Juggling Soot*

In desperation over my inability to get a handle on my rewrite, I have turned to reading plays other people's plays.  Specifically the works of Joe Orton, who wrote Loot, and Peter Barnes, who wrote The Ruling Class (made into a motion starring Peter O'Toole, 1971) and one of my favorite plays, Laughter.

Not surprisingly, this has been very helpful.  As a dramatist, I've always known that one of my failings is that my plays lack a driving force, e.g. a character who pushes the action forward.  I've read Lajos Egri's book, The Art of Dramatic Writing, in fact, I keep it on my desk.  Egri's basic theme is that the main character has to want something desperately enough to do whatever it takes to get it.  I struggle with this.  It's not that I don't understand it, intellectually at least.  I just have trouble translating it into my work.

Reading Orton and Barnes has helped me realize one thing that could help.  Their plays are filled with angry people.  Mine never are.  Outward anger is not my issue.  For myself, I turn anger inward.  It becomes humor and sarcasm.

In my family of origin, anger was not an acceptable emotion.  I was chastised and punished as a child for being angry.  My sister became the outlet for anger when I was a child.  I expressed my anger in sometimes aggressive but mostly passive aggressive behavior toward her, and she expressed loudly the seething anger  that was suppressed by the rest of us.  I think it is part of the struggle we have both had as adults.  She seems to have coped better than I.

My characters are never openly angry.  This is a problem.  There is a lot of energy and drive in anger and my work suffers because no one is driving it forward.  I need an angry character and I think I know how this can be and needs to be applied to my current rewrite.

Yea!


*Peter Barnes - The Ruling Class