Notes on Mayo Simon's "The Audience and the Playwright"
While nominally written for the audience, this is one of the wisest books about writing for the theater that I have ever found and I consider it essential reading. The notes are organized under the following topics:
- Overview
- Beginnings, Middles, Ends
- Two Worlds, Inner and Outer Stories
- Urgency, Precious Moments
- Character
- Contrasts and Paired Characters
- Knowing When to Laugh
- Direct Expression of Emotion
- Creating a Sense of Time Passing
- Misdirection, Turning Points
- Ends
- Summary: Six important ideas
The Audience and the Playwright: How to Get the Most Out of Live Theatre
By Mayo Simon
Applause Theater and Cinema Books, 2003
By Mayo Simon
Applause Theater and Cinema Books, 2003
OVERVIEW
“In the theater, the imagined is more powerful than the observed.” (p.37)
- All playwrights everywhere have had to deal with the same problem—how to keep [the audience] in their seats—which they have all solved the same way, by giving the audience a powerful role.” (p.23-24)
- It is out of your desire to understand that the playwright constructs your role. It’s not easy. If he gives you too much to do, you’ll get annoyed, too little and you’ll start inventing your own role, which usually means laughing at the wrong lines, or thinking about business or sex or dinner. But when the playwright gets it just right, you play your part eagerly and with great pleasure.
- “The strength of the audience’s desire to understand can be measured by the playwright’s use of the tactic of withholding. The playwright tantalizes, teases, even frustrates in order to raise the stakes, to make you care more and more about reaching that final moment of illumination.” (p.22)
- Entertainment is based on understanding. You don’t laugh at the joke until you ‘get it.’
- “In the ordinary world you rarely get any kind of vision. Life is too confused, too messy, too many unknowns, too much background noise. It’s in the theatre that you get a chance to see clearly. Theatre clarifies life.”
- “A play, taken as a whole, may be seen as an exercise in misdirection, as it moves from illusion to reality, from innocence to knowledge.
- Why design a whole play this way? Why not move directly to reality? Then the play would be no play, and there would be no place for you. No privileged seat and nothing for you to know that they don’t. No detective work and no analysis. No caring for the innocent and vulnerable who live by their illusions while you see reality. No raising the stakes to heighten fear and hope. No chance for you to choose sides, to become an advocate, to get invested in someone’s life. No pleasure in uncovering the truth. [etc] (p. 129-130)
- “The basic rule of thumb in playwriting is to give the audience more rather than less information.” p.145)
“In the theater, the imagined is more powerful than the observed.” (p.37)
- Avoid showing sex (embarrassing), and violence (seems unbelievable).
- Don’t try to make theater a window on a realistic world – that is the province of film
- “In the 1950s, plays began trying to imitate films using multiple sets on turntables and levels. That only emphasized what the stage was not—a window on everything. Now the stage has learned something much more important from film—how to create fluid changes of time and space without distinct entrances and exits, and this has given rise to whole new techniques for storytelling.” (p.39)
BEGINNINGS, MIDDLES, ENDS
Beginnings
“The beginning of a play announces the universe of the play, not just the visual setting, but the interior geography, the logic, the ground rules. In each play you enter a different universe. Where am I? What are the rules here? Is it okay to laugh?” (p. 67)
“At the beginning of a play, the playwright gives you—and only you—knowledge that puts you in a privileged place. Then he gets you into your detective role of questioning, evaluating, and anticipating by using precious moments to convince you that something urgent is happening right here, right now, with hopes and fears for innocent and vulnerable people you care about.” (p.63)
Middles
“The middle of the play tends to be about what the characters want. . . . The middle has the turn-around scene, where illusion meets reality and commitments test each other, raising your hopes and fears for the innocent and vulnerable people you care about.
