Thread by @BoodhuRamu

Ten tweets about playwriting for #WorldTheatreDay

Conducted playwriting workshops in 2021. ​Many young people said they have stopped relating to Indian theatre of the 20th century

Plus the impossibility of writing a 21st century playtext

Some thoughts (tips and tricks) ...

THE OPENING

I've maintained that Bleak House is the best of Dickens. Some say, over-rated; some say, anti woman!

Guess what is the first word of Charles Dickens's novel Bleak House (1853)? Also it’s first sentence?

London

PS: Yes, sometimes, the opening is as simple as that

THE END

Beginnings are important; but then, so are endings

At the end of the Balzac novel, the hero looks at Paris from the top of the hill and threatens the city: "Now we settle accounts"

PS: Read Sijie Dai's novella Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress. Will surprise you

DIALOGUE

Theatre is dialogue; and dialogue is NOT easy

I read and re-read The Brothers Karamazov again and again

The last time I read it, I realised it's actually a play; that is pretending to be a blockbuster novel

What splendid dialogue writing, O' Sant Dostoevsky

THEATRE IS TIME

Playwriting is time

And Time's Arrow by Martin Amis is all about time

It's a book about Nazi Germany but in rewind mode: Absolutely super-duper technique

If the playwright in you wants to conquer time; then this is a must-read (one useful trick up your sleeve)

DEADLINES

If you have run out of ideas; and there is a deadline hovering, do read these two tiny gems

1). Coetzee’s novella which can be adapted + staged

2). Wonderful short stories in this Isaac Bashevis Singer set. So exquisitely crafted that anyone can adapt for the stage

Plays are about STIRRING CHARACTERS

Everything this man has written is a masterpiece. Mantel + Alexevich

Every single character is a grotesque charade plus a tough survivor of absolutism

Kapuściński makes Shakespeare's Othello + King Lear look jaded

Genius!

SUB TEXT

Bulgakov wrote this story in the 1920s

It is Gogol + Kafka + Neo Realism

Since it is the Stalin Era, he says something but implies the opposite

The main character (Korotkov) is like Jawdekar + Bawdekar in Begum Barve (one of the best Indian plays of the 20th century)

THE OFFSTAGE

Saul Bellow's book is about a murder trial in Chicago; it is about his wife (an astronomer); it is about his mother in law on her deathbed; it's about state politics in Romania

What is remarkable is: all these events are kept offstage

This is a Chekov masterclass

THE SET UP

The Bridge provides 13 permutations for one situation involving a student named FD (the initials are Dürrenmatt’s) who staggers drunk across Kirchenfeld Bridge on 15 Oct 1943, even as a meteor falls

Most of the story is a setup for the last two pages

Viva structure!

AND FINALLY

Two authors every playwright must read

Juan Rulfo: The best in the story-telling biz; a book admired by Borges + memorised by Marquez

Then there is Celine even though he was accused of being a Nazi collaborator. How to tell a wicked tale about anti-heroes + dregs