The Playwrights' Prime Directive

I have sat through a lot of readings and performances of new, original plays. Which may just be another way of saying, man, have I sat through a lot of boring theatre. It's amazing how slowly the seconds crawl by when there's boring drivel on stage.

I have slowly and painfully come to the conclusion that there is only one absolute rule in playwriting. We could call it the Prime Directive of playwriting. You can do anything you like on stage, except bore your audience. All the other rules - about plot, structure, conflict, etc. - are only suggestions to help you avoid boring your audience. You can safely ignore them as long as you observe the first law. That's why it's easy to find good plays which "violate all the rules". They might be all wrong, but they're never boring.

(Just in case you're wondering - no, I'm not referring to anything you wrote. I found all of your writing absolutely scintillating.)

Unlike the reader of a book, or a television viewer, a member of your audience can't just get away when she's bored. She can't change the channel, or skip ahead to a more interesting part, or go do something else entirely. Not only is it considered rude to get up and shuffle past a bunch of other people to get out of the theatre, it calls attention to oneself to do so. Besides, she paid good money to see this play, typically a lot more than she would pay for a movie ticket, a video rental, or even a hardcover book. If she's bored, she's stuck there, and she will hate you for that. You think she'll come back to your next play?

You don't have to pander to your audience. You can offend them. You can frighten them. You can enrage them. You can do anything you want to do on stage, except bore them.

It's up to you to remember that your audience is paying you. Even if the performance is free, they're giving you their time and attention. The least you can do for that is to avoid making them feel that they have wasted their time and/or money.

Not being boring is the most basic problem which a new playwright must master, and in their zeal to get to their great themes and ideas and characters, many new playwrights will stumble over the boredom issue. Most new playwrights seem to be more concerned with writing beautiful plays than with writing interesting plays. I've got nothing against beautiful words, and many of the dullest plays I've heard are full of wonderful, beautiful writing. Unfortunately, they're still boring, and no audience will be interested enough to want to hear the beauty of these plays.

So what's not boring? That's a tricky question, unfortunately, and the playwright isn't in total control of the play. A bad performance can render even the greatest script into a snooze-fest. But it's usually pretty easy to distinguish a boring performance from a boring script. But not making your script boring -- well, that's part of the art of playwriting, isn't it? I don't think it's reducible to rules, though the rules are useful signposts (See The Playwriting Seminars). Ideas like plot can be very useful, because a new play is often boring when "nothing happens". That's the #1 problem I see in new plays: lots of talking, no action. But why does something have to happen in the play? Because this is a play, not a lecture. You may have the greatest idea in the history of ideas. (Not likely, but possible.) You still have to make us care about it.

Don't bore the audience. That's all I ask. Everything else is in the service of that edict, and once you have your audience's interest, they will let you take them where you will.