters must speak lines written for them I believe that most playwrights are trying to recreate real life, or as close to real life while still being interesting.
ReplyDeleteI feel that many things we read are real life experniences, or characters are taken from real life, at least in part.