Ends
The end tends to be about what [the characters] get. The end has the consequences, followed often by a moment of self-knowledge, and then the final action where the main character, having moved from one world to another, makes his choice and pays the price.” (p.156)
Beginnings
“The beginning of a play announces the universe of the play, not just the visual setting, but the interior geography, the logic, the ground rules. In each play you enter a different universe. Where am I? What are the rules here? Is it okay to laugh?” (p. 67)
“At the beginning of a play, the playwright gives you—and only you—knowledge that puts you in a privileged place. Then he gets you into your detective role of questioning, evaluating, and anticipating by using precious moments to convince you that something urgent is happening right here, right now, with hopes and fears for innocent and vulnerable people you care about.” (p.63)
Middles
“The middle of the play tends to be about what the characters want. . . . The middle has the turn-around scene, where illusion meets reality and commitments test each other, raising your hopes and fears for the innocent and vulnerable people you care about.
Ends
The end tends to be about what [the characters] get. The end has the consequences, followed often by a moment of self-knowledge, and then the final action where the main character, having moved from one world to another, makes his choice and pays the price.” (p.156)
TWO WORLDS (ALSO, INNER AND OUTER STORIES)
- In most plays, the characters can be divided into two worlds (division is not always immediately obvious – it’s not Montagues vs Capulets, but a world with a tradition of hate vs a world of rule-breakers).
- In most plays, one world is under siege by another.
- Most plays have both a large outer story (the two worlds) and a more personal inner story. These two stories connect.
- The inner and outer stories develop and test each other. In plays, what you do in one story always affects something or someone in the other story. (p.131)
- “A key scene . . . [is] always marked by a new commitment that will test out other commitments in both the inner and outer story. And it’s usually marked by a change in your role. Your hopes and fears intensify. You choose sides. You know what you want.” (p.104)
URGENCY / PRECIOUS MOMENTS
“From the time the playwright places you in a privileged seat, even if you love the people, the only way the playwright can keep you in your role throughout the play is to make sure that every moment on the stage is a precious moment. This concept is more basic than plot. It determines at which points in people’s lives the play will take place.”
“In the ordinary world you rarely get any kind of vision. Life is too confused, too messy, too many unknowns, too much background noise. It’s in the theatre that you get a chance to see clearly. Theatre clarifies life.” “In the theatre every word, every gesture, every sound counts, because all the irrelevant words, gestures, and sounds are left out.” (p.75)
“Urgency is your feeling that right here, right now, something is happening that demands action, something with big potential consequences, something the characters cannot walk away from, and it usually comes with a time limit attached that keeps you glued to the play.” (p.57)
Precious moments have a sense of urgency and include:
“From the time the playwright places you in a privileged seat, even if you love the people, the only way the playwright can keep you in your role throughout the play is to make sure that every moment on the stage is a precious moment. This concept is more basic than plot. It determines at which points in people’s lives the play will take place.”
“In the ordinary world you rarely get any kind of vision. Life is too confused, too messy, too many unknowns, too much background noise. It’s in the theatre that you get a chance to see clearly. Theatre clarifies life.” “In the theatre every word, every gesture, every sound counts, because all the irrelevant words, gestures, and sounds are left out.” (p.75)
“Urgency is your feeling that right here, right now, something is happening that demands action, something with big potential consequences, something the characters cannot walk away from, and it usually comes with a time limit attached that keeps you glued to the play.” (p.57)
Precious moments have a sense of urgency and include:
- First moments,
- Final moments,
- Moments of threat,
- Testing moments,
- Temporary moments,
- One-of-a-kind moments put into perspective by looking back at the past.
- One-of-a-kind moments, connected to the future by hopes and fears
- Stolen moments (p.58)
KNOWING WHEN TO LAUGH
- Audiences always come ready to be amused, so plays often begin with something funny that sets a kind of baseline. The playwright doesn’t want you to laugh at the serious. If he can get you to recognize comedy at the beginning, then when he gets more sober you’ll see the contrast. This is funny, that is serious.” (p.67-68)
- “The essential purpose of having Mercutio on one side and the nurse on the other is to give you something to laugh at so you won’t laugh at the lovers. Laughter in the wrong place is death to a play. Comedy around the fringes of a love scene gives you a quick measuring stick—that is the funny part, this is the serious part.” (p.140)
CHARACTER
What kind of characters will an audience care about?
Characters must in some way know less that the audience
CONTRASTS AND PAIRED CHARACTERS
What kind of characters will an audience care about?
