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I love stage directions.
I do, I love them! I hear a lot of music and sounds when I write and I also see a lot of specific things. As a result I write a lot of stage directions in my play. I appreciate designers in the theatre and I like to give them things to work with and interpret. I think that's part of the collaborative art of theatre... call me old fashioned if you will...
I wrote this one today:
The First One sits down and Wedding Day by Rosie Thomas plays all the way through as she gets increasingly sadder and sadder. Her weeping becomes louder and louder until it's hard to hear the song. The stage fills with rose petals and suddenly the floor of rose petals become a large puddle of blood.
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Damn.
I should share more if that's the kind of response I'm going to get! :)
Go Rhino, go !
Neat! Mostly I've heard "don't bother with stage directions, people ignore them anyway". But I don't think that's true. How could you ignore Tennessee William's stage directions for instance?!
I think people ignore them when they don't fit the play or tell the actors how to feel and what to do. But when they don't, they can just create a whole visual landscape. We are the generation of movies and tv shows... we can't help it and neither should we try to avoid it, IMO.
Go Rhino, go !
I read an article once in which the playwright (name escapes me) said if you want your plays done in rep theatres, go technical. Give the designers something very, very, cool to do. It still has to be theatrical, but if you have to keep the number of actors down, go wild with your staging thoughts....
Wow! That is damn well Sarah Kane-esque. Which is my way of saying freaking awesome as hell.