Writing for Vaudeville · Chapter 8Part 8
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(1) The Farce Sketch. Nevertheless such excellent farce sketches as Mr. and Mrs. Sydney Drew, Rice and Cohen, Homer Mason and Margaret Keeler, and other sterling performers have presented in vaudeville, are well worth while. The fact that many of the minor incidents that occur in such finely amusing sketches as Mason and Keeler's "In and Out" [1] do not lend weight to the ending, but seem introduced merely to heighten the cumulative effect of the farce-comedy, does not prove them, or the offering, to be lacking in entertainment value for vaudeville. Rather, the use of just such extraneous incidents makes these sketches more worth while; but the introduction of them and the dependence upon them, for interest, does mark such offerings as narrative sketches rather than as true playlets.
[1] By Porter Emerson Brown, author of A Fool There Was, and other full-evening plays.
(2) The Straight Dramatic and Melodramatic Sketch. In identically the same way the introduction into one-act dramas and melodramas of "bits" that are merely added to heighten the suspense and make the whole seem more "creepy," without having a definite—an inevitable—effect upon the ending makes and marks them as narrative dramas and melodramas and not true playlet forms.
From the foregoing examples we may now attempt
5. A Definition of a Vaudeville Sketch
A Vaudeville Sketch is a simple narrative, or a character sketch, presented by two or more people, requiring usually about twenty minutes to act, having little or no definite plot, developing no vital change in the relations of the characters, and depending on effective incidents for its appeal, rather than on the singleness of effect of a problem solved by character revelation and change.
It must be borne in mind that vaudeville is presenting today all sorts of sketches, and that nothing in this definition is levelled against their worth. All that has been attempted so far in this chapter has been to separate for you the various forms of dramatic and near-dramatic offerings to be seen in vaudeville. A good sketch is decidedly worth writing. And you should also remember that definitions and separations are dangerous things. There are vaudeville sketches that touch in one point or two or three the peculiar requirements of the playlet and naturally, in proportion as these approach closely the playlet form, hair-splitting separations become nearly, if not quite, absurd.
Furthermore, when an experienced playwright sits down to write a vaudeville offering he does not consider definitions. He has in his mind something very definite that he plans to produce and he produces it irrespective of definitions. He is not likely to stop to inquire whether it is a sketch or a playlet. [1] The only classifications the professional vaudeville writer considers, are failures and successes. He defines a success by the money it brings him.
[1] In discussing this, Arthur Hopkins said: "When vaudeville presents a very good dramatic offering, 'playlet' is the word used to describe it. If it isn't very fine, it is called a 'sketch.'"
But today there is a force abroad in vaudeville that is making for a more artistic form of the one-act play. It is the same artistic spirit that produced out of short fiction the short-story. This age has been styled the age of the short-story and of vaudeville—it is, indeed, the age of the playlet.
The actor looking for a vaudeville vehicle today is not content with merely an incident that will give him the opportunity to present the character with which he has won marked success on the legitimate stage. Nor is he satisfied with a series of incidents, however amusing or thrilling they may be. He requires an offering that will lift his work into a more artistic sphere. He desires a little play that will be remembered after the curtain has been rung down.
This is the sort of vehicle that he must present to win success in vaudeville for any length of time. While vaudeville managers may seem content to book an act that is not of the very first rank, because it is played by someone whose ability and whose name glosses over its defects, they do not encourage such offerings by long contracts. Even with the most famous of names, vaudeville managers—reflecting the desires of their audiences—demand acceptable playlets.
Edgar Allan Woolf, one of the day's most successful playlet writers who has won success year after year with vaudeville offerings that have been presented by some of the most famous actors of this country and of England, said when I asked him what he considered to be the difference between the sketch and the playlet:
"There was a time when the vaudeville sketch was moulded on lines that presented less difficulties and required less technique of the playwright than does the playlet of today. The curtain generally rose on a chambermaid in above-the-ankle skirts dusting the furniture as she told in soliloquy form that her master and mistress had sent for a new butler or coachman or French teacher. How the butler, coachman or French teacher might make her happier was not disclosed.
