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Workshopping a play

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Before submitting any work to a theatre, producer or publisher, a play or musical needs a chance to be workshopped. What exactly does workshopping mean?

Because a play is presented as a live work, simply reading over your finished play or musical cannot give you the sense of the characters and the drama so imperative to such a genre. A novel or short story is meant to be read…a play is meant to be seen and heard. That’s where workshopping can greatly assist any author.

Imagine that you have written a wonderfully comical murder/mystery type play particularly aimed at teenage performers. Your characters range from a nerd to a valley girl to a high society snob to a street-wise punk to a movie star. You hear the inflections of their voices in your head and you picture how they will move about the stage. Now comes the workshopping process.

Utilizing a drama class of teens, do a cold reading of your play. Assign each student a part and read through the play from start to finish. Some of the more intuitive students will automatically pick up on the subtle character traits you are aiming for and your characters will jump off the page and become live people.

At this stage you may begin to make changes. Are any of the lines awkward when read? Does any character’s expressions sound inappropriate? Do the characters’ lines interact naturally like real conversations? What may read well on the printed page may not sound right when spoken aloud. It is sometimes beneficial to get feedback from the actors themselves. They can often provide real insight into developing more believable characters and dialogue.

The next step in workshopping your play would be to begin to block the scenes and activities of the characters. Blocking simply means deciding where and when entrances and exits are to take place and implementing the action necessary for each scene. At this time the playwright may realize that characters not delivering a large number of lines have little or nothing to do when not speaking. In reality, people do not simply stand around waiting to deliver a line of dialogue and this will look unnatural if it occurs in your play. By basing the activity on the character it should be quite a simple task. For example, if there are extras in the scene, such as chorus girls, they could be off in one corner stretching or primping when they are not involved in the focal point of the scene.

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