Day 6

8th July 2019

Activities:

1. We began the day by reading a draft of Abhimanyu’s play. After the reading, we took turns to offer criticism on what was working and what was not, what could be fleshed out further in the coming scenes and what might benefit from revision. Chanakya noted the importance of setting down an event flow, which can facilitate the writing process. We spoke about how, ideally, each individual scene should push the play in the direction of one bigger thing, whether that be resolution or something else. By crafting an event flow, a writer knows where the play ostensibly starts and finishes, and that makes it easier to take decisions that helps the characters get from beginning to end.
2. Then, we read a draft of Saudamini’s play. Again, after the reading, we took turns to offer our criticisms and help the writer determine what she wanted to have another look at and what was working for the piece.
3. After that, we began a discussion on the structure of plays and noted a distinction between event-driven plays and character-driven plays. With event-driven plays, characters are all responding to an event, which is the driving force of the play; and with character-driven plays, the characters and their destinies, in a sense, is the driving force of the play. Of course, the distinction is not black and white and plays often feature a mix of event-driven portions and character-driven portions.
4. As an exercise, we were asked to write the summaries of two short stories where one story was event-driven and the other was character-driven, and both stories had to engage with the theme of demonetization.
5. After writing our summaries, we were split into two groups and each asked to present the event flow of any one of our stories. One group had to present an event-driven story and the other had to present a character-driven story.

Questions considered:

1. What makes a text theatrical? Why is writing for the stage different from writing for other mediums?
2. What are the ways in which a character can be given a voice of their own? What does a writer do to avoid using a character as a mouthpiece for their own voice?
3. What is the driving force of your play? How do you ensure that each scene reveals something new to the audience, and pushes the play forward in the right direction?