Playscript Analysis 	3

A man ought to read just as inclination leads him; for what he reads as a task will do him little good. A young man should read five hours in a day, and so may acquire a great deal of knowledge.
James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson

The close details of a script should not be a cause of impatience, as is the case with far too many critics and theatre practitioners today, but rather a source of inspiration and delight.
Richard Hornby, Script into Performance

In the first half of the twentieth century, many houses had a room
devoted to books and reading. It was called a library. Even in modest homes there was usually a reading place in the living room or parlor furnished with a comfortable chair and an adequate lamp. Today the home library has given way to the television room and the comfortable chair all too often faces the television set. Lamps are strategically placed so that light will not shine on the TV screen. In the television age, readers must forage for space and fend for themselves in the search for adequate light.
If the following tips for play readers preparing to read scripts seem excessively elementary and self-evident, pause for a moment and take a careful look at your own reading place and your own reading habits. Improvements may be in order.
Chairs, tables, and noise. Theatre designers spend a lot of time reading plays. Treat yourself to a comfortable reading chair (ideally, one that doesn't double for watching television) and a good lamp. Place a small table close by for your mug or glass and the pencil and pad you use for note taking. If you live in a

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From Page to Stage

house that occasionally passes for Grand Central Station, make a "do not disturb" sign and see that your companions take it seriously.
Atmosphere and aesthetics. Not many people can read effectively in the same room where talk shows or music videos fill the television screen. Design a reading space for yourself in a quiet area you find aesthetically pleasant, a place that works for you. Some readers prefer facing a window; others find the out-of-doors distracting and tuck themselves into a corner or a nook under a staircase. Consider bedrooms, porches, halls, and other out-of-theway spots. If music helps you concentrate, place a speaker or a portable tape or CD player close by. Make a conscious decision that reading accessories, such as a footstool and a firm back pillow, are work-related tools, equal in importance to your electric pencil sharpener and templates. The place where you read and make connections with texts is as central to your design process as your desk and drawing board.
Single sitting. Organize your time so you can read a play in a single sitting. Because plays are so tightly packed with facts, both past and present, descriptive as well as active, it is difficult to keep all of them in your head if you let a day or even a few hours go by between acts. You can read straight through many contemporary plays in under two hours; Chekhov, Brecht, and Moliere require about three; Shakespeare, Jonson, and Aphra Behn close to four. Read each act without interruption; take an interval break between each act to freshen your coffee or tea and stretch your legs.

The First Time

Reading a play for the first time is never a smooth trip. Although we all begin to read with an expectation of what the journey will be like, the characters, ideas, and actions on the page soon overtake and outrun our
assumptions. The reader is forever having to circle back to recall an earlier incident, and to take another look at it in light of what has just happened. A reader who has just learned a new fact about a particular character may be forced to pause for a moment to recall an earlier incident-"Aha," says the reader, "so that's why he was so eager to change the subject"-and quickly reinterprets what appears to have been true before. The more complicated the play, the more often the reader must shift perspectives in order to keep the whole work intact and in mind.

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Playscript Analysis

As we saw in chapter 2, individual bits of pertinent information are less obvious in a playscript and more apt to be scattered throughout the dialogue than in a novel or a short story, where a single paragraph can sum up a wealth of character analysis and background. Very few theatre designers, even the most observant, can collect enough details to begin the design process after a single reading. In the first reading, all readers, including theatre designers, simply turn each page in order to find out what happens next.
Even so, many designers insist that the first reading of a playscript informs their design process in important ways. Some designers make it a point to remember, even to record, the images produced by a first reading: a color, a shape, a piece of furniture, a quality of light. These initial images, even when they are vague and unfocused, and appear to have little apparent relevance to the play being read, assume an important role in a large number of designs. Some designers also pay careful attention to their emotional reactions after a first reading, knowing from experience that these responses will help them to make connections with audiences later on.

