Allied with the actor

Here we go further examining the writers potential alliance with the actor.

Actors will often have a sense of the well-proportioned scene. It can both be a intellectual or primary, bodily sense of drama's structure. But most of all, actors are worth listening to as a scriptwriter because they will be living with your fictional work, taking responsibility for it, investing it with their own bodies and minds. They'll sense when lines doesn't work, are surplus or go in a wrong direction.

Of course, sometimes an actor can have problems with a line or element which is difficult for them personally. It might provoke a fear in them, often unconsciously, and so they will try to argue rationally, objectively why the line or element is bad. If you sense this is the case, be happy, because it is a great opportunity to strengthen the alliance with the actor. If you can explore the actors objection to the element and reach a satisfying resolution without antagonizing him or her, you'll have expanded your mutual trust.

One of my main tools to exploring differences of opinion, both in relation to actors, but also when working with writers/directors/producers, is to focus on asking questions and establishing a mutual agreement on the primary logic and mechanics of a script/scene. Its a bit Socratic, but without the didactic approach. The key is to allow for the possibility that you are wrong, even when you damn sure you're absolutely right.

In such conversations I listen a lot after what I call 'hidden gems'. Because often hidden in an objection, no matter how rational or irrational, you can find an unknown treasure. An experience, an emotion, a story or a moment which can bring a new aspect to the script.

Actors are the writer's best ally, alone for the reason that they have the most to win by making you better, by helping you to succeed - and many of the understand how to be truly collaborative.

The courage

"Courage is being scared to death... and saddling up anyway" - John Wayne

The word courage has its root in the latin word for heart; cor. Courage flows from the beating heart, that wants to live in spite of fear. David Mamet argues that the most important thing the actor brings to the character is their own courage. This will give the character life; a real, living heart, so to speak, to the otherwise artificial and non-existent person.

The actor's primary virtue has always been courage. The simple act of standing in front of an audience demands courage in itself, even if you by disposition crave it and are driven to do it. One of the best pieces of advice I ever received was to connect with actors, if I wanted to write drama. As a writer, you might think you are the brain, but without the heart you are worth nothing.

After my return to Denmark, I attend more theatre performances and I meet more actors. Two of the recent performances I saw reminded me of the importance of courage. One was a grotesque, semi-spex version of Chaplin's The Gold Rush put on stage to buffoon the makers own desire to be political correct. The whole performance breathes with courage; it hides nothing, uses all the most simple, old tricks, never tries to be clever, and that is why it works so well. The courage of the performers convince. The other performance I saw was cleverly made, well-designed and full of new tricks, but in the directing and in some of the crucial parts, it lacked courage. It never left the stage. It was impressive, but without heart.

The same goes for writing and designing drama. Better to have courage than to be clever and perfect. Practice the discipline of sensing if your impulses are controlled by fear or inspired by courage and desire. I have a bunch of tricks and questions I treat myself to in the process. Like:

"What is the worst thing that could happen now?"

"- for the character?"

"- for me as a writer?"

"What is the worst possible idea I can come up with to solve this problem?"

- I leave the script and take a walk, while trying to sense and answer to: "What do I really, really want, no, not just want, but desire, crave? What can I imagine that will give me a kick?"

As writers, we have the time to reflect and ponder, so what I really admire about the courage of actors, is that they do it on stage in real time - they follow their impulses even when they know it might lead the performance astray from the planned (that is; when they do it, and not when they are just playing safe). Both in acting and writing, its the true moments of courage, where someone let go of all that is safe and well-known and take those steps into uncertainty, those are the moments, which truly touches us as an audience.

“Not just because..”

Drama is essentially an examination of what people want and what they will do to get it. This seems to be the basic mechanics of the good scene or script.

Ask what your characters want and how they go about getting it. This is the fundamental tool to make weak scenes better.

Always.

Say it out loud: Always.

Now repeat it, while hitting yourself in the head, lest you should forget it.

Your best friend, the actor.

