A few words on play writing…

I started a new play this week and I’ll probably finish the first draft tomorrow.
By this time in my life, I’ve got playwriting down to a science of sorts, especially comedies. I didn’t really know that until I started this new play. I’m calling it Hallucinosis and it’s such an easy play for me to write that my friend, Sean, said upon hearing the idea, “It practically writes itself.”
Hallucinosis is a bit of a change for me. It’s an old-fashioned play, not really meta in any sense. It’s the kind of play you can take your mother to… if you’re into that.
But I realized the other day, as I was writing, that it fell into a kind of formula I’ve been developing. It’s a formula for comedies and it goes like this.
build the play to a climax at the end of Act One that leaves your audience stunned because they realize things are going to be even crazier in Act Two;then, make everything even crazier in Act Two.
It works pretty well. The only catch is you have to really deliver in Act Two.
Another way of explaining it is kind of like a dance. You have to know the steps. Listen, I’ve got playwriting down so tight now that I can drop a new riff, or a new joke, or a new bit on every page, and I’ve learned how to make those jokes build into bigger jokes. When you’re writing a drama, the same principle applies but you build in character development instead of jokes.
Vicky asked me if it gets boring but it never does. Because even with as much as I’ve learned, I’m still learning every time I write a play.
I think the moment I stop learning, as soon as it becomes boring, I’ll pack my plays up in a box and move on to something else. But something tells me that’ll take a while.
I think I’ve only just begun…