- “You care about [people] who want things and fight for them (especially when they are living illusions and you see the reality).” (p.50)
- People who are young, awkward, lonely, who have suffered loss
- People who are in conflict, who are fish out of water
- People who are brave, bold, gallant, venturesome, clever
- Sometimes people who are inflated, evil, even mean-spirited if exaggerated and played for laughs
- Motivation apparently not as important as action (Shakespeare used stock motivations such as “Moors are jealous” and “Italians are crafty” and got on with the show. Motivation is a modern concern).
Characters must in some way know less that the audience
- “In every well-written play you find that those you care about are in situations that make them in some way innocent (while you are knowledgeable) and in some way vulnerable (while you in your privileged seat are secure).” (p.50) But don’t equate innocence with youth or vulnerability with weakness.
- If people on the stage understood everything about their situations from the beginning, either hope or fear would be gone—along with your role.” (p.59)
- “There are always different levels of understanding in a play. There is always somebody on the stage who knows less than you. For you to feel knowledgeable, someone else has to be ignorant. That keeps you in your role. You are the evaluator, the good detective. You are piecing things together on your own, no one telling you anything, no one spoon feeding you. You feel pretty smart in the theatre.” (p.76)
CONTRASTS AND PAIRED CHARACTERS
- “Theater is a study in contrasts. Characters are paired. You understand one person’s action only by seeing others taking other actions.” (p. 186-187)
- “Notice as a part of playwright tactics, how characters are paired. [In Translations,] Jimmy Jack, the most erudite student, is introduced as a counterpoint to Sarah who can barely speak. The playwright constructs his universe out of contrasts and comparison so you can make quick judgments about people. It’s not a novel—no turning back and no stopping to reflect in the theatre. A play may contain many subtleties, but they have to rest on broad firm limbs. How do you decide quickly that someone is smart? The playwright shows you dull. How do you know someone is beautiful? The playwright shows you plain.” (p.71)
- “How do you know something? You measure it against something else. . . . the playwright is guiding you with strong clear contrasts. . . . When [in Measure for Measure] these conventional attitudes are ripped off, you recognize bedrock feelings.” (p.108)
- “Plays always offer alternative paths to help you measure the movements of characters.” (p.134) “You must know what world the character is in and what it will cost him to make the move to another. You must see the paths that others have taken when faced with the same choice.” (p.182)
DIRECT EXPRESSION OF EMOTION
“The playwright is careful to leave frontal visceral emotions off the stage. All kinds of feelings are expressed here, but the big emotions are left for you.
. . . Audiences instinctively try to locate a role that no one else is filling. If you’re told one thing, you will tend to think another. Moments become more precious when you’re the only one who notices them.” (p.183)
“The stage cannot get you to feel something by demanding it from you. If the stage says cry, you’ll want to laugh. If the stage says laugh, you won’t. And if the stage says stand up and cheer, you’re going to look at your watch.” (p.188)
“The audience rarely duplicates an emotion found on the stage.” (p.181)
[Re Translations] One thing is certain—if everybody understood what you understand and talked openly about it, there would be no role for you. The playwright has to leave a space for you to play your part. You fear for those who can’t, won’t, or don’t know enough to fear for themselves. As playwrights have all discovered, characters who moan and groan for themselves are off-putting. Better for them to smile and you to worry.” (p.80)
[Re Translation] Today, all these people and their way of life are long gone. You may be watching their last precious moments. All were innocent. All were vulnerable. All had hopes. All were threatened. Do you care about them? Yes. Not because they ask for your sympathy, but because they don’t. This allows you your role of feeling for them.” (p.74)
“Self-pity is off-putting—hard to cry for the one who cries for himself—it steals your role.” (p. 50)
Falstaff says after Hal’s cruel rejection, “Do not you grieve at this. I shall be sent for in private to him.” “He refuses to give in to his feelings, allowing you to feel for him.” (p.60)
Re Strider, a story in which a Prince refuses to acknowledge the old horse who loves him: “What if the Prince had said, “Yes, that’s him,” and then wept? What would happen to your role? It would evaporate. Sure, you would get what you demanded, but not in a form that would let you play your part. You would no longer be seeing below the surface of things, understanding what others do not—or will not—admit. All you could do now—at the end of the play—would be to observe, and if the Prince was weeping for himself you would not weep for him, that role being occupied. In fact, you might adopt the role of being slightly embarrassed at the sentimental absurdity of a man and a horse embracing. (p. 155-156)
“The playwright is careful to leave frontal visceral emotions off the stage. All kinds of feelings are expressed here, but the big emotions are left for you.