Because writers often forget it (and don’t even get me started on the directors, whom so easily get lost in their ‘visuals’). The scenes are then weak. You end up writing something else than drama, pure expo, narration or even poetry. Maybe we get lucky and the director and/or especially the actors have plenty of dramatic instinct to infuse the scene with drama. Despite the weak scene, the actors will somehow play their characters with lots of intention. This is the hallmark of the natural actor, not being able to play without clear and present intention, no matter what ‘method’ or technique they think they are applying as actors, this is fundamentally their craft, as it is ours. So learn from them. Speak your own lines. Find the intention. Feel it. Its in the body. Not the mind. That’s why you need actors. They have bodies. Physical bodies. Authors of novels don’t need them, so in their writing they can be lyrical, reflective and even acadmic. We can’t. The actor is our siamese twin and we can’t live without them. Hell, we shouldn’t even want to.

Our profession: Existential paradise

This examination of want and will demands a certain portion of cynicism from us as creators. By ‘a certain cynicism’, I’m not thinking of a bleak outlook on life, but rather a questioning, not-taking-anything-at-face-value-attitude. Peel off the illusions to better create the illusion of a drama.

Nothing is ever ‘just because’; just because he is a good man, just because that’s how the story is, just because that’s how reality is.

No, the young man is helping the woman because he wants something. What does he want? To be considered a hero? To make her fall in love with him? To forget about his own problems?

No, a story never just is. Its always a choice. At the outset, you might be making a lot of unconscious choices, just to get going, but at some point, you need to examine your choices. Are there better choices to make? More interesting? Daring? Never accept your story at face value, just because.

OK, reality is, just because it is. But you are not constructing reality. It might remind us of reality or it might be an altogether different reality from mine. So, yes, we are back at the choices. How is the world and reality of your drama?

That’s your decisions, and you have to make them. That’s how you construct drama. Satré would be in paradise (and btw, he wrote a few decent plays himself).

This is one of the most important 'tricks' in our tool-box: Never stop being the child who asks “Why?” and the child who observes the emperor and exclaims: “But he’s not wearing any clothes!”

A script workshop in Copenhagen

I have been asked to do a script-workshop for teaterHUSET in Copenhagen, beginning January '10.

Her kan du læse TeaterHUSETs præsentation:

Manus Workshop – vil du blive bedre til at skrive?
Det er nemt at blive forvildet i skoven af dramaturgiske modeller. Manuskriptforfatter
Troels Christian Jakobsen arbejder med en række enkle principper, der går forud for
modellerne, og som kan hjælpe den skrivende til et bedre overblik. Det er i virkeligheden
ret enkelt at skrive dramatik, hvis det ikke lige var fordi, vi nemt gør det temmelig svært for
os selv og hinanden.
Hver session begynder med en introduktion til dagens emne, efterfulgt af samtale med
deltagerne om deres eget skrivearbejde, som kan være et eget manus eller skriveopgaver
stillet af workshop-lederen. Det betyder at workshoppen både er for folk, der er igang med
skrive egne manus, og folk der har brug for nogle udfodringer til at komme igang med at
skrive.

De 7 workshops har følgende overskrifter:
1. Principperne:
Intro til de grundlæggende principper for dramatik: konflikt, tonalitet, karakter, mysteriet og
enhed. Plus nogle noter om proces.
2. Struktur:
Intro til at arbejde med en fleksibel akt-struktur med udgangspunkt i en almen 4-akts-
model. Plus lidt mere om proces.
3. Konflikt:
Konflikt er grundstoffet i dramatik, men betydningen overses ofte.
4. Tonalitet:
Hvilken toneart eller genre er vigtig for hvordan et drama konstrueres. Alt begynder med
de to grundlæggende, komplementære genrer; komedien og tragedien.
5. Karakter:
I det gamle spørgsmål om hvorvidt karakter eller plot er vigtigst, må svaret principielt set
være: karakteren.
6. Mysteriet:
Drama har sit udspring i religiøse mysterier og spiller stadig en vigtig rolle ved
konstruktionen af drama.
7. Enhed:
Aristoteles talte om stedets, tidens og handlingens enhed - og det holder stadig som
princip.

Troels Christian Jakobsen er uddannet på Dramatikeruddannelsen i ’96 og har lige siden
arbejdet inden for teater, TV og film, både som manusforfatter, dramaturg og instruktør.
Han har især arbejdet en hel del med udvikling af nye stykker og manuskriptudvikling til
spillefilm, de seneste 4 år i Grækenland.