I always pay attention to the way I feel after I read a play for the first time. I think that's the closest I'll ever come to what audiences experience when they see a production. Most of them only see it once, you know. Just once. We have to keep reminding ourselves that the audience only sees the play once; and we can't change that experience for them, no matter how many
times we read it and how deeply we get inside its skin. No audience will ever get as much of the playas I've gotten by the time we get into tech rehearsals. That first reading is my only guide to the nature of the play's initial impact. If I corne away with good feelings, I'll try to recreate those particular good
feelings for the audience. If I corne away with negative feelings, well, I'll try to make up for them somehow.

Other designers make the first reading as "neutral" as possible.

I pretend I'm Joe Blow reading a play. I don't know nothing from plays. Never held a drawing pencil in my life. I just picked this script up. I'm reading it. That's alL Of course it's probably the most important part of my design process. How? Haven't a clue.

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From Page to Stage

"But, I Don't Like the Play!"
Young designers with limited experience in reading playscripts often wonder how much weight they should give their personal opinion of a play after a first reading. Will they be able to create designs when their first reaction is some variation on "It was. . . okay." "Kind of boring, actually." "Very confusing." "Hard to understand." The most troubling response of all, of course, is: "I don't like it." "How," the young designer asks, "can I design anything good for a play I don't like?" A chorus of experienced designers quickly sings out that "liking is beside the point"; some designers even relate experiences in which they created their best and strongest designs for plays they thoroughly disliked, even hated, when they first read them. The skeptical young designer continues to glare at the offending playscript: "I just don't believe that's possible."
There are two reasons why liking or not liking a play after one reading (or several) is not necessarily a stumbling block on the path to successful design. One has to do with a basic human propensity, the other with the specific nature of playscripts (see chapter 2). Because these reasons also speak to a variety of less-than-positive responses to plays on the page, it is worthwhile to examine them briefly.
Humans are, in general, somewhat biased toward not liking, or not being comfortable with, new experiences. This knee-jerk-type response, stronger in some people than in others, may be the remnant of a survival strategy inherited from ancient ancestors and buried deep within the instinctive portion of our brains. Undoubtedly, there was a time in human history when eating an unfamiliar berry, trying to make friends with a strange creature, or wandering far from familiar paths could have signalled disaster for a single exceptionally adventuresome human, and for the group as a whole. In this modern, and thought-to-be safer world, most people still retain a built-in, initially negative response to new experiences. I can recall several foods that tasted awful the first time I put them in my mouth but which I subsequently came to relish; people I disliked on sight who later became good friends; and a great deal of
music I found downright appalling when I first heard it but ultimately learned to love. Off the top of my head I can recall many plays I found boring, difficult, or needlessly demanding when I first read them and many others I simply did not like. In almost every case, once I began to interact with the characters and their dialogue, to look at the world of the play with a designer's eye, I became interested, then intrigued, and finally involved. In

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Playscript Analysis

almost every case, involvement turned into an objective, informed liking. (Liking a play instinctively, and not being able to express why, can be as great an impediment to a successful design process as not liking a play.)
The second reason first-time readers may respond negatively to reading a play is that it is an incomplete experience. (Remember our discussion about the relationship between a playscript and a blueprint?) Readers must find and fill in parts of the story, pick up clues in the dialogue that explain present actions and past circumstances, and even figure out from scattered comments what the characters look like and where they are. This is tedious work. Getting good at it requires practice. It is no surprise that inexperienced readers of playscripts are much more apt to dislike a play after reading it the first time than people who read plays regularly, whether for business or for pleasure.
Therefore, my advice to the young designer who does not believe he or she can find enough inspiration in a particularly unlikable playscript to create spaces, orchestrate colors, or manipulate fabrics successfully is "Cool it." Read it again. Begin another conversation with the play and its characters. listen better. Insofar as you can, reserve major judgments until after your next encounter.

The Second Time

The second reading of a novel, a short story, or a playscript is totally different from the first simply because the reader already knows what is going to happen. Some works of fiction do not need second readings. At the end of many books or stories, the reader comes to the end of the final page, sighs contentedly, and returns the volume to the shelf or hands it on to a friend. The reading has been a complete experience. By contrast, because a single reading of a playscript is always an incomplete experience, theatre designers know they must return to the script in order to find the facts that will inform their designs.

