Writing for Stage and Screen: Creating a Perception Shift in the Audience(Introductions to Theatre)

" Reading and digesting the lessons in this book can be of greater value to an aspiring dramatist than years in an MFA program. Whether you are writing for the stage, screen or audio, this book is an invaluable teacher and guide to have by your side throughout the development and revision process." Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig "This book does what no other playwriting book in my experience has done, it offers a new way of seeing and conceiving how theatre makes meaning and carries emotional impact in performance." Suzan Zeder, Professor Emerita and former Head Of Playwriting at University of Texas at Austin, USA Combining a step-by-step analysis of the technique of writing for stage and screen with how the mystery, poetry, and emotional momentum is achieved for the audience, Sherry Kramer offers an empowering, original guide for emerging and established writers. In this structured look at the way audience members progress through a work in real time, Sherry Kramer uses plain-spoken vocabulary to help you discover how to make work that will mean more to your audiences. By using examples drawn from plays, film, and streaming series, ranging from A Streetcar Named Desire to Fleabag to Pirates of the Caribbean, this study makes its concepts accessible to a wide range of artists who work in timebound art. The book also features multiple exercises, developed with MFA writers in The Iowa Playwrights Workshop and The Michener Center for Writers, where Kramer taught for the past 25 years, which provide entrance points to help you consider and create your work.

Table of Contents:
List of Illustrations 1. Works of Art Teach Us How to Read Them First We Must Find a Way to See The World in Front of Us There is an Old Saying in the Theatre: The First 20 Minutes Are Free A Closer Look at The First 20 Minutes Some Advice About the First 20 Minutes Tone There is Always a Clock EXERCISE: Spend Some Time With Structured Time Attention 2. The Perception Shift Insight: The Eureka Moment Attention and Insight The Power of a Moment's Newness How Newness Drives Insight A Joke is a Small Play The Perception Shift in Three Plays: Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The Beauty Queen of Leenane, A Streetcar Named Desire EXERCISE: Experience a Small Perception Shift in the Comfort of Your Own Home Hiding in Plain Sight 3. Theatre Is a Rhyme For Life Certainty, Meaning, and Maybe Dramatic Doubleness The Bone Violin The Bone Violin: A Fugue for Five Actors EXERCISE: Track Doubling in The Bone Violin Doubleness is Our Most Elegant Tool The Three Surfaces of Doubleness in Three Plays : A Streetcar Named Desire, Betrayal, The Beauty Queen of Leenane Systems EXERCISE: Pleats Systems and Theme EXERCISE: Tracking Systems In A Streetcar Named Desire The Ends of Plays Tend to Mirror Their Beginnings Empathy and Doubleness 4. Story and Plot Sequence = Meaning EXERCISE: Order Makes Meaning Breadcrumbs Story Is Another Word for Time How the Plot Organizes Itself Outside of Story Futurity The Double Track of Time (Non-linear plays) Plot and Story are Two Different Things Anti-Climax EXERCISE: How Your Plot Uses Story Conveniences To Sum Up Story and Plot So Here We are, Ready to Talk About the Enchantment That Is Story Vertical and Horizontal Vertical vs. Horizontal EXERCISE: Draw Two Sets 5. Choice and Consequence Why Choice Matters to the Audience The God Who Loves You - Carl Dennis EXERCISE: Tracking Character Desire The And Then, The So Then, and The What If EXERCISE: The And Then, The So Then Repeatability WRITING EXERCISE: A Five Minute Scene About Choice Choice vs. Reveal WRITING EXERCISE: Adapt A Family Story Alternative History WRITING EXERCISE: An Alternative History Play Choice and Tragedy A Tragedy is like Going Down a River There are Two Forks of the River The Sun has to Shine Breaking Bad Right vs. Right Tragedy is the Art Form of Change Tragedy is Made Out of Hope Hope as Strategy WRITING EXERCISE: The Nodes Tragedy is a Clash of Values What is it Worth? vs. What does it Mean? In-Itself Value and the Evolution of the Art Form Tragedy Is Not Simply Sad Why Do We Take Pleasure in Tragedy Characters Don't Change No Matter How Much They Want To. No Matter How Much We Hope They Will. In Comedy, People Change It's a Form of Magic The Magic of Changing Without Changing EXERCISE: Find Comedies Where People Change But it Feels Like Someone Changes in Plays That Aren't Comedies. Are You Sure Someone Doesn't Change? But If People Can't Change How Do We Change? WRITING EXERCISE: Write Three Monologues About the Same Choice from Three Different Character's Point of View 6. In Retrospect, Inevitable In Retrospect Inevitable Outcomes Not In Retrospect Inevitable Outcomes EXERCISE: Write the Last Moment of Your Play As a Sonnet Pointers Pointers are Lies that Tell the Truth The Attributes of Pointers: Systems and Pointers, Forwards and Pointers How Pointers Announce Themselves How to Write Pointers On Purpose The Atomic Throw Is an Uncertain Kitchen Foreshadowing and Misdirection Titles EXERCISE: Finding Your Title Running Gags A Play Tells the Truth, But It Enjoys Using a Lie To Tell It EXERCISE: Lies Spoilers EXERCISE: Identifying Pointers EXERCISE: Identify Pointers In Your Own Play 7. Convergence It's Never a Single Moment EXERCISE: The End and The Beginning Is Saying That Convergence is Everywhere in A Great Work of Timebound Art The Same Thing as Saying That a Great Work of Timebound Art is All Convergence? To Be Human Is To Confuse a Satisfying Story With a Meaningful One EXERCISE: Noticing Perception Shifts The Turn The Prestige Reveal and Choice Enlarging the Idea of Dramatic Event EXERCISE: The Dramatic Future The Difference Between What Happens on Stage and What Happens in the Audience EXERCISE: The Last 45 Seconds Again. Endings as Different Genres Why a Perception Shift Makes Things Weightless How Coincidence is a Form of Rhyme Open Endings Mysteries are Almost All Writers' Favorite Genre for a Reason A Small Play To Fill Us With Wonder Structure is Just What Happens in the End EXERCISE: Adapt the Climax/Convergence of a Song Hope is at the Heart of Everything in the Theatre EXERCISE: Tracking Hope Once Again: The Duck Rabbit Index

