ENGL 3070 Oral Exam Prep

Stuart Spencer

Action, motivation, and conflict

Louis Catron

• Characters should battle to defend their ideas

• Write a biography; include information that might not even be present/relevant to the play

• Base characters off of real people

• Denouement: final knitting together of loose ends; can be ambiguous so that audience can interpret the endings as they please.

Garry Garrison

• Characters in-conflict: they should be compelling, and we should sympathize with them

• Characters act situationally, i.e. they respond differently because they’re forced to take certain actions in certain situations.

Stephen Jeffreys

• Character-based dialogue: each character has a different word register, sentence length, and rhythm

• Should be testable through the ‘Peggy Ramsay Test’

David Mamet

• Play concludes when the truth prevails, when the “hidden is revealed.”

Michael Ball

• Conflict-driven dialogue: a character only speaks to get what they want by removing an obstacle.

• Cherish ignorance: do not prematurely reveal information to maximize dramatic tension; audience’s desire to know what comes next drives the play.

• Stasis: every play begins with stasis (status quo) that is disrupted by an intrusion; the play ends when the intrusive forces achieve a new stasis (or the old one is successfully maintained).

Alan Ayckbourn

• Use the minimum # of characters necessary

• Condense stage action

• Choice of time affects the viewpoint of the observer

• Never underestimate your audience

• Your characters need a life offstage

• You can never know too much about your character before you start