The Reader as Detective

It is impossible to describe the precise ways in which words in a script and the information they convey-the character traits, relationships, actions, places, times, and given circumstances that constitute a play-inform or incite a design. The transformation of dramatic writing into images of windows, chairs, waistcoats, collars, shafts of light and shadow is mysterious, personal,

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From Page to Stage

and probably biochemical. Neurons fire, synaptic connections are made, images appear. Someday neurochemists, neurophysiologists, and neurobiologists may understand the process, but even then, I doubt if the process itself will change dramatically.
A theatre designer collecting script facts proceeds very much like a crimescene detective searching for physical clues and interviewing witnesses. After a good deal of examination and interpretation, the detective and his or her team will be able to construct a detailed re-creation of the crime. All investigative work requires patience. Playscript readers, like experienced detectives, do not jump to quick conclusions. They look, listen, collect, and remain objective. They are careful to classify information correctly and cautious about accepting the veracity of witnesses at face value. For a theatre designer reading a play in order to begin a design process, the second reading is often the start of the investigative phase that will result in some sort of structural script analysis.
Specific preparations for second readings are similar to those of detectives as they set out to investigate a crime. These include making careful provisions for recording information and! or taking notes. The usual tools are pencils, pens, notebooks, clipboards, typewriters, computers (laptop models are ideal), and recording devices. Whatever you use, make sure you are well supplied. (It must be admitted that some designers-unlike detectives who must write down everything so they will always be prepared to present concrete evidence in court- depend entirely upon their extraordinary memories to collect and classify script facts. Most of us, however, do not possess a memory of this caliber.)
In addition to launching the designer's script detective work, second readings often spark clear and specific visual images directly related to the script, which are the first building blocks from which the foundation for the design process is begun. As I examined my own script analysis process, I discovered that during second and third readings I pay special attention to exchanges of
dialogue in which characters mention actual, tangible things. In his 1972 Mill1ifesto, Richard Foreman says, "art is not concerned with essence! but with THING." He goes on to describe the purpose of art: "Create a ZONE in which placed things luminate." Because things illuminate scripts for me, I collect them assiduously while I read. Even things that will never physically appear on stage are often as important to me as the costume, chair, or candelabrum that does.
The following brief set of "thing-oriented" notes were made by a costume designer during and after three readings of Tony Kushner's Angels in America,

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PlayscriptAnalysis

Part I: Millennium Approaches. The notes refer to the dialogue in act I, scene 4, the scene in which Prior tells Louis he has AIDS.

What happens? Louis & Prior talk after attending Louis' grandmother's funeral, before going to the cemetery. Prior is in a bad humor; his cat is missing; he blames Louis. Prior shows Louis a lesion on his arm; it is Kaposi's sarcoma. Prior says he is going to die. Prior wants Louis to go home with him. Louis leaves Prior "to go bury my grandma."

Louis' grandmother saw Emma Goldman speak; Emma Goldman wore a hat. At the cemetery everyone will "put dirt on the coffin." "It's an old Jewish custom to express love." If you're late you don't get to.
	Louis' grandmother reminded him of his mother; for that reason he
didn't visit her.
Louis gets" closety" at family affairs; Prior says "You get butch."
Louis' grandmother's coffin was a "tiny little coffin."
Prior says Louis' cousin Doris is "a dyke."
Prior's cat might be long-haired: "Not a furball in sight."
Louis wanted a dog; named the cat "little Sheba."
Louis says dogs have brains; Prior says cats have intuition.
Prior says he "did" a Shirley Booth: "sloppy slippers, housecoat, curlers.. :' ete. "Come back, little Sheba, come back."
	Prior describes his lesion as "The wine-dark kiss of the angel of death."

LOUIS: Emma Goldman's hat, coffin and dirt, being late, mother/grandmother, Doris, dog.
PRIOR: watching people, watching Louis, cat, floppy slippers, housecoat, curlers, wine-dark lesion. .

