Recently I talked about opening lines here, going on to express my ongoing fascination with the opening of “True West” here. Playwright EM Lewis responded by asking what was my favorite opening line from one of my own plays… and that, ladies and gentlemen, leads us to an example of how a writer spends 90 minutes doing something more “fun” than working on his current project.

Those ninety minutes later, I have to say I don’t have a favorite opening line. In fact, I’m not even sure I can find evidence of one good opening line. (And having the “True West” line as an example doesn’t help.) The ones that immediately stood out in my mind did so because of the spin the actor put on it, and the overall context of what was happening and what was going to follow. Once you’ve seen it produced, it’s hard to extract the experience from the written line. Here’s an example, in the form of the opening of “The Size of Pike”:

(The apartment of a fortyish working man bachelor – the basics, and displayed none too well. A TV, empty beer cans of a notably cheap brew, a pizza box, a recliner. Not a pig sty, but arbitrarily unkempt. There are two doorways, one to the kitchen and one to the bathroom, and a closed door leading outside.

At rise: JOHN and ROD surrounded by camping and fishing gear: a tent, a sleeping bag, Coleman lantern, fishing rod and tackle box, an ice chest and the like. They each hold a bag stuffed with more stuff. John carefully sets down his bag. Rod lets the one he’s carrying drop with a thud. He wipes the sweat from his forehead with the back of his
arm, then looks at John sorrowfully, shaking his head with disapproval.)

ROD
Izzat it?

(John looks around.)

JOHN
That’s it.

Great opening line? Mmm… probably not. But it sums up a lot of the theme of the play: that Rod views himself as a manly man and John as someone who is too pampered and bringing too much stuff on this fishing trip. Does the opening line signal that the play is also going to be at times comedic? No — but the director and the actors were smart enough to get that, and to get a laugh out of the first line.

What I noticed in dipping into a couple dozen of my plays was that most of them start immediately (whether they’re short plays or not). This habit probably comes from my formative years of reading bad pulp novels, where someone with a gun comes in in the first three pages. An example from my play “Speedy”:

(A woman, MINDY, addresses us.)

MINDY
(To us.)
It started with a vicious argument with my husband Rob. I don’t know how it turned that way – it happened fast – but it was about the Millers coming over.

(Lights come up on a table and Rob seated at it. Mindy seats herself in the other chair.)

MINDY
(To us.)
I didn’t want them to.

(She calmly places her hands around Rob’s throat, then this remembered scene starts and she shifts into violent emotion.)

MINDY
You prick! You fucking asshole! This was supposed to be our night out! Now you’ve got these goddamn assholes coming over and screwing everything up! I hate those fucking Millers! If I hear one more story about Jim Miller!
Who are these people who eat our snacks and drink our wine?

ROB
(Gasping.)
Sandy’s… your best… friend….

MINDY
(To us, hands still around his throat while he freezes.)
It’s true. Since college. Sandy studied biochemical engineering. I studied anthropology. We’re both managers at Barnes & Noble. I like her a lot. But this time I felt differently and said:

(To Rob.)
Best friend? Best friend? It seems to me that Caesar’s best friend was Brutus. Look how that turned out! I would gouge out the eyes of her aged grandmother with a paring knife.

ROB
(Struggling to pry her hands off.)
I think you’re –
(As he frees himself:)
Over-reacting!
(He gasps for air and rubs his neck.)

Great writing? No. Fun on stage? Yes, if done right. It also shows an attempt to stave off my foremost fear: boring the audience.

Although I haven’t come close to having a great opening line, I think this, from “Three People, According to Sociologists,” is probably closest:

Scene One

(A basement band set-up. A huge acoustic drum kit with a massive bass drum, kettles, toms, hi-hats, percussion blocks, everything imaginable but twice over. A stool behind it. To the side, a guitar in a stand, a beat-up old amplifier, another, but in better shape, distanced from it. A battered refrigerator rescued from a junkyard or garage sale. Beside it, a couch with its stuffing showing. Also, a stereo with stacks of records and tapes, all dusty, and a profusion of cables, leads, and wires leading everywhere: to the two microphones in their stands, to the stereo, to a separate small tape deck, to phase shifters and the like for the guitar. In short: a cluttered, mossy, dusty basement music set-up. Down left, a phone atop a small desk with chair. Everywhere: empty beer cans with stamped-out cigarette butts atop them, and stray trash: junk-food bags, greasy pizza boxes, empty cans and bottles.

Hard, punkish rock and roll music rises, then fades, as the lights come up on:

ROOG, thick with muscle, wearing a sweatshirt with the sleeves ripped off, jeans, and sneakers, sits at the desk by the phone, thinking earnestly. A clutter of paper scraps — names and phone numbers written on bar napkins, matchbooks and the like — is scattered atop the desk. SPIKE, anorexic-thin, with black t-shirt, black leather jacket, black sneakers, and ripped jeans, noodles around with another guitar, a cigarette dangling from his lips. He plucks stray notes, tries chord changes, etc., while he talks, his amp off the entire time.)

