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- Reading responses must be AT LEAST 200 words.
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- Reading responses are due by midnight on the night PRIOR to our discussion of the required reading.
While going through Spencer’s reading there were many things I could relate too. There is a current idea floating in my head that I would love to write, granted it’s not a play but the last paragraphs of Spencer’s book stuck out. “In other words, even when you get the urge to write such a play, it may be due to impulse that is really experiential... at some time in life you have experienced its sting.” (page158) Which is very true for the idea I have in mind. With his idea of making the theme into a sentence it can help me in my future writings. There was always this roadblock when it came to making them into more than the ideas in my head. Having read Proxima B before gave a sense of comfort, even though it’s been more than a year I had seen it performed in class. Being able to read some of the lines and remember how they were said how they had been performed by actors (Students but still) showed how things can come to life and how they can change when real people are put to the test. Hearing Nagafuchi again always makes me laugh, and I picture my grandma saying it the same way the old woman would say it.
ReplyDeleteKendra Lara
Spencer gives a good head start for the people who aren’t sure how to begin writing their plays even though they may already have an idea of what it will be about. That’s my case. I have been thinking about two different ideas and the readings and my play’s actors accessibility is what has been making me change my mind. Right now, I have two different ideas that still do not seem to fit with a good setting. Spencer talks about how he advises his student about making a theme, more like a complete sentence. Another advice is about creating an image. This image is composed of a believable setting, and then we place the characters in it. Creating this may seem like something very simple, but it is not. At least, not for me. But, it gave me motivation to start doing it.
ReplyDeleteOne thing that I can agree with Spencer is that you can add something personal to understand the feelings of anger, jealousy, happiness, etcetera, of your characters. I have used that method before when working in any kind of writing. It does help when you get stuck in some parts of your play (or story). However, sometimes you can be biased by your own experiences and then it turns into a mess.
Paulina Longoria
Both readings provide examples of impulse and theme, what I will take away from these readings is how to make my theme of my play concrete. Proxima b along with Stuart’s section on theme, helps me better understand how to construct a well written play. I usually write impulsively and it’s a mess, so the tips Spencer provides about impulse and theme will help me keep in mind to protect the impulse and the rest will follow. For example, the main character in my play is originally made to be impulsive, her actions and speech, but I noticed that this impulsivity changes the theme of the play. Instead of going back to reconstruct it, I leave it like that even if the theme so happens to change, I try to “protect” the impulse. However, what I would like to know is if impulse in playwriting is the same as it is outside of playwriting. I want to know if I’m using the term right when it comes to the reading by Spencer. I hope that I can apply this further to my play, I feel that it is lacking a concrete theme but with the examples, I feel like I know where to take it now.
ReplyDeleteIlene Guevara
I think that this section of Spencer’s book has maybe been the most useful for me. Like the students he describes, I usually have an idea for something I want to write. An abstract, hopefully interesting, idea, but no scenario to kick it into gear. I know he covers a lot of ways to breach the gap between idea and play, but I think the most useful is figuring out why you want to write about that specific theme. An idea or theme may start as “an intellectual problem, but there’s a chance that you’re interested in it because at some point in your life you have experienced its sting” (Spencer). Spencer suggests that you investigate why you want to write about it, in case there is a personal experience connected to it that you can draw from. I think that most good writers, of any type, write the best about things they care about, that are important to them, so this advice is very helpful to me in figuring out how to translate an idea into a play.
ReplyDeleteLacey Naumann
With Spencer's reading, I enjoyed his tackling of such an abstract concept of an Idea, and describing how to begin the process of playwriting from the concept. It sounds so simple after, creating a sentence, like a thesis statement, on what your play will focus on, but the most impactful piece of advice I got from Spencer regarding theme was that "You can know it beforehand, or you can discover it as you go along" (pg 155). It felt very relieving to see that it's common and acceptable to not have a clear idea of what you want to get across and allow yourself to discover that as you write, getting the meaning from what you've created as a whole. He also mentions that it should generally act as a guide, which I can attest to from editing my play ideas from the beginning to what I have so far, and because of that I feel more confident that I can describe a clearer narrative within our time/location restraints. With Proxima B, I believe the theme/central idea of the play was in finding common ground with someone through kindness, along with confronting one's own insecurity/self-doubt, as Mirta points out to Judy how she allowed for her colleagues/superiors to dismiss her research, which in the same vein mirrors how Judy has dismissed Mirta, condescending her for doing the same thing Judy has been doing at a basic level; wanting to look up at the stars. - Jesse Rocha
ReplyDeleteSpencer opens up the topic on how we should develop our ideas and form a coherent play, bringing up examples and techniques to build a stronger scene. I, as many others, can benefit from what Stuart Spencer is imposing as I tend to bounce around different ideas, trying to find the ones that stick out the best for me. He writes “For the playwrights, a theme is only a guide, a way of helping you to stay on track,” (pg. 155) and we should keep that in mind when we start to develop our scene, making sure our topic we’re trying to share is the main focus on the play. We have to find out what to write and why we should write about it. Robert Paul Moreira’s Proxima B is an example of having a central idea and trying to not deviate from it, as he developed the play and as explained to us last year, had a clear message he wanted to share and stuck to it. It gave me comfort reading the play again as it reminds me that even the more abstract ideas can be laid out simpler in the written text and the actions of actors. It’s all about the development of the play.