Tid: Torsdage d.21.januar, 28.januar, 4.februar, 11.februar, 18.februar, 25.februar og
4.marts 2010. Hver torsdag kl.19-22.
Sted: Dramatoriet
Pris: 1000 kr.
Deltagere: 6 personer.
Tilmelding: Senest 13.januar 2010
Tilmeld dig nu til projekt@teater-huset.dk. Erfaring er ikke påkrævet. Skriv om du vil
arbejde med et manuskript, du allerede har gang eller om du mere har lyst til at blive
kastet ud i øvelser.


Anden henvendelse til:
Liv Helm
, Projektkoordinator
TeaterHUSET

Rådhusstræde 13

1466 København K

Tlf: 35102522

The Joke

I believe creating scripts for drama is one of the more difficult things you can undertake. One reason is that a script is essentially build upon one joke, and you have to make everything relate to that joke. You have to keep this simplicity in mind while creating a complex world around it. Often a script fails because it looses aim of it's joke or repeats the joke over and over without any complexity. I use the term joke, because of its simplicity, but could also talk about dramatic irony, the inner mystery or

So what is a joke. Here are some examples.
Silence of the Lambs: Starling hopes she can make the lambs stop screaming by saving the girl from Buffalo Bill, but she can't.
Seventh Seal: The Knight has lost all faith, but in facing the most meaningless of all, Death, he finds a new faith.
Sixth Sense: Crowe, the main character, believes he is supposed to save the boy, when in fact its the boy, who can save him.
Last Tango in Paris: The Brando-character has lost all faith in love because of his dead wife's betrayal, and takes out his despair on a young woman in a nihilistic sexual relationship. The joke is that he rediscovers love, but too late - death has been invited into the relationship and the young woman kills him to his big surprise.

When I work on my own scripts, I always stay in notebook-mode, collecting ideas, writing a few lines, arranging the rough structure, until I have a firm hold on the joke. Only then can I progress to treatment or script. In my work as a consultant, I have seen too many times, writers and directors setting out to write their script without a solid idea of their joke. The result is always what I call an unfinished script, even if it gets produced.

Back in CPH

I have returned to Copenhagen to find better paying jobs as a scriptwriter - and right away TV2, the second largest TV station in DK, had a public tender for a prime-time mini-series for 12-year olds and their families. Episode length 25 minutes, episode budget 200.000 euro. I have turned in two concepts. "Murder of Four", roughly translated from Danish (where murder is 'morder' and mother is 'mor' - so the title has a wordplay in Danish, as well as a link to a very popular feature film series from the 60s called "Father of four") - this is a crime story where four kids have to prove their mothers innocence. The other concept is a fantasy thing - a kind of ET story, but with supernatural creatures.

"Murder of Four" already has a producer attached, the danish company Thura Film. The fantasy-concept is still looking for a producer.

In mid November TV2 will call in a selection of projects for a pitch session. Based on that, they'll choose 3-4 projects to begin development - each handed roughly 7000 euro to write a first episode and story-line for the following two episodes. Of those 3-4 projects they will eventually choose one to be produced later in summer 2010.

ATHENS SCRIPT WORKSHOP

Over the summer The Athens Script Workshop will appear in a new form.

Daily 2 hour sessions will be held at Ianos on Stadiou 24 in the cafe from 4 to 6 pm. It begins Monday the 6th of July and will continue for 8 weeks.

Mondays: Introduction to script creation.
Introduces my view on drama and the creation of scripts. Participation free of charge.

Tuesdays: Principles of drama.
We talk about the basic principles of drama with examples of how they work and how to work with them.

Wednesdays: Toolbox.
After principles, we look at tools for better writing, like act models, creative methods and simple tricks.

Thursdays: Writing exercises.
Based on principles and the toolbox writing exercises to develop your understanding of them.

Fridays: Your writing.
We take a look at the participants own writing, either a project or your exercise-writing. Your choice.

The setting will be informal, discussion is welcomed and participation is flexible - meaning you only have to show up for the type of session you find useful.

Payment follows this simple form. Enrollment: 50 €. After that: 5 € per session you participate in.

If you have questions about the workshop email me. You can find my email address in my profile.