ROOG
(Exasperated.)
I dunno. I’m runnin’ outta guys.
(Pause. No response from Spike. He picks through the scraps, finds another phone number.)
How ’bout Jess Hames?

SPIKE
Thinks a C’s an E. Bad thing in a bass player.

As with “True West,” the audience sees the set, sees the actors, hears the first line — and immediately understands what this play is going to be about. That’s not the only mission of an opening line. But it is, after all, your opening — and so it should open the play.

This is not as bad as some stage directions I’ve seen.

Thanks to Mark Chaet for sending this.

While I’m on the subject of “Godot,” Trey reminded me of this poem, which I wrote in the 90’s. It’s been published a few times — I don’t remember where. It seems especially pertinent at the moment.

Waiting for Godot to Leave

Well, he finally showed up
And of course he brought guests,
Uninvited ones,
And he ate all the h’ors d’ouevres
And he’s finishing off the punch
And he knows everybody who’s anybody
And goes on about them at great length
And he stuck his head up your dress
And he threatened to ruin me
And now he’s in the pool with our daughter
And he’s so fascinating and intimidating
And funny and awful and rude and overpowering
But just such a boor in the end.
No surprise, really.
Nobody ever lives up to their P.R.

At this point, having seen probably 10 productions of “Waiting for Godot,” having read the play several times, thought about it, weighed the various merits of differing performances, and having gone so far as to give my son the middle name Beckett, I think I’m qualified to discourse on the play.

The acclaimed Gate Theatre production currently at UCLA Live! is no good.

I say this with no glee, mirrored only by my absence in glee seeing it.

Although the play is many things, one thing it is not or should not be is ponderous. But that’s what we have here. In fact, here’s how ponderous: It started around 8:10, and wrapped up just shy of 11 p.m., with a 20-minute intermission. Given that Act Two was 55 minutes (I clocked it), that puts Act One at about an hour and a half. Tooooo… slowwww….

My companion, the fiercely smart playwright and performer Trey Nichols, said that it was lacking in existential dread. Absolutely true. It was also lacking in comic rhythm. Beckett modeled the characters of Gogo and Didi after Laurel and Hardy; while I don’t expect Laurel and Hardy, I expect the comic spirit necessary to the parts. I also expect something to be at stake. Several years ago at The Matrix theatre in Hollywood, the late David Dukes, in addition to being a wonderful clown alongside co-star Robin Gammell, closed Act Two with a wrenching depiction of a man desperate to understand his place in the universe. The current Didi, played by Barry McGovern, seemed more like a man learning he might have to wait for the next bus.

Whom do I fault? Oddly enough, the memory of Samuel Beckett. Evidently his determination of how this play must be performed has been cast in stone at the Gate Theatre and with this director and at least two of the actors, all of whom he had personally worked with. This situation sounded hauntingly familiar, so when I got home I dug out my edition of Kenneth Tynan’s Letters , and there it was. (At the time, Tynan was the literary manager of the National Theatre.)

31 March 1964

To George Devine, copies to Laurence Olivier and William Gaskill, The Naitonal Theatre

Dear George:

Forgive me for writing, but I feel I must try to explain more clearly to you and Larry what is worrying me about “Play.” I wouldn’t do so if I didn’t feel that many of my qualms were shared by others.

To recap: before Sam B[eckett] arrived at rehearsals, “Play” was recognizably the work we all liked and were eager to do. The delivery of the lines was (rightly) puppet-like and mechanical, but not wholly dehumanized and stripped of all emphasis and inflections. On the strength of last weekend, it seems that Beckett’s advice on the production has changed all that — the lines are chanted in a breakneck monotone with no inflections, and I’m not alone in fearing that many of them will be simply inaudible. I suspect that Beckett is trying to treat English as if it were French — where that kind of rapid-fire monotony is customary.

The point is that we are not putting on “Play” to satisfy Beckett alone. It may not matter to him that lines are lost in laughs; or that essential bits of exposition are blurred; but it surely matters to us. As we know, Beckett has never sat through any of his plays in the presence of an audience: but we have to live with that audience night after night!”

Please understand me: I trust the play completely, and I trust your production of it, — up to the advent of the author. What I don’t especially trust is Beckett as co-director. If you could see your way to re-humanizing the text a little, I’ll bet that the actors and the audience will thank you — even if Beckett doesn’t!

Why have I seen “Godot” so many times? Because done well, it is an astonishing experience. The first time I saw it was as an undergrad, in a college production featuring my friend Joe Stafford as an imperious Pozzo. That was 20 years ago, but the performance has stuck with me — Joe embodied the comic boorishness of the role. And at the end, when the moon has risen and Godot has yet again not come, the lights drew down and pinlights of white emerged in the flies, signifying stars, and for a moment I lost my place in the universe. That’s an effect I’ve been swiping ever since, as with “Two Men Losing Their Minds” at Moving Arts in 2000.