. . . Audiences instinctively try to locate a role that no one else is filling. If you’re told one thing, you will tend to think another. Moments become more precious when you’re the only one who notices them.” (p.183)
“The stage cannot get you to feel something by demanding it from you. If the stage says cry, you’ll want to laugh. If the stage says laugh, you won’t. And if the stage says stand up and cheer, you’re going to look at your watch.” (p.188)
“The audience rarely duplicates an emotion found on the stage.” (p.181)
[Re Translations] One thing is certain—if everybody understood what you understand and talked openly about it, there would be no role for you. The playwright has to leave a space for you to play your part. You fear for those who can’t, won’t, or don’t know enough to fear for themselves. As playwrights have all discovered, characters who moan and groan for themselves are off-putting. Better for them to smile and you to worry.” (p.80)
[Re Translation] Today, all these people and their way of life are long gone. You may be watching their last precious moments. All were innocent. All were vulnerable. All had hopes. All were threatened. Do you care about them? Yes. Not because they ask for your sympathy, but because they don’t. This allows you your role of feeling for them.” (p.74)
“Self-pity is off-putting—hard to cry for the one who cries for himself—it steals your role.” (p. 50)
Falstaff says after Hal’s cruel rejection, “Do not you grieve at this. I shall be sent for in private to him.” “He refuses to give in to his feelings, allowing you to feel for him.” (p.60)
Re Strider, a story in which a Prince refuses to acknowledge the old horse who loves him: “What if the Prince had said, “Yes, that’s him,” and then wept? What would happen to your role? It would evaporate. Sure, you would get what you demanded, but not in a form that would let you play your part. You would no longer be seeing below the surface of things, understanding what others do not—or will not—admit. All you could do now—at the end of the play—would be to observe, and if the Prince was weeping for himself you would not weep for him, that role being occupied. In fact, you might adopt the role of being slightly embarrassed at the sentimental absurdity of a man and a horse embracing. (p. 155-156)
CREATING A SENSE OF TIME PASSING
- “The playwright wants you to be aware of time. He does not want you thinking too accurately about it. He wants no awkward comparisons between his universe and yours. He wants to release you from anything that could disturb the ground rules he has established. Therefore, no clocks. But by the middle of the performance a playwright must have you believing that the play is moving purposefully through time, that it is ‘going somewhere.’ (p.93)
- How does he do this? First by getting you to concentrate, not on clocks, but on process.
- . . . There are other kinds of human and natural processes that deliver the sense of life progressing. Some plays start in the morning and end at night. Some plays start in one season with trees blooming, and end in another season with trees bare. Some plays start with a crime, move to investigation, finish with a trial. Some plays show characters growing up, getting married, growing old.” (p. 94)
- “In the theatre, one way or another, the gridwork of human and natural processes keeps time moving and establishes the base note, the pulse of life of every play. And yet, you may still feel that a play is not ‘going somewhere,’ which is to say, you don’t feel that you are going somewhere—i.e., making a purposeful journey to a destination. That’s the function of the structure.”
MIDDLES / TURNING POINTS / MISDIRECTION (anticipation, surprise, delight)
MISDIRECTION
- Designing a structure that keeps the audience moving purposefully through time can be torture for any playwright.
