Exercise 60
Welcome back to 101 Exercises for Playwrights.
I’ll be migrating from Twitter once these 101 Exercises are posted. For the moment, you can catch up on the exercises so far on the Twitter thread @MarkRavenhill2
If you been following these exercises, you’ll be familiar with the idea of a character’s ‘objective’. (And you’ve probably come across it elsewhere).
An objective what a character wants.
You can identify a series of objectives: what I [the character] want in this beat, what I want in this scene, what I want by the end of this play.
It’s best on the whole to make these wants concrete and simple. ‘I want to be reconciled with my mother’ rather than ‘I want universal harmony’.
If you’re writing a play with a central character, it’s their objective which drives the play. Once the central character has achieved their objective or definitively given it up, lights out and curtain down, end of play, fast as you can.
There can be a few levels to this:
The character knows their objectively and states it openly. In more ‘declared’ forms of theatre, they might turn and tell it to the audience. Or even sing it. The ‘I want song’ is a recognised thing in musicals.
Or:
The character knows their objective but doesn’t state it openly, although it still guides their choices and actions.
Or:
The character doesn’t know their own objective. They’re driven by an unconscious want. How often have we looked back years later and realised ‘ah that’s why I did that’?
Take a look at something you’re working on now. What are the characters’ objectives? Particularly the central character, if you have one. Is it a declared objective, a hidden objective or an unconcious objective?
Take a scene or a short section from something you’re working on (perhaps something from a previous exercise) and try re/writing it three times in three different ways with a different levels each time.
Declared objective: I say aloud (maybe even directly to the audience) what I want.
Hidden objective: I know what I want. I don’t say it aloud but it guides all my choices and actions.
Unconcious objective: I don’t know what I want - but the writer has a strong idea!
Which level do you feel more comfortable writing?
Is it comfortable writing that level because that’s your true voice as a writer? Or does it feel comfortable because that’s a habit that might be limiting you?
It will take a while to figure out the answers to those questions. They’re probably questions you’ll return to over your playwriting life. You might answer them differently every time you return to them.
Each play you write may require different levels or combination of the levels.
In my recent play ‘Ben and Imo’, (come see in 2025 at the Orange Tree, Richmond!),the two characters move between hidden and unconcious, with the occasional dash of declared.
Currently I’m writing a series of comedies which draw their plots from Commedia scenarios in 1611. In these everything is a declared objective, often by speaking directly to the audience. These characters are likely to say: “hello audience. Here’s what I want and here’s how I plan to go about getting it. Watch and see how it works out’. This happens frequently in ‘classical plays’ but is worth considering for your new play.
Happy writing. Until soon,
Mark