Building Your Play: Theory and Practice for the Beginning Playwright

9. The Pigeon Sister

 9 The Pigeon Sister I need to begin this chapter with a nod to Neil Simon. It was while teaching his play The Odd Couple that I was able to crystallize this concept, and thus its name is both an indication of what it is and an acknowledgment of its source. Let me describe the play to you if you don’t know it, or refresh your memory if you do. Both Felix and Oscar are divorced men, who in the course of the first act, decide to live together. One of them is a freewheeling, easy-going slob who takes life as it is. That’s Oscar. The other, Felix, is the complete opposite: analretentive , compulsively neat, and a bit of a hypochondriac. Their two personalities are just destined to crash eventually. Let’s examine the structure Simon has created. The first act sets up the situation in a series of well-constructed miniplays. A quick rundown reveals some of them are about: • how the card game should be played; • Oscar doing something about the missing Felix; • Oscar keeping Felix from killing himself; • Oscar convincing Felix to move in with him. At the end of act 1, Felix does move in. Act 2 continues with more miniplays showing us how the relationship between Oscar and Felix has changed and are about: • the new kind of poker game that’s going on; • Oscar threatening to do something drastic. 5XVK3W&KLQGG $0  SOME ADVANCED TRICKS And then the play runs out of steam. We’ve seen the two men together; we know how their lives have changed; we’ve had perhaps too many variations on the same old gag involving the nice guy and the slob. By the time we get to the middle of the first scene of act 2, Simon is clearly running out of plot, not to mention jokes. He needs something new to kick the play into a higher gear with new action. And it’s precisely at this point that Simon has Oscar say, “Like unless I get to touch something soft in the next two weeks, I’m in big trouble.” And the play is off and running in a clear, new, and interesting direction. Turns out that two young ladies have moved in upstairs: Cecily and Gwendolyn Pigeon. Oscar has his eye on them, and of course, is referring to the possibility of sex with them when he talks about “touch[ing] something soft.” The rest of the play is now about whether or not Oscar will get Felix to help him score with the women. And driving toward this goal there follows a whole series of miniplays about: • the lateness of dinner; • whether Felix will go through with the plans; • getting acquainted with the girls; • fixing drinks; • Felix sharing his family miseries with the girls; • Oscar trying to save the evening; • what happens the next day; and • how Oscar and Felix have both been changed by this experience. In other words, the introduction of this new plot twist has been nothing more than a device to generate new action. And it’s this device that forms the subject of this chapter; a device that—for want of a better word—I’ve named the Pigeon Sister. A Pigeon Sister is any device or event or situation that arises in the play over which two or more characters can interact. It’s both a catalyst and a focus, engaging these characters in activities—it is something that makes them have to do things. It’s sometimes called the story hook, the peg on which to hang the action to follow. Most important, think of it as that device that turns a situation into a drama. 5XVK3W&KLQGG $0  THE PIGEON SISTER Examine every any sitcom you’ve ever watched. Every episode uses virtually the same characters with the same personality quirks involved in the same relationships. The situation never changes. What does perpetually change, however, is the Pigeon Sister: Every week some new catalyst or event gives all the characters something different to do. Sometimes it’s a new person who comes into the mix. Sometimes it’s a problem one character is having at work. Sometimes it’s a surprise. Sometimes it’s not. If you ever watched the TV version of the Odd Couple, you’ve seen this at work. Felix has trouble with his job. Oscar needs...