Motivations for Producing a Play

Video Transcript

STEVE CAVERNO: Hi. My name is Steve Caverno on behalf of Expert Village, and today I'll be talking to you about playwriting basics. Now, we're going to look at motivations for writing a play. How do you explore some of the ways in which you develop inspiration and motivation for writing a play? We'll examine some plays that have done this. "Life Experience," Eugene O'Neil's classic tragic play, "Long Day's Journey into Night" is inspired by much of Eugene O'Neil's life. Eugene O'Neil's mother actually was a morphine addict, his brother drank himself to death, and Eugene O'Neil actually had tuberculosis when he was growing up. These are some of the ways in which he used events in his own life to dramatically structure a play. It was very personal, trying to touch something universal in people. Oftentimes, people go to the theater for release. They have a hectic life and they want to just enjoy themselves. Farces, like Neil Simon's "Rumors" where mistaken identities and crazy situations and characters having misunderstandings are basically the fuel of the play to add the humor and to entertain an audience. There are also cultural reasons to write a play, such as to inspire social change. Elmer Rice's "The Adding Machine" which provides a horrific look at how automation can make man obsolete, and Zero is basically rendered useless, just typing on a little adding machine has meaning to a machine. These are some of the ways that we can see different motivations for writing a play and sometimes you can draw from your life experience. Sometimes, you can draw for what you want to do to change the world.

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