Done right, with verve and with stakes, featuring characters who yearn for answers, “Waiting for Godot” is a transformational experience. Performed as a museum piece pregnant with significance, it’s a crashing bore.

Just because playwrights are sometimes asked to participate in “talkback” sessions after a developmental reading doesn’t mean they should heed any of the suggestions.

The other night I went to the staged reading of a friend’s play. Good play, good reading. It’s amazing what you can learn about a play when you see it on its feet, performed in its entirety, and by good actors under the capable guidance of a good director.

In this case, all of the strengths of the play became clear: an arresting subject matter, strong characters, deft transitions, sparkling dialogue. It also became clear to me (as well as to the audience, it later turned out) that we need a little more insight into why one character committed the heinous act that catalyzes the play. I’m confident that that additional bit of clarity will complete the play.

I was impressed by the feedback from this audience; this is a developmental theatre, and most of the people speaking are playwrights with productions under their belt and actors used to working on new plays. By and large, when it comes to what makes a play work or not, they seemed to know what they’re talking about.

This hasn’t always been my experience, either as the playwright or as a member of the audience. I go into these things figuring that if they could have written the play better, they already would have done so. More than 10 years ago I decided that my personal mission in these instances was to be funny and entertaining, so that the theatre was glad it had invited me and so that no matter what anyone thought of the play they would at least see that I could be fun to work with. (Because, by and large, who comes to such readings? Actors, directors, producers, writers — people somehow or other connected with producing plays.)

This particular play deals with a court case — although, as one astute attendant noted, refreshingly, it does not take place in a courtroom and thereby avoids the procedural scenes we’ve seen cooked up on television six nights a week. My least favorite idea from the house the other night was this one: to remove all question of guilt or innocence, begin the play with a declamation of guilt, and work backward to investigate motive, a la “Equus.” An intriguing idea — but not for this play, not at this stage. This play is finished (almost).

When I was a teenager I remember reading a thick collection of Isaac Asimov’s stories, each with an introduction by Asimov (modeled perhaps after the Dangerous Visions series edited and interminably introduced by Harlan Ellison). Asimov said that after he had written a story, while he might do light revisions, that story was done — and to rework it and rework it would be like chewing second-day gum. It was an image that stuck with me.

Rewrites are necessary. Almost always. In every first production I’ve had, I’ve wound up doing at least minor rewrites because in working with good actors and a good director I’ve found new things — things that work, things that don’t, and sometimes opportunities that were missed. Twice, I’ve found new and better endings, but I went into each of those productions knowing that each play needed a new grace note to truly finish it.

To rewrite is good. To get stuck in rewrite and restructuring would mean not only not completing your present project — it also means not working on your next one.

Restructuring an entire play, one that already works? That sounds like chewing second-day gum.

The best opening in contemporary drama is this one, from “True West”:

“So, Mom took off for Alaska, huh?”

Look how much it tells us:

1. Because we see two men on stage, and the one refers to “Mom,” they must be brothers.
2. This character who says it, Lee, didn’t know Mom was gone, and now he’s asking about her. So clearly, he’s been away.
3. Not only was he away, he’s been out of touch with Mom. In general, middle-aged women don’t take off for Alaska on a moment’s notice. Lee knew nothing about it, so, unlike many of us, he doesn’t give Mom a courtesy call once a week.
4. He’s also been out of touch with his brother, Austin. Austin knows Mom’s gone, so he probably knew Mom was going, too. Yet Lee didn’t.
5. Because she took off for Alaska, Mom’s probably not coming back soon. It’s far away. (Although she does show up unexpectedly late in the play, we are led to believe that she won’t. This provides backdrop for her sons’ actions throughout the play. If she were coming home any minute, they might behave very differently.)
6. Mom’s gone, and Austin is there in the house. Everything seems in order. This tells us that he probably has a good relationship with Mom. She trusted him.
7. It also tells us that she was probably right to do so. Everything looks to be in order. It seems that Austin is a responsible person, so Mom’s trust is warranted.
8. Lee, on the other hand, seems belligerent, right from this opening line. There’s something snotty about the way the question is framed: Mom didn’t “go” to Alaska, she “took off” – as though someone or something is being left behind. And the “huh?” hardly seems casual.
9. Lee’s resentment is palpable, both at Mom because she’s not there…
10. …And at at Austin because he is. Lee went looking for Mom, and instead found Austin in her place. Or, more appropriately given what we know of sibling rivalry, in Lee’s place.
11. Given his upset at finding Mom missing, Lee probably came seeking Mom or help of some sort. Why is he there? Because he needed something.

