Stagecraft: The Art and Joy of Writing Plays and Musicals
As a kid actor, I grew up in the theater, so it is natural that I should be attracted to writing plays and musicals. You may have never thought about it. It’s rewarding, even as an exercise. In plays, you have the visual of what is happening onstage and the spoken words to tell the story. Nothing more. No getting inside one’s head. No making writer asides or sharing information with the audience other than what comes from a character’s mouth. Even if playwrighting is not an aspiration, it is an incredible exercise in making your fictional dialogue meaningful and content-rich.
As we explore writing for the theater, for those of you who might wish to try your skills at writing a one-act play or even a full-blown musical, I will discuss what makes theater good, pleasant, and even awe-inspiring. As an actor, I have been in some excellent productions. I have also been in complete duds that I knew would be duds, but my contract and professional standards would not let me withdraw from them. I remember being in a show once, and Mark Hamill (of Star Wars fame) told me afterward, “Clay, that has to be the worst production I think I’ve ever seen.” He was right. I was shamed. (Though it was one of my life's most professionally funny moments.) Thankfully, the show closed soon.
So, knowing that bad plays and musicals are as easy to write as good plays and musicals, let’s write a good play. A good play follows the rules of all good writing: great craft and attention to detail, edits, edits, and more edits, well-thought-out choices, and – most importantly (you’ve heard me say this before) – your own voice. Everything I’ve been sharing with you over the months relating to fiction and other forms of writing applies to writing a good play or musical.
Before we start writing, let’s consider who writes what. For a straight play, you’ll only need to write the script. We’ll presume that you can do that. The script will be called the book if you're writing a musical. Musicals also have some other elements. A musical will have music and lyrics, of course. You might need a co-writer for this if you aren’t musically or lyrically inclined. We’ll talk more about getting cowriters later. For the entire musical, you’ll need the book, the lyrics, and the music. The book and the lyrics together are called the libretto. The lyrics and the music together are called the score.
So, we’ll jump more into specifics and details in a future post, but this gives you a starting place for the elements involved. It’s an exhilarating exercise to tell a story with only dialogue and developing that skill will help you tremendously no matter what other forms of writing you are doing. I encourage you to think about it. Start your ambitions with a one-act play. A one-act play is a short play that usually lasts between 10 and 30 minutes and has a single plot, setting, theme, and a limited number of characters. (By the way, a play tends to run around 10,000 to 12,000 words per hour, whereas a musical tends to run 8,000 to 10,000 words per hour.) So, until we continue our discussion in future posts, think about a simple story you might want to tell that fits the above criteria. All your writing will benefit from this exercise, and, who knows, you might see your name on stage!
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