Using Our Gifts: Workshopping New Plays
A beautiful phase of a new play process is after a draft is fresh and ready to be shared. Now in the development stage, we as artists need to find ways to test the project out and see what sticks. Workshops become a great nesting ground for gathering artists together for a shorter period of time to enhance the work.
Recently, I facilitated a workshop for a new ensemble-driven script by playwright Lindsay Kelly. With a completed first draft, Lindsay was looking for outside perspectives on how to develop the work further.
We began first by determining our goals for the four hour workshop process by examining where Lindsay wanted the play to end up: Are we trying to get into a new play festival? Is it a passion project only for you to have? Is this a writing sample to use for submissions? By understanding where Lindsay wanted the piece to end up gave us a clearer sense of the path to get there.
We arrived at making the focus of the workshop about characterization — to more clearly define the objectives for each character through past experiences and group dynamics. We then found actor friends who were willing to lend their talents for some hummus and coffee and organized a four hour period to dig in.
A workshop for a new play offers a short period of time to use the gifts of everyone in the room to reach a common goal. Here’s how my gifts as a workshop facilitator contributed to structuring the afternoon and working towards the goals of Lindsay’s piece.
Serving as an impartial storyteller.
I view all plays through a lens of story beats and ever changing relationships. While working through the goal of deepening the characterization, I asked questions about how the current moment was influenced by the moment prior and how the story’s progression impacts the arc of the characters.
The actors, Lindsay, and I began our workshop process by reading the play aloud. Afterward, dissecting how each character contributes to the events of the story and how each character transforms from beginning to end. As an ensemble driven play, it became imperative to understand the changing alliances between the friend group on how story beats impacted what the character’s needed to do next.
Plays are about what people want and what they do to get it. Developing any element of the play must be done in tandem with a storytelling lens of how characters achieve what they want and how they use other people to inch closer to the objective.
Working towards a clear goal.
When we gather to work on an artistic project, managing the clock is important to ensuring we get everything we set out to accomplish. Before meeting, Lindsay and I set a clear timeline for the workshop. We isolated that the most important factors were to hear the script read aloud and to deepen the objectives and story arcs for each character. We knew this piece was about the ensemble and the play needed clarification on who each member was in the group.
After reading the play and discussing the story, I then lead a series of exercises to test relationships:
Improv scenes in pairs: Giving a location and a problem to solve within 3 minutes.
Group dynamics: Who is the funny one? Tell us about time that a character stirred the pot.
Why are you in this story? What do you need and who do you need it from?
Who are you in the group? Do you like who you are in the group, and if not, who you do want to be in the group?
What secret are you keeping from the others? Who knows that secret?
From these activities, we were able to pinpoint where characters were bleeding into one another and better clarify their role in the group. With this workshop, we accomplished our goal by focusing on a single element of the play and then using our time to fully serve that one element.
Making room for other’s gifts.
While facilitating workshops, part of my role is to bring out and enhance the true potential of the other people in the room. If someone in the room is a genius at quick one-liners, it is only to our advantage to incorporate that gift in today’s work. If someone has a dance background, let’s find a way to use it today and see what happens. The moments created may not make it any further than this workshop space and we got a taste of how a committed actor may approach the role.
Also, when working under a time limit, I want to hear everyone’s ideas and we may not have the opportunity to process every thought. During workshops, I try to find a way to collect fresh ideas in a way that won’t impede the overall goals. For a play about high school friends, we asked the actors to bring a journal and continuously reflect as their assigned character. If a character pissed you off in an improv, write about what happened that pissed you off. At the end of the workshop, Lindsay and I reviewed the journals to see what great insights the actors had that we didn’t have time to discuss as a group.
The people who are with you in the workshop may not be the same when the production is staged. It only makes our art stronger to fill the room with people who will challenge and strengthen our work in hopes of gaining new perspectives. My job as a facilitator becomes about lifting, utilizing, and managing what everyone brings to the table to encourage creativity and new ideas.
There comes a point in the play making process where we need other people. The words are meant to be read aloud and interpreted by other artists. We can use each other’s gifts to create an environment that sparks new perspectives and serves our artistic goals.
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