- A primary structural element of every play is an event that looks like it’s going in one direction, then turns around and goes in another direction. This is basic to a play, an act, a scene, a sequence, or a line, especially a line of comedy.” (p.95)
- “The playwright does not want you sitting back and calmly judging. He needs you to be moving in a direction, vigorously anticipating. Only then can he surprise you, sometimes with comedy, sometimes with shock, sometimes with fear or hope, and occasionally with insight.” (p.97)
- “This is called misdirection. The playwright keeps your anticipations going, and even if you end up pretty much where you thought you would, you still have the sensation of movement through the scene. . . . (p.128)
- “Hope matters in plays, especially tragic plays. You must always feel there’s a path up as well as a path down. This puts you in movement, enticing you one way and then another, making you anticipate an outcome, then surprising you with what actually happens.” (p.136)
MISDIRECTION
- “Nothing in a play ought to happen exactly as you think it will. Everything should hit with a bit of surprise.” (p.77)
- Playwright accomplishes this by
- Create memories/evidence the audience will draw on
- Based on this evidence, audience anticipates the future, is led to expect something
- Only when an audience expects one thing can it be surprised by something else.
- “Basic rules: no anticipation, no surprise. No surprise, no delight.” (p.17)
- “Every character you care about has to be tested and has to make choices. Watching the purely inevitable gets dull quickly because there’s nothing for you to do. . . . It’s choices—anticipating them and being surprised by them—that keeps you in your role.” (p.124)
- “Usually, as the play develops through stroke and counter-stroke, the tests escalate.” (p.170)
- What if the playwright eliminated the zigzags of misdirection and got right to the point? . . . What’s lost? . . . The play would go dead. No movement. No raising the stakes. No time for your hopes and fears to develop. No time to savor the test and the choice.”
- “If the characters realize they’re in a design, they will go dead. If there’s no design, the audience will go dead. The proper handling of the tension between audience, characters, and design is where the art is.” (p.96)
- “Sometimes a single scene is not sufficient to complete a movement that starts you in one direction and then turns you sharply in another. Sometimes it takes a sequence of scenes.” (p.104)
- “There is another kind of scene that is unique to the middle of a play. It has the same architecture (moving one way, then turning in another) as a key scene. But it is more central to the structure. It is the turn-around scene” (p. 115)
- “The turn-around scene is not what is ordinarily called the climax of the play. It is sometimes a very small scene. Sometimes it’s a scene that does not even appear on the stage. But there is always a huge shift of motion, as the play goes from the track of illusion to the track of reality.” (p.117 – example is Romeo causing Mercutio’s death and then killing Tybalt)
- In this sense, theatre mimics life. We live on our illusions, and it takes a lot of time and effort for reality to break through.” (p. 129)
ENDS
Introducing an innocent at the end
Insight
Introducing an innocent at the end
- “The introduction of an innocent who does not know what you know, or has yet to learn what you have learned, or who has, for one reason or another, lost his knowledge is typical of the final moments of many plays It’s put there by the playwright to give you your final role. If everybody knew everything, there would be nothing for you to do.” (p. 190)
- “Most playwrights don’t like to introduce new innocent characters at the end of the play. Rather, they see to it that there are characters on the stage who are innocent about what has occurred and don’t know what you know.” (p. 195)
- “Sometimes the final image of a play is a return to innocence. Playwrights use different tactics to bring characters from the painful knowledge they have achieved back to innocence, and thereby keeping a space for you to play your part.” (p. 201)
- “Some people are innocent because they are trapped in one world and can never understand the other world until they get there.” (p. 203)
Insight
- You don’t often get what you hope for/demand but if the play is good, you are content with what you got. (discussed 158-162)
- “A good way to trivialize a play is to concentrate on its politics. It may make us feel good. It may stroke our convictions. But the truth is, books are much better venues for raising questions about complicated matters.
- The playwright steered you into quick insights, quick judgments, and finally quick wisdom. But the good play contains a slow aftertaste of doubts, uncertainties, questions. The better the play, the more complicated the response, until you may realize that your ordinary ways of thinking aren’t working anymore.” (p. 210-211)
- “To be truly satisfied in the theatre, you should rise up from your privileged seat at the end of the play different than when you sat down.” (p. 212)
- “A good play reaches deep. A good play reminds us about the preciousness of life. A good play gives us the hope of something that life doesn’t usually provide—the possibility that understanding is out there, though we may have to knock down old ways of looking at the world and start our thinking all over again.” (p. 212)