October’s HighlandLIT, on 15th October, was a workshop on the theme ‘Write to Perform’, led by our Chair, Dr Paul Shanks. There was an in-the-room audience, and a watching-from-home audience via Zoom. Those attending heard Paul discuss how to present writing to a live audience, and the skills required to communicate effectively in that context. His main emphasis was on drama and theatre, and he provided detailed notes to those attending (and arranged to send them to online attendees).
This is clearly a theme close to Paul’s heart – he explained that before his studies in literature he studied and worked as an actor/performer in his late teens and early 20s, and still used the skills he acquired in that context. He also emphasized the power of live performance, mentioning the role of Ancient Greek Theatre in binding people together, forging connections between actors and audience, enriching the community with shared stories.
It’s impossible in short note to cover the richness of information Paul shared with us. He covered the following main areas:
Techniques for reading aloud
Among the advice he shared was the importance of precise enunciation, and the value of silence creatively used – allowing words to ‘hang’.
Adapting texts for live performance
Paul’s advice here included: seeing the Narrator as a character, and providing notes on posture, clothing and gestures; cutting and reforming sentences to reflect speech rhythms; describing the parts of the stage (Paul gave us a ‘duffers’ guide) the actor should occupy in the course of the performance.
Writing for live performance
Here, Paul considered different styles of stage direction in detail, looking at examples from well-known works. He discussed how much detail the writer should include in stage directions, and how much to leave to the production company. He highlighted issues which need to be taken into account – budgetary constraints, for example, and the fact that there’s a limit to what is technically possible in a theatrical (as opposed to a filmic) work.
Paul noted that theatre is a representation – or a ‘re-presentation’ - of the world, and that hence it can be either presented realistically, or in abstract form.
Writing dramatic scenes
Paul had two major emphases here: the need to make dialogue realistic – finding ways of communicating on paper to the actor the hesitations and interruptions which are part of everyday conversations; and the need for each scene to revolve round some kind of conflict, and to lead to some kind of change.
He defines change as ‘a change of circumstances or fortune (reversal), a change of mood, a discovery, a decision, a deed and accident.’
Exercises
And then there were two exercises. Firstly, we were asked to write a description of the setting for a planned dramatic piece, and secondly, we were invited to place a couple of characters in our setting, give them words to say – and a reason for one of them to depart with an object which had been present during the conversation. Intriguing! And one or two people were brave enough to share their work with the room and the online audience.
This is the barest outline just of Paul’s major points – there was so much more. We are deeply grateful to him for donating his time to prepare and deliver this excellent workshop, and for doing so with the humanity, humour and graciousness we have come to appreciate. Thanks too to Cathy Carr, who ran the technical operation.
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