"Then came a knock on the door, followed by the elucidating remark of the maid, 'Ah, this must be he now.' A strange man thereupon entered, who was not permitted to say who he was till the piece was over or there would have been no piece. The maid for no reason mistook him for the butler, coachman or French teacher, as the case may have been, and the complications ensuing were made hilarious by the entrance of the maid's husband who, of course, brought about a comedy chase scene, without which no 'comedietta' was complete. Then all characters met—hasty explanations—and 'comedy curtain.'
"Today, all these things are taboo. A vaudeville audience resents having the 'protiasis' or introductory facts told them in monologue form, as keenly as does the 'legitimate' audience. Here, too, the actor may not explain his actions by 'asides.' And 'mistaken identity' is a thing of the past.
"Every trivial action must be thoroughly motivated, and the finish of the playlet, instead of occurring upon the 'catabasis,' or general windup of the action, must develop the most striking feature of the playlet, so that the curtain may come down on a surprise, or at least an event toward which the entire action has been progressing.
"But the most important element that has developed in the playlet of today is the problem, or theme. A little comedy that provokes laughter yet means nothing, is apt to be peddled about from week to week on the 'small time' and never secure booking in the better houses. In nearly all cases where the act has been a 'riot' of laughter, yet has failed to secure bookings, the reason is to be found in the fact that it is devoid of a definite theme or central idea.
"The booking managers are only too eager to secure playlets—and now I mean precisely the playlet—which are constructed to develop a problem, either humorous or dramatic. The technique of the playlet playwright is considered in the same way that the three-act playwright's art of construction is analyzed by the dramatic critic."
We have seen what the playlet is not. We have considered the various dramatic and near-dramatic forms from which it differs. And now, having studied its negative qualities, I may assemble its positive characteristics before we embark once more upon the troubled seas of definition. The true playlet is marked by the following ten characteristics:
1—A clearly motivated opening—not in soliloquy form.
2—A single definite and predominating problem or theme.
3—A single preeminent character.
4—Motivated speeches.
5—Motivated business and acting.
6—Unity of characters.
7—Compression.
8—Plot.
9—A finish that develops the most striking feature into a surprise—or is an event toward which every speech and every action has been progressing.
10—Unity of impression [1]
[1] See page 30, Writing the Short-Story, by J. Berg Esenwein, published in "The Writer's Library," uniform with this volume. Note the seven characteristics of the short-story and compare them with the playlet's ten characteristics. You will find a surprising similarity between the short-story and the playlet in some points of structure. A study of both in relation to each other may give you a clearer understanding of each.
Each of these characteristics has already been discussed in our consideration of the dramatic forms—either in its negative or positive quality—or will later be taken up at length in its proper place. Therefore, we may hazard in the following words
A Definition of a Playlet
A Playlet is a stage narrative taking usually about twenty minutes to act, having a single chief character, and a single problem which predominates, and is developed by means of a plot so compressed and so organized that every speech and every action of the characters move it forward to a finish which presents the most striking features; while the whole is so organized as to produce a single impression.
You may haunt the vaudeville theatres in a vain search for a playlet that will embody all of these characteristics in one perfect example. [1] But the fact that a few playlets are absolutely perfect technically is no reason why the others should be condemned. Remember that precise conformity to the rules here laid down is merely academic perfection, and that the final worth of a playlet depends not upon adherence to any one rule, or all—save as they point the way to success—but upon how the playlet as a whole succeeds with the audience.
[1] Study the playlet examples in the Appendix and note how closely each approaches technical perfection.
Yet there will be found still fewer dramatic offerings in vaudeville that do not conform to some of these principles. Such near-playlets succeed not because they evade the type, but mysteriously in spite of their mistakes. And as they conform more closely to the standards of what a playlet should be, they approach the elements that make for lasting success.
But beyond these "rules"—if rules there really are—and far above them in the heights no rules can reach, lies that something which cannot be defined, which breathes the breath of life into words and actions that bring laughter and tears. Rules cannot build the bridge from your heart to the hearts of your audiences. Science stands abashed and helpless before the task. All that rules can suggest, all that science can point out—is the way others have built their bridges
For this purpose only, are these standards of any value to you.
