Day 8

12th July 2019

Activities:

1. Today’s session was dedicated entirely to a workshop on Saudamini’s play, which explores masculinity in India through an adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club and Uday Prakash’s Paul Gomra ka Scooter.
2. We began by reading a few scenes from the play and immediately after, jumped into improvising stagings of those scenes. The actors did not enact the script, but instead were given free reign to play with the characters and explore each personality through different situations, which in turn helped the playwright see what the interactions of her characters might look like and create the basic structure/chronology of events within a scene. At one point, a third character was added to the scene to see how that impacted the dynamic of the other two people.
3. Then, once the actors had an understanding of what their characters were like, we began exploring different approaches to the opening scene, in which a father and a son argue. Saudamini was asked to, in effect, write her scene in real time; the actors moved around the space and Saudamini called out dialogues on the spot, which they then delivered. Every now and then, when the scene seemed to stagnate, Chanakya clapped his hands and Saudamini had to interrupt the routine of the scene; anything could happen—a third person could walk in, something could break, a character could reveal something big. If the playwright felt stuck, she was at liberty to call for a prompt from the other members of the lab, and so the scene continued.
4. Improvising each written scene was useful in determining which scenes had too little forward action and could use a stronger sense of direction, and which scenes had too much going on. We were able to test out dramatic choices in the script and see what looked good on the stage and what could benefit from revision. We noted the importance of ensuring that conflict remains in the scene, as this helps engage an audience in a direct manner.

Questions considered:

1. What motivates your character? What are the different layers that compose your character? How do they interact with the play’s other characters?
2. What is propelling the forward motion of a scene? Does each scene contribute to the advancement of a larger narrative arc?
3. How is routine established and disrupted in a scene? How is tension maintained in a scene?