Subsequent Readings

Usually I read a play three times before I feel ready to talk to a director about designing it. Three times wasn't enough for Beckett. I read Waiting for Godot five times before I began to get a glimmer. Even then, it was only a glimmer. (Julie Hodge, scene designer)

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From Page to Stage

When all the apparent facts have been gathered, a theatre designer's relationship with a playscript changes. By now, the designer has made notes about time and place, relationships and motivations, past happenings and future hopes. The questions that remain are What does it mean' How am I supposed to feel about what happens? What impact does the author mean the play to have on the audience? What impact do I expect the play to have on the audience' How will a production of this play "fit into" the current attitudes and beliefs of my audience and my community, and how will those same current attitudes and beliefs effect the production of this play?
After the third reading, but sometimes before, theatre designers will probably meet with the director and the other designers working on the production. At this point there is a strong temptation for designers to leave additional readings of the script up to the director and the actors in rehearsal while they turn their attention to researching visual information and begin to work at the drawing board.
Indeed, during the years when the director's vision, or "concept," was sacrosanct, theatre designers were not encouraged to concern themselves with exploring the play for meanings or make attempts to figure out how the production might affect an audience. Today, designers are taking a more active role in shaping the total production. Each collaboration begins with individual script work and expands into meetings with all members of the production group. The exchange of ideas, focusing on the playscript, continues during the
designer's individual creative process and throughout the period when both the designs and the performances are being realized. Regular trips back into the playscript are as necessary for a designer as they are for the director and the
performers, providing the common ground on which all the work is based.
,

General Script Analysis

Play-analysis is of primary importance in the directing process. Merely feeling about a play is entirely insufficient. Play-analysis (structural analysis) must be mastered as a technique so that it can be used in approaching all aspects of the theatrical
art in all plays, historical as well as modern. (Francis Hodge, Play Directing)

Once the designer has collected a sufficient number of playscript facts (what constitutes "sufficient" varies considerably from person to person). the next

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 Playscript Analysis

step is to organize them in a useful and informative way. Even if they do not think of it as a defined task, most theatre designers today engage in an organizing and classifying process that is usually referred to as playscript analysis. For some, it may be taking general and sporadic notes while reading or using transparent pens in different colors to highlight words and phrases directly on the pages of the script. For others, it is a careful study of the elements from which a particular play is made and may result in a dozen pages of well-organized notes and lists, possibly even a chart or two. No matter how casual or formal the approach is, doing playscript analysis is the designer's first dramatic action.
As I have suggested, my favorite analogy for the process of discovering and then organizing script facts is the metirulous investigation of a crime site. The investigating detectives note its contents and its inhabitants, interrogate witnesses, and consider all outside influences that have directly affected the event. Objectivity is important to both processes, as well as the discipline to look first and assign a context later. "Just give me the facts ma' am," the TV detective Sergeant Joe Friday used to instruct crime witnesses on the popular television series Dmgnet. I often find myself saying the same words to young designers who are learning to read scripts: "Just give me the facts." of course, theatre designers must have faith, just as detectives do, that "the facts," discovered and individually noted, will eventually form patterns from which detailed images of actions emerge. They can then interpret these patterns to create an accurate, or truthful, structure.
It is at this point that the analogy between solving crimes and making theatre loses its usefulness. An explanation of why the analogy fails will help us to understand how a group of trained theatre people, sometimes strangers to each other when the work begins, are able, as a group, to create a successful, focused theatrical event. In the criminal investigation, the structure of the crime as pieced together from everything the detectives collect, hear, and observe is tested in a courtroom. There, it is subjected to at least one opposing interpretation. By the time all the witnesses and attorneys have finished examining the original structure, that structure may have come to look quite different. One version of the crime will prevail and the accused will be pronounced guilty or innocent. In this courtroom model, one version of the facts, one interpretation of the events, wins out over all others.
Good theatre is never a matter of winning. Good theatre is collaborative. Winning or losing is not an issue; guilt or innocence is not a consideration; judging does not happen. Ideally, a theatre production comes into being in an

