About this video
David and Hannah explain how to read a play, which contains its own instructions for performance. They cover dialogue, stage directions, parentheticals that suggest how a line is delivered, acts and scenes, the cast list (dramatis personae) and the idea of Chekhov's gun.
You'll be able to
- tell the difference between dialogue and stage directions in a script.
- explain the difference between acts and scenes.
- explain what Chekhov's gun means.
Key words
- stage directions
- Text in a play that tells how to perform it and is not read aloud.
- dialogue
- The lines a character speaks, shown after the character's name.
- act
- A big section of a play that can contain many scenes.
- scene
- A smaller section of a play, like a chapter in a book.
- dramatis personae
- Latin for the cast list: the characters in the play.
- Chekhov's gun
- The idea that something introduced early in a story should become important later.
Transcript
- [David] Brightly. Good morning, Hannah.
- [Hannah] Good, good morning, David? - [David] He crosses to Hannah, points out the window at the horizon. Look out there. Hannah, do you see what I see?
- [Hannah] Yeah, I see a bird. But what are you even-
- [David] It's a glorious day to learn about the elements of drama. Whispering. One of my favorite subjects.
- [Hannah] Why are you saying the stage directions?
- [David] What? - [Hannah] David, you're-
- [David] I thought I was supposed to read the whole thing?
- [Hannah] You're not supposed to read the parts in parentheses.
- [David] And scene. Readers, hello. Hi, Hannah.
- Hi David. - So, this video is about how to read a play. It's different than reading a book or a poem.
- [Hannah] Plays contain their own instructions like Ikea furniture, but not instructions for assembling a desk or whatever.
- [David] Nope. - [Hannah] Instructions for performing the play.
- [David] So, there's text in a play that isn't meant to be read aloud by people on stage during the play, like I was doing. One example of that is the stage directions. I was only pretending not to know what they were.
- [Hannah] So deceptive. - [David] Ain't I a stinker? But yeah, there will sometimes be stuff in parentheses under a character's name that suggests how an actor might deliver the line. So, when you've got a character's name in a script like this, followed by a line, that's called dialogue, it's telling us which character speaks each line.
- [Hannah] This can be really useful if the tone of the line isn't clear from the text. David, gimme a line read. Everything's great.
- [David] Everything's great. - [Hannah] Same line, but everything's terrible.
- [David] Everything's great. - [Hannah] Let's put up a chunk of script from my play.
- Ooh. - So we can talk about the divisions of a play and stage directions. See what it says up top?
- [David] "Act one, scene one." - [Hannah] Plays are often divided into acts and scenes.
- [David] So Hannah, how would you describe the difference between an act and a scene?
- [Hannah] Well, acts are like big pieces and scenes are little pieces. One act can include many scenes. So, imagine a book that goes, part one, part two, part three. Those are like acts. And the scenes of a play are like the chapters of that book. Much, much smaller.
- [David] So Hannah, like what do you use stage directions for? What are the functions of them in a text?
- [Hannah] Yeah. Stage directions can tell us where a play is set, who the characters are, and what objects they're interacting with. Read for a bit and then I'll explain some more.
- [David] Okay, here we go. "Act one, scene one. The drawing room, day. Hannah is delicately placing a vase, a vase, on the mantle piece in her beachfront manor." Wow. This version of you is fancy.
- [Hannah] What can I say? - [David] "David enters, sopping wet, covered from head to toe in seaweed." Hannah, what is this?
- [Hannah] It's called the creative process, David.
- [David] And I guess we should probably say a mantelpiece is kind of that shelf above a fireplace.
- Yep, that's right. - So, okay. So, you can use these stage directions to inform how you set up the scene. And I noticed that you've capitalized all the character names and all the important nouns. So, now I know which onstage items or props are absolutely necessary for the scene.
The vase, the seaweed. - [Hannah] Yeah. Not everyone does that, but I like it.
- [David] Now, one of the first things you'll see in a play is the cast list, which is sometimes called (mimics a fanfare trumpet) the dramatis personae. Sometimes. It's Latin, it's ancient. The only reason I bring it up is that you'll see this phrase if you read Shakespeare's plays in school.
- [Hannah] It just means the people in the drama, the characters in the play.
- [David] So, the last thing we want to talk about is a concept called Chekhov's gun.
- [Hannah] Anton Chekhov, a beloved Russian playwright, he said, "If you place a gun on the mantle piece in act one, it must go off by act three." Disclaimer, this is a metaphor.
- [David] Yeah, it doesn't have to be, in fact, it probably shouldn't be a literal gun. But this concept basically means that it's satisfying when you introduce something early in the play, and then towards the end of the play it becomes important or relevant in a big way.
- [Hannah] Hey, hey, David? Remember when I saw a bird out the window earlier?
- [David] Yeah. - [Hannah] It's a lot closer now. (David mimics a crow)
- [David] Ah! Giant bird. Giant bird, panic. Close the window. (Hannah laughing) (David mimics a crow) (object thudding) (David yells) Go. Hurry, open the window! Open the window! (David mimics a crow)
- [Hannah] You good, David? (David sighs)
- [David] Yeah. Um... (coughs) Yeah, I'm good. Uh, uh, you can, you can learn anything. David out.
- [Hannah] Hannah out.
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