About the Author :
Sherry Kramer is a playwright who has won numerous awards for her work and has written more than thirty plays, including David's RedHaired Death, When Something Wonderful Ends and The Wall of Water. She teaches playwriting at Bennington College, USA, and taught regularly in the MFA programs of The Michener Center for Writers UT Austin, TX, and the Iowa Playwrights' Workshop, where she was previously head of the workshop. She was the first national member of New Dramatists.

Review :
It's hard for me to think of anyone who has shaped the way I think about playwriting more than Sherry Kramer. While most of my education as a playwright was awash in silly rules surrounding plot mechanics, Sherry showed me how plays are organized in more meaningful and fundamental ways. While others taught me the structure of playwriting, she taught me the poetry of it. I have been waiting a decade for this book. Not since Lajos Egri's classic The Art of Dramatic Writing have I been so excited and inspired by and grateful for the ideas contained within a text on dramatic writing. Reading and digesting the lessons in this book can be of greater value to an aspiring dramatist than years in an MFA program. Whether you are writing for the stage, screen, or audio, this book is an invaluable teacher and guide to have by your side throughout the development and revision process. Sherry Kramer is a brilliant and uncommon mind, someone who mixes a keen understanding of narrative structure and mechanics with a reverence for theatrical magic. I will never forget the first time I heard her talk about the DNA of plays, how they code themselves line by line, how they reveal to an audience how to understand them-and, to their writer, how to be faithful to their core questions. As a former student, I'm still using the many tools she gave me, both when writing a new draft or when in the throes of rewrites. Sherry is an artist and a teacher, and her ability to harness pedagogy to illuminate instinct is one of her many unusual gifts. Sherry Kramer is the best kind of playwriting guide-generous, ingenious, and wise. She is an audience's best friend and the fairy godmother of storytelling. Without Sherry's big ideas on structure, magic, and perception shift, I'd be lost as a writer and teacher. I plagiarize her daily. Most books on the playwriting craft are derivative and oddly traditional-Sherry's guide is both the tornado and yellow brick road. You will never go back to thinking about drama the same way again. Sherry Kramer has a singular, comprehensive approach to teaching playwriting. This book is both a toolbox and divining rod, giving playwrights tools and strategies to make their own unique theater magic. For years, students have raved about Sherry as a mentor and a teacher, sharing notes on her classes as though it was precious contraband. Having access to this 'Kramer Bible' is a major moment for playwrights, teachers and theater-lovers alike. This book does what no other playwriting book in my experience has done, it offers a new way of seeing and conceiving how theatre makes meaning and carries emotional impact in performance.