The kind of playlet is largely determined by its characters and their surroundings, and on these there are practically no limits. You may have characters of any nationality; you may treat them reverently, or—save that you must never offend—you may make them as funny as you desire; you may give them any profession that suits your purpose; you may place them in any sort of house or on the open hills or in an air-ship high in the sky; you may show them in any country of the earth or on the moon or in the seas under the earth—you may do anything you like with them. Vaudeville wants everything—everything so long as it is well and strikingly done. Therefore, to attempt to list the many different kinds of playlet to be seen upon the vaudeville stage would, indeed, be a task as fraught with hazard as to try to classify minutely the divers kinds of men seen upon the stage of life. And of just as little practical value would it be to have tables showing the scores of superficial variations of character, nationality, time and place which the years have woven into the playlets of the past.
In the "art" of the playlet there are, to be sure, the same three "schools"—more or less unconsciously followed in nearly every vaudeville instance—which are to be found in the novel, the short-story, painting, and the full-length play. These are, of course, realism, romance, and idealism. [1] These distinctions, however, are—in vaudeville—merely distinctions without being valuable differences. You need never give thought as to the school to which you are paying allegiance in your playlet; your work will probably be neither better nor worse for this knowledge or its lack. Your playlet must stand on its own legs, and succeed or fail by the test of interest. Make your playlet grip, that is the thing.
[1] Should you wish to dally with the mooted question of the difference between realism and romanticism—in the perplexing mazes of which many a fine little talent has been snuffed out like a flickering taper in a gust of wind—there are a score or more volumes that you will find in any large library, in which the whole matter is thrashed out unsatisfactorily. However, if you wish to spend a half-hour profitably and pleasantly, read Robert Louis Stevenson's short chapter, A Note on Realism, to be found in his suggestive and all-too-few papers on The Art of Writing. In the collection of his essays entitled Memories and Portraits will be found an equally delightful and valuable paper, A Gossip on Romance. A brief technical discussion will also be found in Writing the Short-Story, by J. Berg Esenwein, pp. 64-67.
But do not confuse the word "romance," as it is used in the preceding paragraph, with love. Love is an emotional, not a technical element, and consorts equally well with either romance or realism in writing. Love might be the heading of one of those tables we have agreed not to bother with. Into everything that is written for vaudeville love may stray. Or it may not intrude, if your purpose demands that love stay out. Yet, like the world, what would vaudeville be, if love were left out? And now we come to those broad types of playlet which you should recognize instinctively. Unless you do so recognize them—and the varying half-grounds that lie between, where they meet and mingle quite as often as they appear in their pure forms—you will have but little success in writing the playlet.
In considering the broad types of playlet you should remember that words are said to denote definitely the ideas they delineate, and to connote the thoughts and emotions they do not clearly express but arouse in the hearer or reader. For example, what do "farce," "comedy," "tragedy" and "melodrama" connote to you? What emotions do they suggest? This is an important matter, because all great artistic types are more or less fully associated with a mood, a feeling, an atmosphere.
Webster's dictionary gives to them the following denotations, or definitions:
Farce: "A dramatic composition, written without regularity, and differing from comedy chiefly in the grotesqueness, extravagance and improbability of its characters and incidents; low comedy."
Arthur Denvir's "The Villain Still Pursued Her" is one of the best examples of the travesty vaudeville has produced. [1] James Madison's "My Old Kentucky Home" is a particularly fine example of burlesque in tabloid form. [1] These two acts have been chosen to show the difference between two of the schools of farce.
[1] See Appendix.
Comedy: "A dramatic composition or representation, designed for public amusement and usually based upon laughable incidents, or the follies or foibles of individuals or classes; a form of the drama in which humor and mirth predominate, and the plot of which usually ends happily; the opposite of tragedy."
Edgar Allan Woolf's "The Lollard" is an exceptionally good example of satirical comedy. [1]
Tragedy: "A dramatic composition, representing an important event or a series of events in the life of some person or persons in which the diction is elevated, the movement solemn and stately, and the catastrophe sad; a kind of drama of a lofty or mournful cast, dealing with the dark side of life and character." Richard Harding Davis's "Blackmail" is a notable example of tragedy. [1]
[1] See Appendix.