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informal, nonconfrontational setting where the designers and a director sit around a table, discuss their individual responses to the script, and eventually come to a commonly perceived idea and image structure of the play.
The director's role in today's theatrical collaborations is one ofleadership. A modern director brings practical information to the table (performance place and dates, rehearsal schedule, budgets, potential casting, and so on), as well as a point of view about production style and performance theory. The director may, although not always, have a particular passion for bringing a specific
script to life on the stage. The best directors hear and see the idea structures of their design colleagues and are able to find connections between them. As the discussions progress, these directors guide and shape the various collaborative efforts into coherence.

Playwright, Not Playwriter

As I noted in chapter 2, the word playwright gives us our first clue about the nature of a playscript. A wright is "a constructive workman," an "artificer," a "maker." The word playwright carries the sense that the play's author does not merely write a script but builds a plan with an edifice-to-come in mind. A novelist, for example, can create a lavishly described scene, set in a vast castle, peopled by hundreds of characters, horses, and a herd of sheep, featuring a public execution described in vivid, bloody detail. A playwright, contemplating a dramatization of the same scene, must always remain aware of the restrictions imposed by performance spaces and live actors, the myriad problems associated with having animals on the stage, and the technical difficulties (as well as considerations of taste) involved in staging a graphic execution in front of a live audience.
Playwrights make plays about any and every subject or character, draw on an infinite number of themes, and compose actions of all kinds. These subjects, characters, themes, and actions, however, must be shaped and built into a structure that will meet the specific dramatic needs of a play. There are hundreds of variations on the play structure, but all plays, from Greek tragedy through Restoration comedy and modern realism, share significant similarities: plays are written to be performed; all plays are performed witltin a defined space; characters, imitated by actors, act out the story; the action occurs in the present, in real time; the interaction of the audience affects every performance.

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Playscript Analysis

Playscript analysis is the process of discovering the unique structure within a single play. The person doing this kind of analysis must understand a play's components in order to find and examine how the playwright has shaped and manipulated his or her vision to meet the needs, and fit within the confines, of the basic construction model.

Fermal Seript Analysis

The most common scheme for playscript analysis appears to have been popularized by Francis Hodge in Play Directing, first published in 1971. Using the six components of drama outlined by Aristotle in his Poetics as a foundation, Hodge defines "seven major areas of play-analysis" as:

l.	given circumstances;	
2.	dialogue;	
3.	dramatic action;	
4.	characters;	
5.	idea;	
6.	tempos;	
7,	moods.	

These "major areas" are a group of classifications into which script facts can be organized and analyzed.
Why would a theatre designer want to spend time and effort on making a formal script analysis? Can it be at all practical? Consider the following analogy: Suppose someone assigned you to take a walk in the woods, and when you returned asked you to describe in detail everything you saw. You would certainly return with impressions and feelings but, when you began your description you would have a hard time recalling specifics. If, on the other hand, you were given a targeted assignment-look carefully at trees and rocks and for signs of mammals, for example-you would return quite able to describe leaf shapes, to compare rock sizes and colors, and to discuss the probable identity of the mammal that left identifiable tracks along the path. We already know that we perceive and remember, in part, through categorization. By deciding what general areas you are going to explore before you begin, you increase the probability of success in your search. "Read that script

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and be able to talk about everything that's in it" is a daunting assignment for theatre designers, but that is what we face without a plan, Conversely, "Read this script and separate the facts as they fall into the following seven (or six, or eight) categories" makes sense to our brains and is therefore both a reasonable and a rewarding task.
Using a formal method of script analysis is not a new idea, nor is it restricted to a single writer. Two of the most recent books on the subject on my shelf, Script Analysis: Reading and Understanding the Playscript for Production, by David Grote; and Script Analysis for Actors, Directors, and Designers, by James Thomas, both focus the analytical search on categories very similar to those outlined by Hodge in Play Directing. The "Outline for Playscript Analysis" in chapter 1 of Ingham and Covey's The Costume Designer's Handbook was also influenced by Hodge, although the categories are labeled and organized differently and have increased in number from seven to nine.