Did Sam Shepard know all this before he wrote the line? Probably not. Was this the first line as he wrote it, or did he find it later in the rewriting process? I have no idea. But this one line achieves a near miracle in launching the play. It sets up a stark conflict between two very different men, united by blood but divided by need, still waging their sibling war decades into adulthood against the placid backdrop of Mom’s kitchen and, later, the unseen terra incognita of Dad’s desert wasteland.

I think “True West” is a masterpiece. Not a word I toss around lightly.

That first line tells us a great, great deal, without any resort to exposition. It seems effortless. Moreover, because it’s clearly the response to a previous line – one we don’t get to hear because it happened before we got to enter their universe – we feel that we’re dropped directly into the action of the play. This play doesn’t just start when it starts, it starts a moment before it starts. That would be a problem if our initial reaction were one of confusion – who are these guys? Where are these guys? What’s going on? – but Shepard addresses all that with this very first line.

Unlike “True West,” too many plays start long after they start.

My wife, who originally hooted at my admiration at The Road (and my preference for it over “World War Z”), now says that she keeps thinking about it and “may have to read it again.”

And one of my grad students, Lindsey, took my recommendation to read it and said she thought it was stunning but that it “gave me nightmares.”

I think this book is going to be with us for a long time.

And I don’t mean for you to use in a bar.

No, I mean great opening lines in drama.

Tonight in one of my classes at USC I invested half an hour in discussing what I think is the best opening line in all of contemporary drama, this one from “True West” by Sam Shepard:

“So, Mom took off for Alaska, huh?”

(More about that — and the 13 things it tells you — tomorrow.)

Shepard grabs us and pulls us right into the play. Too many plays – including too many of his own plays – start long after they start. When I’m rereading my plays with an eye toward production, one of the questions I ask is, “Is this really the opening line?” Or, is that opening line buried somewhere on page 3? If it truly is on page 3, your play probably should be two pages shorter.

How do you know if you’ve got the right opening line? Some questions that help:

1. Does it say something about the speaker?
2. Does it say something about the setting?
3. Does it say something about the play, helping us understand why we’re here?
4. Most importantly, does it help start the play by grabbing the audience in some way?

You’ve really got only a few minutes to enlist the aid of your audience. If it’s a comedy, you’ve got less than that – audiences need permission to laugh. (Nobody wants to be the only person laughing – they’re afraid to be wrong and look foolish.)

It’s best to get your play started right away.

Re the Paul McCartney divorce saga:

If you had assets worth $1.5 billion and you wanted to marry a model, couldn’t you find one with two legs? And couldn’t you get her to sign a prenup limiting her to, say, $50 million in benefits for her three years of hard work?

I guess John was “the smart Beatle.”

A couple of weeks ago I went to see “Doubt” at the Ahmanson Theatre with two friends. The play was well-written, funny, surprising — and a bit of a cheat.

I say that because it purports to be a play about… well, doubt… but it never gives you enough information to truly feed doubts or build convictions. The play should be called “Intuition,” because it is largely built around a nun’s intuition that a priest is molesting a young boy. She confronts the priest, who denies it, and that is somewhat the extent of the plot. She confronts, he denies, she makes up a lie, he (and this is just to ruin the play for you if you haven’t seen it) finally sees there’s going to be no end to her accusations and gains a transfer to another church, and now that he’s gained what turns out to be a promotion to another parish and this time in a role that includes heading the school she turns to the audience and says, “I’m filled with such doubts.”

I guess because rather than punish him, God promoted him.

The entirety of the “evidence” against the priest is this: We learn in an early scene that Sister Aloysius saw Father Flynn place a consoling hand atop a boy’s wrist and the boy flinch. (If at age 12 I had felt the church pastor place a hand on my wrist in an open assembly, I would have flinched too. And he never molested me. For the most part, twelve-year-old boys don’t want to be touched by anyone.)

Maybe the play should have been called “Persecution,” because again, barring any scenes with additional fact, what we’ve got is a play in which a one person’s determination that she is right succeeds in driving another person out. In fact, one of my compatriots thought well into the play that that was precisely the theme of the play; he compared it to “The Crucible.”

The playwright, John Patrick Shanley, has a gift for dialogue. After a day of dealing with petty nonsense, it was an absolute treat to hear people discourse on a higher level. The sermons written for the priest are particularly strong, built around delightful metaphors that work as parables. But I don’t think the play is about what it’s advertised as. Of course, my father-in-law brought home a bag of Brach’s chocolate-covered blueberries that says “Harvest Fresh.” I said, “This is a lie. Blueberries in the orchard don’t have chocolate on them. So they can’t be ‘harvest fresh.'”

You always have to ask “Really?” To do otherwise is to believe that blueberries grow with chocolate, that “Doubt” is about doubt, and that Dick Cheney is keeping America safe.