ReplyDelete-Luis Alonzo
I remember reading Dr. Moreira’s play for creative writing. I particularly found this play interesting because of how authentic it seemed to be. The relationship between the two women was very realistic yet contained a good amount of ‘drama’—as how a good play should have. I like how Spencer goes into depth about ideas and abstracts. As a personal opinion, I find these whole elements of writing particularly interesting AND crucial. I feel like us writers go through this a lot. Having an idea or abstract in our mind and finding it very difficult to craft it into writing. It sounds easier than it really is. For me, when I have a great idea for a story or a novel, all I want to do it sit down and start writing it. And there are many cases when I could do that. But then everything else comes into mind and I realize that everything else comes into play—character development, structure, order. Everything that is behind a great story. This can also apply to a play itself. You can’t just sit down, right dialogue, and expect people to like it or be compelled to read it. You must learn the right idea of craft.
ReplyDeleteIvanna Zamudio Trevino
We see the converting of an idea into a play. I like that Spencer mentions very mainstream play to give examples as to different formats or styles plays can take. A Doll’s House, Othello, and Macbeth are all familiar to me and easily reminded me that a play has so much freedom that it doesn’t have to fit any mold. I think that as playwrights, we ask ourselves a lot of “what if”s to try and find the direction that the play is going in. We might have a character idea or a general concept that needs direction into forming a conflict strong enough to become a play. He says on page 169, “finding and protecting that impulse remains the most difficult and delicate of all tasks.” This line particularly resonated with me because I had one particular story idea that was responsible for me wanting to pursue writing in the first place. Although I forgot that a piece needs to grow with you so you don’t just leave it behind. It’s like writing by impulse. Even incorporating a personal experience/emotion into your writing, even ever so slightly, can add a really human touch to the character. This is how we get a character like Judy in “Proxima b” who is self-doubting and convincing to us, the readers.
ReplyDelete-Gabriela Urbano
I enjoyed Proxima b the first time around (creative writing) and I really enjoyed it the second time around. I thought the idea that there is a infinite amount of space out there , and two people can be so alike. It seemed like Judy and Mirta were two completely different people but I felt that deep down there were actually alike and Judy subconsciously couldn’t stand that idea.
ReplyDeleteMirta was an amateur astronomer & I think there was a part of Judy that felt, although she was an actual astrophysicist, that she too was looked at as an “amateur astronomer”. Judy so badly wanted to separate herself from that idea and prove to Mirta (and the other people in her life) that she was worthy of time and respect, or maybe to prove how different she is from Mirta, even though Judy’s bosses are treating her the way she is treating Mirta. In the chapter Spencer talks about plays sometimes stemming from an idea or a concept. I tried to apply that to Proxima b & if this work would have been stemmed from an idea or concept, I believe it would be workplace hierarchy, or sexism in the workplace. This can only be confirmed by the author, but i think it’s a fair guess that this is about how women are treated, or mistreated, ignored, looked down on in workplace environments no matter how educated. Also it could simply be a workplace hierarchy situation where Judy isn’t getting treated with the respect she deserves because she doesn’t have as many years at the Observatory, or as much experience as Nagafuchi, or Heinmann.
Aisha Teegarden
Theme is probably the most nebulous, yet important, part of a play. It is, for the most part, something in the background that is teased out eventually, as the audience thinks of what they see is happening. I usually don’t think of what the theme is at the start of writing, but whatever it is comes out in the process. I know this is different for a lot of people, but in my opinion, beginning with a theme makes people force things into the play that don’t seem to belong. Sometimes that is fine, and can actually make the play work better, but it usually ends up being too much like an Aesop’s fable, too on the nose and (in the internet’s parlance) cringe. Spencer makes good points about how to avoid this, like the identification of what the subject and predicate of the theme is. His distinction between the intellect and the experience is also very clarifying. Plays can be heady, dealing with philosophical questions like in “Waiting for Godot,” but a play is incomplete without the connection to real “experience” – images, sounds, smells that make the play have that “truthiness” that audiences crave.
ReplyDelete- Rodin Grajo
I think it's vital to understand that not every single part of a play needs to be clearly mapped out before you begin writing. Some of my best work has begun as just an impulse, and the themes and deeper ideas develop as the writing continues. If you begin with a central theme in mind and try to force the work to fit that, it won't work as well as letting it develop naturally as you write. If there is a strong central idea or impulse around which your play is based, themes will gather around it, not the other way around. I think Proxima B is a great example of this, with the strong central idea of a struggling student attempting to be recognized, that expands and grows as it continues, adding more themes of life, loneliness, responsibility, and self-worth. A theme is not something that needs to be clearly defined or envisioned before you begin writing, but rather a feeling that arises naturally as a work progresses and grows. Attempting to 'force' a work to have certain themes that do not arise naturally from it can feel disjointed and awkward.
ReplyDelete-Nathan Phillip