An Outline for Playscript Analysis
The following playscript analysis outline is the one I currently use and share with my students. It changes in small ways from year to year because I regularly revise and, hopefully, improve it. This outline has been constructed as a series of questions. Not all of these questions will apply to every script you read and examine, and some scripts may require you to create additional questions. Answer the questions that do apply as concisely and as specifically as possible. Note script references and record page numbers on your outline so you can locate your references quickly.

I. WHERE ARE THEY?
a. In what country, city; place, building, room, etc.?
b. How do the characters describe the place they are in? c. Is there any special significance to the place they are in?

II. WHEN ARE THEY?
a. In what day; month, year, century, season, time of day; etc.?
b. Do the characters have anything specific to say about when they are?
c. Is there any special significance to when they are? Is it, for instance, a
national holiday?

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Playscript Analysis

III. WHO ARE THEY? (Consider characters separately and as a group
	or groups.)
a. How are they related?
b. What are their roles in life? Include jobs and professions as weIl as social and economic classes.
c. What do they think of each other? 
d. What do they think of themselves?
e. Under what form of government do they Iive'? What are their attitudes about the form of government under which they live?
f What role does religion play in their Iives? Which religion?What are their attitudes about their religion?
g. What are the prevailing attitndes toward sex, family, marriage, and ethical conduct? Do they live within or rebel against these attitudes?

IV. WHAT HAPPENED BEFORE THE PLAY BEGAN?

Limit your facts to information given in the dialogue but be sure to "listen" carefully; much of what you discover will come from casual clues, which can occur in a variety of contexts.

V. WHAT IS THE FUNCTION OF EACH CHARACTER IN THE PLAY?

a. Principal characters:
Who is the protagonist'
	Note primary action(s)
Who is tlie antagonist?
	Note primary action(s)
What are the functions of the other principal cliaracters?
b. Secondary characters:
		What is the function of each?

C. Crowds and functionaries: 
	Note functions

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VI. WHAT KINDS OF DIALOGUE DO THE CHARACTERS SPEAK?

a. Realistic?

b. Naturalistic? 

c. Literary?

d. Poetry? e. Other'

VII. WHAT HAPPENS IN THE PLAY?

a. Briefly describe the principal event in the play. b. Construct an action chart for the play.
VIII. WHAT IS THE PLAY'S THEME?

This will only become apparent when you have read the script several times, and perhaps not until rehearsals are well underway.

Working Through the Playscript Analysis Outline
The first time you start to work through a detailed playscript outline for a moderately complicated play, it will seem enormously time-consuming. But careful reading and attention to detail take time and a good deal of persistence. A fully completed outline may be many pages in length. However, if you continue to use the same basic format, the steps involved become more routine and less formidable each time you go through the process. As you become more familiar with the elements from which plays are made. you also pick up clues in the playscript and perceive the play's structure more quickly. Your first few playscript analyses may require ten to twenty hours of reading, rereading, searching, and recording. However, an experienced theatre designer who has been offered a script to design early one afternoon, and is expected to attend an initial production meeting the next morning at nine o' clock sharp. can prepare a creditable script analysis in four or five hours and still get a good night's sleep.
There is nothing magic about the order of the outline and very little that is orderly about the process itself When I first began to do systematic playscript analysis as part of my design process. I simply jotted down clue notes, one after

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the other, on legal pads. After I had finished collecting as many facts as I could find in two or three readings, I cut the individual notes apart, organized them into categories, and stapled or glued them onto sheets of notebook paper, which I kept in a binder. Later, I experimented with several colors of highlighter pens, which I used to mark clues in the script itself, transferring only general information to my own notes. Now I keep a copy of the script analysis outline saved as an open document in my computer (a Macintosh PowerBook). For each script I work on, I copy the outline and fill it in. I insert bits of image-provoking information as I discover them in the text and continue to add, subtract, question, correct, and organize facts and observations in what is very much like a conversation, carried out on the computer screen, between me and the play.

