Notes on Jeffrey Sweet's "Dramatist's Toolkit"
Both of Jeff Sweet's books (see also Solving Your Script) are very practical manuals for playwriting and are designed to be used together. This one is primarily descriptive and has a couple of sections specifically on musicals.
The Dramatist's Toolkit: The Craft of the Working Playwright
By Jeffrey Sweet
Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1993
What is a play?
Dramatic structure (in whole play or in individual scene) may be based on:
Exposition
Characters
Objective
Negotiation
Dialogue / speech
Musicals, general
Songs in musicals
Ethics
Miscellaneous
By Jeffrey Sweet
Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1993
What is a play?
- A program of opportunities for actors to do things that rivet the audience's attention & sympathy
- Playwright shouldn't comment on or evaluate characters or action - that is the audience's job
Dramatic structure (in whole play or in individual scene) may be based on:
- Character: protagonist with objective faces series of obstacles
- Physical obstacle (often adventure plots)
- Another character's will
- Internal obstacle (a character's various roles are in collision ): character will be multi-faceted
- "the drama of one's life is the product of a conflict between two or more roles that are both of enormous importance but are ultimately irreconcilable." Drama moves to a point that character must choose between roles.
- Event with clear start and end (formal rituals like trials, weddings, funerals, duels; or disasters)
- The heroic challenging of the accepted social order puts one at profound risk
Exposition
- Opening constitutes a contract with the audience about the kind of play they are to expect: genre, comedy or tragedy, realism or fantasy, style of storytelling
- Plunge into heart of story immediately, then audience will be attentive, wanting to know why
- Low context: characters don't know each other, they can explain more (exposition easier)
- High context: characters do know each other, they talk in shorthand (exposition is trickier)
- Exposition in high context: show a negotiation that could only exist if characters are who they are
Characters
- Best characters do observable actions (unlike writers) and interact with other characters
- Autobiographical characters likely to observe and comment wryly off to the side rather than act
- Love even the antagonists, because actors have to be able to give life to them all
- Melodrama and farce can tolerate stock characters
- Small cast plays generally have fewer issues to settle, tend to be about relationships
- Large cast plays can be about collision of large social forces
- Differentiate members of a large cast by separate distinctive entrances
Objective
- the big thing character wants and will go to extremes to achieve
- not always what the characters SAY they want or consciously THINK they want.
Negotiation
- Character's behavior is motivated by his objective (not what the playwright needs to accomplish). Scene consists of negotiation between characters. Instead of articulating objectives directly, characters are likely to negotiate over anything they attach value to:
- A well-chosen object (may be transformed or even destroyed)
- The loyalty, affection, cooperation or endorsement of other characters
- Space or territory (sometimes elevation) or time (pacing)
- Other things (Streetcar: temperature, humidity, light, music on radio, legal concepts)
Dialogue / speech
- reflects national/ethnic/class background, education, status in relation to others in scene
- people interrupt themselves and others, correct words, change tack, use few adjectives or adverbs
- is an extension of trying to achieve objectives
- each speech includes a hot word/phrase/idea that triggers other character to object/challenge/modify
- how characters speak to or about a "A" will establish who "A" is
Musicals, general
- Opening number should set the style
- Sung soliloquy an accepted convention in musicals
- Chorus generally represents a community (they sing together, therefore share values)
- Soloists have different values - plot comes from conflict between chorus (society) and individual
- Newer musicals have alternative structures (p.102-3)
Songs in musicals
- Unlike pop songs, musical songs should be indirect ("I shall scream, Mr. Bumble")
- Lyrics should give the PREMISES, leave the audience to draw the CONCLUSIONS
- Lyrics go flat when "the characters stand around and exhaustively and candidly evaluate themselves. . . . This information is for the most part old news, making the songs dramatically useless." 105
- Most important to find best point of attack for a song in a given dramatic moment
- If song is well-aimed, then even an uninspired but workmanlike execution of song will serve
- Each character should have distinctive music
Ethics
- Theater depicts behavior, is therefore ethical. Playwrights are moralists and should live ethically.
- Playwright should not grossly misrepresent important matters in history or present fact
- Connect to the larger world, know something about more than show business
Miscellaneous
- When you violate a ritual or expectation, as in parody (93-97) you generate a burst of energy
- Theater is metaphoric. Include something too realistic (like nudity) & spell is broken (121-124)
- Screen writing requires many more plot points, and shorter scenes (109-113)
- Theater size and style of stage may make or break a show (115-119)
- What makes a workshop useful (139-148)
- Networking, Dramatist's Guild (149-158)
- If play is technically difficult to produce, it may not get produced - avoid adding problems