Addressing the Audience

THE PLAYWRITING SEMINARS > STRUCTURE > STYLE > ADDRESSING AUDIENCE

'In the past, my work had a surrealistic edge. But I find now that history is surreal. . . . The past, the present, and the future are interrelated and are still interacting. My structures may seem disjunctive, but the fragments eventually make a picture.'

-- Ping Chong

• In Representation

  You're doing what most American Screenwriters do: you don't let your characters talk directly to the audience. Or to put it another way, you don't let them make eye contact with all the folks in those seats.

  This is the good old Fourth Wall device: just before the curtain went up some idiot in a bulldozer apparently ripped off the front wall of that living room -- and the characters inside never notice that we're staring at them through the hole. It's is the Ant Farm approach to theatre.

• In Presentation

  You're admitting the obvious -- folks are out there watching, so you might as well use that fact in telling your story. And you let at least one -- or sometimes all -- of your characters talk to us.

  You can do this technically with a Narrator who leads us through the play while the rest of the characters don't acknowledge us.

  That's what Charles Fuller did in A SOLDIER'S PLAY [the play, of course. Not the movie]. Or you can have any number of your characters take us into their confidence. This is what John Guare did in SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION [the play, of course. Not the movie.]