Welcome
John William Tuohy lives in Washington DC
*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***
South Street Players (southstreetplayers.org) is seeking original, short (10
mins preferred, 15 mins maximum) plays for its 13th Annual Tri-State Theatre
Festival.
The festival, which receives more than 300 scripts annually, is committed to
presenting the finest and most unique original, short plays written by local
playwrights from New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania. The event also serves
as an artistic fundraiser, with all proceeds going to SSP to help maintain its
commitment to producing high-quality, extremely engaging theatrical experiences
for our audiences.
***
Go Try Play Write - the prompt for the month of July 2023 is:
A poetic meeting prompt. A ten page maximum "meet cute" between two
people, but written in some form of poetic verse. This would be like the first
meeting between Juliet and Romeo. Free verse, iambic pentameter, haikus,
dactylic hexameter, in rhymed couplets, in alliteration, etc. Even rap! Pick a
form, state what it is in the title, and make it work for the scene. We know
you can do it!
***
L’Esprit Literary Review publishes work written in the fearless, risk-adept,
and revolutionary spirit of High Modernism. We accept short fiction, creative
non-fiction, novel extracts, drama, literary criticism, book reviews, artwork,
and photography. General submissions are currently open.
*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the web site
at https://www.nycplaywrights.org
***
*** 19TH CENTURY MELODRAMA ***
The word "melodrama" derives from "melody [in] drama" (like
opera); melodrama at its finest aspires to have the tone and the repetitive
waves of building emotion of an opera or a symphony. In melodrama, the plot is
sensationalized and emotional and the dialogue is bombastic and sentimental.
Characters tend to be thinly sketched, flat Stock Characters (the hero or
heroine might face problems from a "homewrecking temptress" or an
aristocratic villain). Melodramas are often accomplished by dramatic, emotional
music.
It's usually associated with everyone acting like a Large Ham, but it's
actually about specific emphasis on any dramatic situation. This is done by
amping up the perceived scale and emotional response on everything. Basically,
every little hurdle becomes a mountain, every setback a tragedy of Greek
proportions, and the official couple will be Star-Crossed Lovers over the
tiniest things, usually thanks to outside interference and Poor Communication
Kills. The difference between melodrama and drama is that the latter aims for
realism; the conflict(s) are based on more logical and reasonable events and
usually tend to have more calmer moods.
Note that this isn't the same as stage actors speaking loudly and making broad
movements. That's just a necessity of stage acting. This is when the actors
portray the characters (or the characters are written as) being akin to
teenagers with a very small, Soap Opera scale world. Every success, kiss, and
snub will carry the sting of a legendary story. Essentially, what to us would
be a pinprick gains the pathos of a rending wound.
More...
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Melodrama
***
The Dog of Montargis
I entered Pixérécourt’s play with the help of three sources: Alexander Lacey’s
Pixerécourt and the French Romantic Drama (Toronto: The University of Toronto
Press, 1928), Louis James’s “Taking Melodrama Seriously: Theatre, and
Nineteenth-Century Studies” (History Workshop no. 3 (Spring 1977): 151-158),
and Marvin Carlson’s “The Golden Age of the Boulevard” (The Drama Review: TDR
vol. 18 no. 1, Popular Entertainments (March 1974): 25-33). The Dog of
Montargis seems to epitomize the genre with its transparent struggle between
Aubri (the hero) and Macaire (the villain), its depiction of virtuous love in the
amorous coupling of the mute Florio and the young Lucille, and its crew of type
characters such as Blaise (the niais who provides local color) and, of course,
Dragon, Aubri’s faithful canine friend without whom Macaire would surely get
away with his vile deeds.
With that ensemble, the play may appear completely ridiculous for students. But
wait! Before we pass judgment, we should watch the trailer for Stephen
Spielberg’s War Horse (http://www.youtube.com/v/B7lf9HgFAwQ) and ponder how
precisely melodrama has infused popular culture with its simple yet effective
depiction of an ordered world in which everyone can tell right from wrong and
good from evil.
More...
http://www.theater-historiography.org/2012/03/16/blog4_melodrama-part-2/
***
Suffering, Spectacle, Spells: ‘Harry Potter’ as Vintage Melodrama
The authors of the latest installment have set the Time-Turner back to the 19th
century.
