Introduction

Welcome to the first week of our semester together. In the Handouts module above, you’ll see
several texts. Please read the syllabus and the assignment criteria before you continue. These
documents are terribly boring, but full of the information that you’ll need to succeed this
semester. Once you’ve read them, proceed to the rest of this module. Also, if you find all the
details in the Handouts module a little overwhelming, don’t panic. Getting a lot of information at
once can be daunting. Each weekly module that appears in Canvas will lay out what you need to
do for that week. The documents above give you a bird’s eye overview of the semester overall.
Each individual module will take you down into the specific details we’ll be covering. Most of
the weeks of the semester will work like this one.

Each week, a new forum will appear in Canvas (sometimes multiple forums will appear at once)
with information about what we’ll be doing that week. Usually there will be a place in that
module to post your work, which I will walk you through in great detail in Week Two. For this
week, you only need to read. It’s a lot of reading, but everything we’re doing this semester will
grow from it, so be thorough. Students tell me this class is very manageable if they stay on top of
the work, but it is very hard to catch up if they fall behind.

How to read a play

Before I talk about the reading assignments, I want to tell you a little bit about how to read a
play. Plays are unique works of literature, in that they are mediated. That means that a
playwright makes a text that is presented to an audience indirectly; it is mediated through a host
of other artists. When a poet writes a poem, the text is experienced directly by the reader—the
same is true for novelists and essayists. When John Grisham, M.O. Walsh, or Maurice Carlos
Ruffin writes a novel, it gets published, and you read it. The connection is direct—the writer’s
brain, to the page, to your brain. However, plays work differently. When a playwright writes a
script, the script goes to a producer, the producer hires a director, actors, a set designer, a lighting
designer, a costume designer, a sound designer, and several other artists. Each of them works
separately and collectively to make the final work of art that an audience sees on a stage. These
artists mediate the playwright’s words to the audience. This ongoing life is why works like
Hamlet can be done again and again for hundreds of years—each new group of artists mediates
the script in a new way. This means that plays can be produced again and again, a few years ago,
a play I wrote in 2019 was produced here in New Orleans, and the production company followed
my show with Macbeth, written about 1606.

Because scripts are mediated, they look a little different on the page from poems and fiction.
Scripts generally contain two things: dialog and stage directions.
1. Dialog is the term for what one character says to another character—the words the actor
will speak on stage. Usually, we see the name of a character followed by the words they
are speaking. The character’s name might be centered above the dialog or justified to the
left margin before the dialog. It all depends on how the publisher sets up the page. You
also might see a brief note in parenthesis somewhere in the dialog; this note is called a
“parenthetical direction” and is designed to tell the actor a little something about the line
they’re saying.
2. Stage directions cover just about everything that isn’t dialog. They tell us what we’re
seeing at any given time. That said, stage directions often don’t tell us too much. Their
 purpose is to inspire the imagination of all those artists who are going to make a
production of the script. In a class like this, you should let the stage directions inspire
your imagination and help paint a picture of what’s happening. As we get into more
esoteric plays, stage directions will be doing more than inspiring imagination, but that’s
for later….

Why read a play

Surreptitiously, this is a course about joy. Entertainment gives us an escape from the stress and
struggle of daily life. Art challenges us and gives us the opportunity to grow and experience the
world around us while simultaneously enriching the emotional world inside of us. The terms and
ideas of this semester increase our ability to enjoy the escapism of entertainment and the
expanded emotional world of art.

Art and entertainment are both wonderful things, but don’t mistake the two. When all is said and
done, entertainment reinforces cultural values, while art challenges values or makes us
rethink/re-see the world. Art often comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable. Also, art
can be sneaky, sometimes it entertains us while indirectly challenging us.

Many of the terms and ideas we’ll explore this semester are viewed as they relate to theatre texts;
however, almost all of the skills shared this semester can be applied to film, television, fiction,
non-fiction, and poetry. Also, and just as importantly, they can be applied to the world around us
in valuable and pragmatic ways. For example, when we explore context and subtext late in the
semester, we’re exploring two terms that are invaluable in other classes, in the workplace, and in
all communication both interpersonal and professional.