Exploring the Categories
Here are some examples of ways you can use the playscript analysis questions to focus your reading on specific words, phrases, and exchanges in the dialogue. The words contain clues that provide answers to the questions. For designers, the words to which you respond must also incite visual pictures or images. The examples are drawn from several different plays; if this or any other approach to playscript analysis is going to be useful. it must work with a wide variety of scripts, whether past or present. The script passages within each example have been gathered from an entire playscript, an act or scene, or a single short section in the play. I have not connected these examples with specific images because no two designers will see the same chair, dress, color, texture, shadow, or lamp.

I, WHERE ARE THEY?

a. In what country, city, place, building, roam, etc.'
b. How do the characters describe the place they are in' 
c. Is there any special significance to the place they are in'

Cloud Nine, by Caryl Churchill (from act I):

CLIVE:	…though far from home…

We serve the queen wherever we may roam,
*

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From Page to Stage

Figure 3-1. A very specific place! From Middle-Aged White Guys, by Jane Martin at Actors Theatre 01 Louisville, with Leo Burmester and Karen Gras.sJe, Photograph by Richard Trigg,

CLIVE:	Long ride in the bush.

CLIVE:	We are not in this country to enjoy ourselves.

BETTY:	We're not in this country to enjoy ourselves.

CLIVE:	Ah what a haven of peace to come home to. The cool, the
calm, the beauty.

BETTY:	I had left my book inside on the piano. I was in the harrunock.

CLIVE:	Isn't that Harry riding down the hill? 	

BETTY:	Sometimes the sunset is so terrifying I can't bear to look.

CLIVE:	Elsewhere in the empire the sun is rising.

BETTY:	Harry looks so small on the hillside. 

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Playscript Analysis

CLIVE:	Edward will go home to school shortly. 	*

HARRY: Built a raft and went up the river. . . They have a lot of skulls around the place but not white men's I think. . . IfI should die in this forsaken spot.

CLIVE:	You are dark like this continent. Mysterious, treacherous. . . when I lifted the mosquito netting.

MRS. SAUNDERS: I do like living in your house where there's plenty of guns. 	*

ELLEN:	I am going to lock you in the nursery until suppertime.

CLIVE:	The heat of the day has gone. . cool drinks in the gazebo. . .

HARRY: Where can I go except into the jungle to hide? 	*

CLIVE:	You have been away from England too long.

On page 4 of the Cloud Nine acting edition, below the cast list, is the following statement: ACT I-Africa, 1880. Clues gathered from the act 1 dialogue begin to flesh out some of the particulars of place. The family is for from home. Beyond the house in which they live (where there's plenty of guns), there is jungle, a river, a hillside, and Clive returns home from a long ride in the bush. Clive describes this continent (and Mrs. Saunders!) as dark, mysterious, and treacherous. Betty says the sunset is so terrifying I can't bear to look. And yet, surrounded by an African wilderness, the family home is furnished with a piano, a hammock, a nursery, and a gazebo. Betty reads a book; the nanny, Ellen, threatens to lock young Edward up in the nursery; and Clive describes his home as a haven of peace. A sense of duty keeps them in Africa; possibly the same sense of duty compels them to try to live as if they were in England. We serve the queen wherever we may roam, sings Clive. Betty and Clive remind each other: We are not in this country to enjoy ourselves. And yet, wild Africa has wormed its way into their very British world.

II. WHEN ARE THEY?

a. In what day, month, year, century. season, time of day, ete.'
B. Do the characters have anything specific to say about when they are? 
c. Is there any special significance to when they are? Is it, for instance, a national holiday?