When novelist J.K. Rowling, playwright Jack Thorne, and director John Tiffany
announced that they were collaborating on a Harry Potter sequel stage play, the
idea seemed charmingly old-fashioned. To have a bestselling author decide that
the adventures of her beloved hero Harry should be continued as a play, not as
a book or film, felt like a throwback to an era when theatre was at the center
of pop culture. As it turns out, the resulting play, Harry Potter and the
Cursed Child—currently selling out on London’s West End, and being mulled for a
Broadway transfer, but most available to fans in book form, as a
playscript—feels like a throwback in other ways too. In essence, it is a
19th-century melodrama for the 21st century.
More...
https://www.americantheatre.org/2016/09/20/suffering-spectacle-spells-harry-potter-as-vintage-melodrama/
***
“Melodramatic is a derogatory term these days because it’s come to us as a
synonym for bad acting,” says Frace, an assistant professor at the school. “But
that’s a misunderstanding that I think has come via bad imitation of an
external form without really knowing where it came from.”
Where it came from is France, and its glory days were in the 19th century. The
Two Orphans was written in 1874 by Frenchmen Adolphe d’Ennery and Eugene
Cormon. Like all melodramas, it features fairly straightforward good and evil
characters, with the good characters repeatedly getting into dangerous
situations from which they must rescue themselves or be rescued.
“Melodrama exists to lead the characters to emotional crises, one after
another, just so we can bring the actor downstage into the spotlight for their
shining moment where they reveal who they are and what they’ve suffered,” Frace
says.
Quite the anathema today, when the most admired actors disappear into their
characters and achieve success through understatement. But 19th century France
was a different kind of time and place. The spectators for melodramas were poor
people who came to the theater to see the actors. And having come, they wanted
to see those actors emote. As Frace puts it:
More...
https://www.washington.edu/news/2009/04/23/enter-the-world-of-melodrama-as-it-was-really-done-in-school-of-dramas-the-two-orphans/
***
Hippodrama, horse drama, or equestrian drama is a genre of theatrical show
blending circus horsemanship display with popular melodrama theatre. Kimberly
Poppiti defines it as, "plays written or performed to include a live horse
or horses enacting significant action or characters as a necessary part of the
plot." Arthur Saxon defines the form similarly, as “[...] literally a play
in which trained horses are considered as actors, with business, often leading
actions, of their own to perform.” Evolving from earlier equestrian circus,
pioneered by equestrians including, most famously, Philip Astley in the 1760s,
it relied on drama plays written specifically for the genre; trained horses
were considered actors along with humans and were even awarded leading roles.
Anthony Hippisley-Coxe described hippodrama as "a bastard entertainment
born of a misalliance between the circus and the theatre ... that actually
inhibited the development of the circus".
More...
https://www.horsepropertiesinternational.com/hippodrama
***
The characters in melodrama are all based off of strong stereotypes. The
typical scenario in melodrama was as follows: The hero is love with the
heroine, and the other way around. The villain, with his sidekick clown, plans
to have the heroine for himself via nefarious means (kidnapping, blackmail,
etc). The heroine does not love the villain back, and wants to be free of him.
The wise and elderly person comes in, and tells the hero where the villain has
taken his true love away, and the hero then sets off in attempt to save the
heroine. When the rescue is complete, the hero and heroine live happily ever
after. Stereotypical “stock” characters remained the same throughout the plot,
never developing.
The Hero: male, brave, moral, handsome, reliable (status = middle class +)
The hero is a brave character, who has the potential to do anything. He is the
character who will typically save the heroine from her misery via the hands of
the villain. The hero will fight the villain in order to get his true love back
into his heart.
The hero will enter onto the stage with grand and confident steps. With the
first hand leading the way, the other hand will rest on his hip, and the hero
will walk in a circle till he reaches his desired position. From there, he will
create the teapot stance, by having his hands in the same place, although with
first hand ending in a higher position, exclaiming his role as hero. His voice
is booming with courage and his head is typically raised up, assuming his
status.
More...
https://sites.google.com/marsden-hs.nsw.edu.au/melodrama/stock-characters
***
At the turn of the 18th century, audience were ready to go over the top, and
get some really, really dramatic theater in their lives. Like, a dog dueling a
man type of dramatic. In London, only two theaters were licensed, but
entertainment entrepreneurs figured out that musical entertainments weren't
subject to the same restrictions. So, incidental music was invented, and the
melodrama was born. And then switched with another infant. And later tied to
train tracks, but rescued at the last minute. And so forth.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxzz31ww4M4&list=PL8dPuuaLjXtONXALkeh5uisZqrAcPKCee&index=29
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