Eric Bogosian
Writing Plays
December 11, 1996.
Touring has slowed down for the time being so I can stay in New York and write. But I will be traveling again on January 17 when I head out to the Sundance Film Festival for the opening of "subUrbia." The film will open around the country in early February.
Speaking of films, I've been making lots of cameos lately. You may see me playing a talent agent in "Substance of Fire", or hear me as a tour guide in "Beavis and Butthead Do America." I also just wrapped a short stint for Woody Allen. I only appear in good movies, so rest assured you will be entertained. For extra fun, bring a stop watch and time my appearance in milliseconds!
My computer crashed a month ago, taking with it pages of notes and lists accumulated since late summer. I felt like I had lost control because I had lost so many precious ideas.
But then I thought "Screw it, who cares?" and I got liberated because now instead of working on all the things I think I should be working on, I'm just working on the stuff I remember to do. Which means I'm focusing on the plays.
That's because the big news is that the director Robert Falls has invited me to Chicago in April to workshop "Griller", the play I started working on last spring here in New York. I've been preparing for a full scale assault on the script.
By sticking to one thing, I put pressure on myself. Usually I work on several pieces at once. But for awhile I'll try to focus on "Griller" solely. I work slowly on my plays, and I have a method for writing them. Part of the method is to write stacks of pages, then put them in the drawer for a few months and see how they read later.
What do I write? I spend a lot of time on my themes, trying to understand them. I make sure they speak to me, raise questions I honestly care about. The themes should be amorphous and interwoven and not easy to analyze. Themes are there because they are why you write the play, not so that a college professor can analyze them. So I don't really care if anyone "understands" the themes.
My work is not "drama" in the traditional sense of the word. "Characters bouncing off each other" is a better description of what I'm doing. I see the play as a model of the stage of my mind's eye. By fleshing out the personae who inhabit my mind and letting them go at each other, the theatrical stage becomes a forum for my personal dilemmas.
A few years back, Irving Goffman wrote a book called "The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life" in which he pointed out we "play" our parts in everyday life. That's the way I see things. If we play our parts, if we learn to play our parts, if we watch others playing their parts, then the statement "all the world's a stage" is more than a metaphor. In fact, all our mind's a stage. Based on what we think we know about people, we act accordingly.
For example, have you ever had a dream about somebody and when you woke up thought to yourself, how amazingly life-like the person in the dream was? "How could I know that person so well?" But you don't know the person, you only know your personal version of that person, so of course when you dream about him or her, the dream seems amazingly accurate.
These people are our own constructions, and they live within us. For me, they are vivid and are the source of characters. My sense of story is pedestrian. My stories lack the towering egos with their sense of will and honor etc., that fuel most dramas. And that's because my prevailing state of mind is confusion and disarray. I am Hamlet personified, trying to see all sides at the same time. (I am an actor who writes, so this is pretty predictable.) My plays are not dramas, they are collisions.
So I spend time looking at my characters and making sure they interest me. Making sure they are archetypal examples of the people in my mind. After I know I want them in my play, I ask myself what their point of view is, what their needs and wants are and I write notes about this to myself.
Creating actions and events becomes the hardest part of the task for me. I usually study the work of other writers looking for answers. I write dialogue for the characters and let things evolve. I ask myself to make these actions and events reflect the themes of the play. If I don't know what's going to "happen" next, I go back to the theme and I get an answer there.
I try to work on all of this continuously. Once I get writing I must stick to it, that's how the things in the back of my mind emerge. I have to solve mechanical problems and be intuitive at the same time. To do this, I have to "work", sitting at my desk, but I also have to muse on the material around the clock, when I'm walking, showering, even when I'm sleeping. I make notes of all things I'm thinking about every day, no matter how petty. Because ultimately, the play is about me and my state of mind. So everything that passes through my life at the time of writing is worth inclusion. Or I should say, the way I see those things. It's hard for the eye to see itself, but it's worth trying.
Once I start writing dialogue I watch for subtext. Subtext is the shifting valence of the relationship between the characters. They are not necessarily going to be talking about what's happening between them emotionally, but I have to show it nonetheless. The audience loves to watch the shift. No shift, no drama. If you just wanted to watch people talk, you could hang out in restaurants. Because there are a lot of "ideas" in what I write - people stating opinions, arguing points of view - it is important these discussions have a subtext. I don't want to lecture the audience or try to show them how clever I am through a characters speeches. No subtext - cut it.
The primary goal is the performance. I think of my scripts as nets that "catch" the performance. What particular actors and directors and audiences bring to the words is a forever shifting kaleidoscope of energy and meaning. Every show is different, ineffable. My job is to formulate the architecture of the train crash, the flesh and blood comes later.