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From Page to Stage

Figure 3-2. A portrait of the family in act 1 of Caryl Churchill's Cloud Nine, in costwnes which help place them in a specific time period. From a production at Arena Stage, Washington, D.C. Photograph by Joan Marcus.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. by Tennessee WiIliams:

MARGARET:	I tell you I got so nervous at that table tonight. 
*
MARGARET:	And the no~neck monsters were ranged around the table, some in high chairs and some on th' Books of Knowledge, all in fancy little paper caps in honor of Big Daddy's birthday.
*
BRICK:	What party'
MARGARET:	Big Daddy's birthday party.
BRICK:	Is this Big Daddy's birthday?
MARGARET:	You know this is Big Daddy's birthday.
BRICK:	No, I don't. I forgot it.
*
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Playsaipt Analysis

BIG MAMA:	We just got the full report from the laboratory at the Ochsner Clinic, completely negative, son, ev'rything negative, right on down the line!
*
MARGARET:	But tonight they're going to tell her the truth about it. When Big
Daddy goes to bed, they're going to tell her that he is dying of
cancer.
*
MARGARET:	this is Big Daddy's last birthday.
*
MARGARET:	he broke his ankle last night jumping hurdles on the high school athletic field!
*
MAE:	I wonder if the mosquitoes are active tonight?
*
BIG DADDY:	I still have desire for women and this is my sixty-fifth birthday.
*
MAE:	You're eight years older'n Brick.
*
MAE:	Why, Gooper has given himself body and soul to keeping this place
up for the past five years since Big Daddy's health started failing.
*
MAE:	. . . Still a football player at twenty-seven!
*
BIG MAMA:	Time goes by so fast. Nothin' can outrun it. Death commences
too early-almost before you're half acquainted with life-you
meet the other.

It is night and the time of year when mosquito", may be active. The night is special in several ways: this is Big Daddy's birthday and a celebration is in progress with children (the no-neck monsters) ranged around the table. . . all in fancy little paper caps. On this birthday night, Big Daddy is sixty-five years old and still has desire for women. The night is special for Big Mama who just got the full report on Big Daddy's health and was told that his tests were completely negative. Before this special night is over, however, Big Mama will be told the truth: that Big Daddy is dying of cancer. The night before this special night, Brick broke his ankle jumping hurdles, on the high school athletic fields. Brick is still a football player at twenty-seven. Brick says he does not remember it is Big Daddy's birthday. I forgot it. Gooper, who is eight years older'n Brick, dedicates himself to keeping this place up and, by inference, is not immature and does not go around pretending to be an athlete. It is diffi-
62

From Page to Stage

(a)

,
, ,

Figure 3-3. Six production photographs that suggest the power of visual images in the comnnmication of character through the visual production. (a) Getting Out at Actors Theatre of Louisville with Lynn Cohen and Susan Kingsley. Photograph by David S, Talbott, (b) Blithe Spirit at Arena Stage with Ellen Karas CUld Sarah Marshall. Photograph by StCUl Barouh, (c) Act 2 of Cloud Nine at MaryWashington College with]ereJ11iah Patterson,TiffCUlY Hayrlett,CUld Emily Hilton, Photograph by David Hunt (d) Holiday Heart at Arena Stage with Donna Biscoe,Afi McClendon, CUld Jeffery v. Thompson, Photograph by StCUl Barouh, (e) Henry V at The Shakesprore Throtre, Washington, DC" with Vivienne Benesch, TedVCUl Griethuysen, CUld Harry Hamlin. Photograph by Carol Rosegg. (I) The Taming of the Shrew at The Shakespeare ThOltre,Washington, D,C., with ]onathCUl Epstein CUldAny VCUl NostrCUld. Photograph by Carol Pratt

cult to imagine how a single night can portend so much anguish. There are shadows in every corner. This is Big Daddy's last birthday. Death commences too early.

III. WHO ARE THEY?
(Consider characters separately and as a group or groups.)
a. How are they related? 
Getting Out, by Marsha Norman: 

MOTHER:	June's havin another baby. Don't know when to quit, that girl. Course, I ain't one to talk.
ARLENE:	Have you seen Joey?

MOTHER:	An Ray . . .
Ray ain't had a day ofluck in his life.
Least bein locked up now, he'll keep off]une til the baby gits here.

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