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11. Miscellaneous Tricks
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11 Miscellaneous Tricks This chapter is a catch-all for a number of useful tricks that often help in early drafts of a play. Sometimes you can play with these first, to help you generate ideas, but they are more helpful when you’re working on revisions. Applying one or more of them to your play or idea can often shed light on how to solve trouble spots. I call them the four “T’s”: • the Torvald moment • triangles • why today? • the turnabout The Torvald Moment First of all, who is Torvald? Any student of theater will, at some point, read Ibsen’s masterpiece, A Doll’s House. The play concerns the problem facing a young woman named Nora, married to a man named Torvald. Nora is being blackmailed by a man named Krogstad. It seems that years ago, Nora forged her father’s signature on a loan application; she needed money to take her ailing husband abroad. Torvald is ignorant of all this for most of the play. Only at the end does he find out what Nora has done. He is furious. He accuses her of being a useless wife, a dangerous mother, a liar, and a very bad person. His position, his financial security, his very reputation are suddenly on the line. 5XVK3W&KLQGG $0 SOME ADVANCED TRICKS However, at the very moment Torvald is berating her, a letter arrives from Krogstad. For reasons too complicated to go into here, Krogstad has changed his mind and removed his threat. Nora is in the clear. When he reads this letter, Torvald calls out: “Nora, my darling; do you see what this means. I am saved, Nora; I am saved!” To which Nora replies, quietly but with deadly effect: “And what of me?” This brings Torvald to his senses, and he excuses himself: “Of course you. Both of us.” But it’s too late. In that one unguarded moment, when his defenses were down and he had no time to think or prevaricate, Torvald has spontaneously uttered words of naked truth that suddenly show us deep inside his personality. All of his pretensions, his selfishness, his fears for his reputation—all these secrets are revealed by that one explosive line. Many plays have similar moments. I’ve labeled this device the Torvald moment, in homage to Ibsen and his genius. It should be obvious that plays that have such moments are meant to be psychologically realistic. The moment usually comes as the climax of a scene of high emotion and great tension, often in the heat of an argument. Here are some examples. In Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, George and Martha are arguing, once again. Martha has the upper hand, as she always does. Their marriage is rotten, built upon lies and self-deceptions. George has bitterly blamed Martha for their unhappiness. At one point in an ongoing argument , George wants to call it quits; he cries out, “I cannot stand it!” And Martha shoots back: “You can stand it!! You married me for it!” With her words clearly exposing George’s weakness and self-deception, he sees the naked truth about himself. In the musical Gypsy, Gypsy Rose Lee—whose real name is Louise—is quarreling with her mother, Rose. Rose claims she has sacrificed her own career for Louise’s and now accuses Louise of trying to dump her, claiming that success had made Louise ungrateful. Each brings up, in psychobabble, issues from the past. As Rose heatedly attacks her daughter, at one point she cries out, “All those years, who was I doing it for?” To which Louise replies, 5XVK3W&KLQGG $0 [54.173.221.132] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 14:31 GMT) MISCELLANEOUS TRICKS cool and calm, “I thought you did it for me, Momma,” reflecting back to Rose her selfish craving for the success she never had. In David Mamet’s Speed-the-Plow, Bobby and Charlie are quarreling . Bobby has promised to work with Charlie on getting the green light for a movie. Bobby has just told Charlie that he’s changed his mind: he’s going to work with this young woman who has made him think about doing good in the world, rather than making commercially successful but garbage films. Charlie is trying to get Bobby to realize that the woman is a fake who only pretended to be virtuous in order to get her first climb up the...