Playwrighting has been around at least since the times of ancient Greece; screenwriting was created less than 100 years ago. Today many theaters struggle to stay in business, but films often see weekly box office revenues in tens of millions of dollars. \nIt might seem that the cinema has replaced the theater, but both playwrights and screenwriters have said, the two mediums can coexist because they serve different purposes. \nMovies generally stick to a structure that emphasizes plot, while plays allow for more exploration of character. Screenwriting pays meticulous attention to the details of every line; playwrights explore the language with more freedom. \nWriters often try their hands at both.
Getting work \nM.F.A. playwrighting student Paul Shoulberg began by writing screenplays because he got tired of seeing movies he didn't like. To get a screenplay picked up, Shoulberg said beginners must enter contests and submit work to agencies if they are not in New York City or Los Angeles. \n"It's like playing the lottery," Shoulberg said.\nShoulberg has entered several contests, but his biggest success was with a screenplay called "A Brilliant Mess." It was selected to be a first-round alternate in Project Greenlight, meaning it was in the top 275 screenplays out of about 7,000 screenplays in the contest, Shoulberg said.\nShoulberg came to writing plays when he saw the play "True West" by Sam Shepherd.\n"(The play) pretty much changed my life," Shoulberg said. "It showed me how powerful theater can be."\nIn comparison to films, plays are easier to break into and get produced, he said.\n"You can do a play anywhere," Shoulberg said. "If there's an open space, you can get that done."\nShoulberg said he tries to do a staged reading for all of his plays and he has directed a number of them as well.\nProfessor Dennis Reardon teaches how to write plays as well as writing them himself. He teaches two playwrighting classes and one screenwriting class in the Department of Theatre and Drama. Reardon's introduction to the world of theater came because his father taught playwrighting at the University of Iowa.\n"I was sort of recruited to be in University of Iowa plays every time they needed some young punk," Reardon said.\nHe liked theater as a whole, but he said he never really liked being on stage. He did enjoy writing, but he said he avoided writing plays until a girlfriend encouraged him to take a playwrighting class at the University of Kansas.\n"I found it to be very easy and a lot of fun," Reardon said, "and as is human nature, I chose the path of least resistance when it came to writing."\nNot long after he started writing, someone showed one of his student scripts to a playwright who was visiting the University of Kansas. The script was then passed on to his agent, who happened to be Tennessee William's agent.\n"She wanted to see more of my stuff, and I didn't have any more stuff, so I had to write some more stuff," Reardon said. \nAbout three years later, one of his plays was sold to a prominent producer in New York. The play, titled "The Happiness Cage," was well received and made into a movie in 1972 starring Christopher Walken.
Constraints of the craft\nReardon learned about the differences between writing for the cinema and writing for the theater when "The Happiness Cage" was adapted for the screen. Reardon said he was the original choice to write the screenplay, but turned down the job.\n"My agent asked me if I'd do it and I said, 'look: I've spent five years on this play already,'" Reardon said. "(I said,) 'I have other ideas. I don't know how to write screenplays. Give it to someone who knows how to do it' -- probably the stupidest thing I've ever done in my life."\nThe person who ended up adapting the play made changes mainly to "open it up," which means the screenwriter added more exterior shots to a play that is mainly set indoors.\n"So, they have to put in tension heighteners, and guard dogs pursuing people," Reardon said. "Chain link fences and a bunch of melodramatic crap that was never in the play itself."\nHe said a major difference with screenwriting is the writer can't build the same momentum that can when writing a play. While writing a play, Reardon said he can write several pages in one sitting. Movies must be planned out more before the writing process begins.\n"There are a lot of conventions embedded in a screenplay structure," Reardon said. \nAmong these conventions is a focus on fast pace, meaning short scenes and short dialogue.\n"If you write more than one line of dialogue in a row in a screenplay, there will be some director somewhere telling you to cut the second line," Reardon said.\nPeople who go to see plays want to see the characters evolve.\n"Audiences are prepared to let things develop not necessarily more slowly, so much as more behaviorally," Reardon said.\nShoulberg said he enjoys writing plays because screenwriting is more exacting and tedious. Playwrighting allows for a unique flexibility with language.\n"Scenes aren't supposed to be longer than a couple pages," Shoulberg said. "Every word has to be precisely what that person needs to say."
Process behind the product\nSenior Kristin Peach plans to graduate this year with a degree in screenwriting through the Individualized Major Program. She takes classes in the Departments of Folklore, English, Theatre and Drama, Telecommunications and Fine Arts. \nPeach said she used to write more short stories, but she found she enjoys and is better at writing dialogue. \nSo far, Peach has done more work outlining scripts than actually writing them. \n"The outline has a list of every scene and basically what happens in that scene or what changes in that scene, and I may have snippets of dialogue in it," Peach said.\nReardon said writing a play begins with trying to answer some sort of question. These questions eventually turn into characters. As the process continues, Reardon said he begins to hear the dialogue in his head and he looks for the conflict in each scene.\n"At some point it kicks in, and at that juncture I start writing very quickly," he said. "Generally, three to six weeks to finish a rough draft under the best of circumstances, but to get to the point where you can do those three to six weeks can take years."\nFor Shoulberg, the process of writing either a screenplay or a play starts with an idea. He then decides if the idea lends itself better to the screen or the theater based on whether it is plot driven or character driven. If the idea has really good characters and dialogue, it is better to be written as a play; but if it is a great story, it would be better for a screenplay, Shoulberg said.\nHe said he's always thinking ahead and has several ideas in his mind most of the time.\n"If it's still a good idea three months after I first thought about it, it's probably worthy of writing," Shoulberg said.\n-- Contact Staff Writer David Charles at dacharle@indiana.edu.