On the surface, this is a class about how to read plays and think about art. Just underneath that
surface, this class is offering a host of skills that make life easier and lusher. On a personal note,
the people I knew in high school and college (just over thirty years ago) who engaged with
concepts and material like this now have a much easier time enjoying life and taking on its
struggles. My friends who ignored these things invariably feel stuck and frustrated with their
lives, and they don’t know why. I don’t pretend that this class offers a panacea for the problems
of the human condition, but I know from decades of experience that the skills offered here make
it easier to enjoy the good and resolve the bad that comes with life in the real world. You’ve paid
to be here; why not make the most of it?

Aristotle
Written about 335 BCE, Aristotle’s Poetics is the founding work of much Western literature. The
writers we’ll read in the first half of the semester are all making art according to the tradition he
established. In fact, most Americans struggle to even read works that aren’t made in his tradition.
You’ll encounter works that actively defy Aristotle’s dictums, but not until we get into the New
Downtown Now anthology in the last few weeks of the semester, and you’ll get a lot of
preparation before I throw you into the deep end of pool.

Aristotle lays out the basic criteria for what makes a successful play: plot, character, diction,
thought, spectacle, and song. We’ll start looking at these six elements of literature this week and
continue doing so next week.
Plot (dramatic arc) and Character
Plot and character are fundamentally interconnected. The plot is the series of events that happen
over the course of the story. The protagonist (the main character) wants something or is trying to
accomplish something and can’t. This is called conflict. The harder the protagonist tries the more
the stakes are raised for the protagonist and the reader—in Fences the protagonist is Troy, and
his wants lead to the conflict. You’ll get a hint of the conflict in Fences with the very first line,
when Bono says: “Troy, you ought to stop that lying.” Right away, we know someone is telling
lies, and that this character knows it. That line subtly plants the seed of a conflict that goes back
generations and is about to rip a family apart. The conflict sets the plot in motion, as the
protagonist tries to resolve the conflict, the stakes (usually emotional) increase.

These increasing stakes grow (called “rising action”) and form the dramatic arc, as the tension in
the plot keeps increasing. The tension builds until the story can’t get any more intense (the top of
the arc). Then something changes, (often called the “climax”) and the tension drops (called
“falling action”) until the plot concludes at the end of the story. The character that travels
through this arc, the protagonist, is at the heart of the story.

There are a few other types of character you might encounter this semester. These characters
aren’t in every story, but they are used by writers often enough that you should be aware of
them:
 The antagonist: this character causes or contributes to the conflict that the protagonist
struggles with.
 The foil: this character serves as a contrast to the protagonist and shows off the
protagonist’s traits. Bono is a foil to Troy in Fences. Bono’s behavior towards his family
makes Troy’s behavior look all the more intense.
 Round character: a round character is a fully-formed character that has real wants and
dreams. They seem like they are real people and/or that they have real psychologies. All
of the characters in Fences are round characters.
 Flat characters: a flat character is a character that serves a function in the story but
doesn’t have any desires that are revealed to the audience. They are very rare in modern
theatre. You won’t see a flat character in the first half of the semester, and the use of flat
characters in the second half of the semester is arguable.

Assignments
Here you would normally be given the next week’s reading assignment and the prompt for your
writing response. Since you’re only reading this week, there’s no writing prompt. You’ll get the
first writing prompt in Week Two.

Reading the PDF excerpts from the book Naked Playwriting by Downs and Russin—the PDFs
are one text that the photocopier turned into two separate parts when I made the PDF. Naked
Playwriting is designed for teaching playwrights; however, the authors do an excellent job of
concisely covering Aristotle and his six elements of literature. So, you’re better served by
reading them than by reading a dusty translation of Aristotle’s original text. While Downs and
Russin talk about how aspiring writers can use Aristotle’s elements, their material is a good way
to begin thinking about how Wilson’s play uses those elements. Plus, many students over the
years have told me this handout is quite helpful.

After you’ve read Downs and Russin, read August Wilson’s Fences. It’s an amazing work of art.
We’ll be referring back to it all semester. It won Wilson his first of two Pulitzer Prizes, the
biggest literary award in America. When you read the play, simply imagine the events that are
unfolding. Next week, I’ll ask you to think about the emotions the play produced for you, and
how it produced them. For now, just read and feel. Hopefully, reading the play will be a
powerful experience to reward you for the mountain of bland (but important) reading that you’ve
had to climb in week one. From here on out, things will get much more interesting.