Examining What I'm Looking For

I got an email in yesterday along with a submission that asked a simple question.

How do I evaluate plays?
This is a great question, what I look at when reading a script? Naturally all reading is subjective, so I may not like something that others rave about. Is it good? There a lot of plays that no one can agree on. How can I say something I don't like is any good? In many ways this is continues with what I've previously wrote.

I have a hard time subscribing to any hard and fast rules to play writing. Name one rule and I can probably think of at least one really good play (if not many) that breaks said rules. I like to think of buoys. I grew up in Michigan, and there is a lot of water there, so water metaphors are pretty easy for me. If you're not familiar with the geography of the US, Michigan is surrounded by the Great Lakes, which accounts for one-fifth of the freshwater in the world. Like I said, there is a lot of water. I now live in Chicago which is also on one of the Great Lakes (Lake Michigan.) Anyway . . . I like the idea of buoys because they float and move with the water, but stay nearly in the same area. As time and tastes change, the buoys adjust accordingly, so they are neither fixed or constantly in motion. They also mark a line you can follow through the water. So here are some of the buoys I think of when reading, though I'm sure there are some I will forget. Some are learned from experience, some learned from others.

Is it alive or is it boring?
This is number one. Do I want to keep reading it? (Note: I do regardless, I feel a responsibility to finish.) If there is one sin in theatre it is being boring. There can be many plays I don't personally like what they are saying that work very well on stage, for example after seeing The Pain and The Itch at Steppenwolf (I didn't get to see it), my wife was angry. Ready to storm out angry. Three days later she was still angry, though she knew how great it had been to illicit such a strong response from her. Likability isn't my main criteria. Great scripts can be boring in a bad production, but I know of none that bored me when reading it, that aren't boring on stage.

Why do I care?
There are an infinite number of reasons I could care about what story a script is telling. If there is not one single reason, we have a problem.

Story?
I believe that theatre is rooted in storytelling. There are many ways a story can be told. Shakespeare and Sarah Kane had two vastly different ways, but both writers are telling a story. But if there's nothing there, what's the point?

What's the Point?
There are an infinite number of reasons I could care about what story a script is telling. If I can't find any, we have a problem.

More than "Real Life"
I love the quote from Jennifer Fawcett (h/t Slay on Theatreforte) from someone she was trying to get to go see a show: “Why would I go to the theatre to see my life? My life’s a piece of shit.” Real life is boring.

Is it Possible?
I fully believe that almost nothing is impossible on a stage with a little imagination. It is not possible for a single actor to go from being fully nude on a bed, to fully dressed in an office, to dancing in a swinging hanging cage in a three minute span.

Unity-Follows the rules?
Above I said I don't believe in set rules for play writing. Here I'm not speaking of the classical rules of unity, of act structure, etc. I believe a play should follow it's own rules. If the world of the play allows for Unitarian space robots, OK. I find it problematic when a show is The Cherry Orchard for an hour and a half and out of nowhere the last thirty minutes is Fat Men in Skirts.

A Voice?
Is there a voice? This one is hard to define. If there are no stories that haven't been told, than how can one be original? That question has been fairly well vetted by now, I'm sure you can occupy a few years reading about it. Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery but why would I want to see/do/read a knockoff of Mamet, when I could just as easily see/do/read something by Mamet. This may be the hardest one to judge. There are many great writers who have written crappy plays, especially early in their careers. If you look at Shakespeare, who after all is the one held up highest, King John is not a very good play, but in it you can see the writer who would become great.

Is it Ready Yet?
This is a tough one. I think one of the problems with many new scripts is they are so polished that any life has been removed. But there are times that a script is not ready. How do I make that judgment? I have a hard time telling a writer what words to write. I've seen this in a lot of staged reading talk backs, someone tells the writer how a play should end. When I ask if it's ready, I mean more are there things that are unnecessarily unclear. If we didn't know why Willy Loman kills himself, there's a problem. I don't think every thing has to be perfectly spelled out, but if events come out of the blue and don't make sense, then somethings amiss.

My Gut
Subjective, yes. Effective, more often than not. I remember reading about one of the great baseball managers. He relied solely on his gut for making decisions. When he was asked how he could do that he said, in effect, forty years of professional baseball had taught his gut pretty well. I'm not quite that old yet, but my "gut" or instincts in a lot of ways are simply distilled experience that I can't consciously point a finger to, at that moment.

These are some of the things I look for when reading new scripts. Different people look for different things, and I'm sure there are other things I'm forgetting. (In a future post I'll try to look at what I do once I've finished a script.)

What do you look for when reading/evaluating a new script?