Melodrama: "A romantic [connoting love] play, generally of a serious character, in which effect is sought by startling incidents, striking situations, exaggerated sentiment and thrilling denouement, aided by elaborate stage effects. The more thrilling passages are sometimes accentuated by musical accompaniments, the only surviving relic of the original musical character of the melodrama."
Taylor Granville's "The System" is one of the finest examples of pure melodrama seen in vaudeville. [2]
[2] Written by Taylor Granville, Junie MacCree and Edward Clark; see Appendix.
There are, of course, certain other divisions into which these four basic kinds of playlet—as well as the full-length play—may be separated, but they are more or less false forms. However, four are worthy of particular mention:
The Society Drama: The form of drama in which a present-day story is told, and the language, dress and manners of the actors are those of polite modern society. [1] You will see how superficial the distinction is, when you realize that the plot may be farcical, comic, tragic or melodramatic.
[1] As the dramas of the legitimate stage are more often remembered by name than are vaudeville acts, I will mention as example of the society drama Clyde Fitch's The Climbers. This fine satire skirted the edge of tragedy.
The same is true of
The Problem Drama: The form of drama dealing with life's "problems"—of sex, business, or what not. [2]
[2] Ibsen's Ghosts; indeed, nearly every one of the problem master's plays offer themselves as examples of the problem type.
And the same is likewise true of
The Pastoral-Rural Drama: The form of drama dealing with rustic life. [3]
[3] The long play Way Down East is a fine example of the pastoral—or rural—drama of American life.
And also of
The Detective Drama: [4] The form of drama dealing with the detection of crime and the apprehension of the criminal. I cannot recollect a detective playlet—or three-act play, for that matter—that is not melodramatic. When the action is not purely melodramatic, the lines and the feeling usually thrill with melodrama. [5] "The System," which is a playlet dealing with the detection of detectives, is but one example in point.
[4] Mr. Charlton Andrews makes a series of interesting and helpful discriminations among the several dramatic forms, in his work The Technique of Play Writing, published uniform with this volume in "The Writer's Library."
[5] Sherlock Holmes, William Gillette's masterly dramatization of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's famous detective stories, is melodramatic even when the action is most restrained.
Here, then, we have the four great kinds of playlet, and four out of the many variations that often seem to the casual glance to possess elemental individuality.
Remember that this chapter is merely one of definitions and that a definition is a description of something given to it after—not before—it is finished. A definition is a tag, like the label the entomologist ties to the pin after he has the butterfly nicely dead. Of questionable profit it would be to you, struggling to waken your playlet into life, to worry about a definition that might read "Here Lies a Polite Comedy."
Professor Baker says that the tragedies of Shakespere may have seemed to the audiences of their own day "not tragedies at all, but merely more masterly specimens of dramatic story-telling than the things that preceded them." [1] If Shakespere did not worry about the precise labels of the plays he was busy writing and producing, you and I need not. Forget definitions—forget everything but your playlet and the grip, the thrill, the punch, the laughter of your plot.
[1] Development of Shakespere as a Dramatist, by Prof. Baker of Harvard University.
To sum up: The limits of the playlet are narrow, its requirements are exacting, but within those limits and those requirements you may picture anything you possess the power to present. Pick out from life some incident, character, temperament—whatever you will—and flash upon it the glare of the vaudeville spot-light; breathe into it the breath of life; show its every aspect and effect; dissect away the needless; vivify the series of actions you have chosen for your brief and trenchant crisis; lift it all with laughter or touch it all with tears. Like a searchlight your playlet must flash over the landscape of human hearts and rest upon some phase of passion, some momentous incident, and make it stand out clear and real from the darkness of doubt that surrounds it.
Where does a playlet writer get his idea? How does he recognize a playlet idea when it presents itself to him? How much of the playlet is achieved when he hits on the idea? These questions are asked successful playlet writers every day, but before we proceed to find their answers, we must have a paragraph or two of definition.
Whenever the word "problem" is used—as, "the problem of a playlet"—I do not mean it in the sense that one gathers when he hears the words "problem play"; nothing whatever of sex or the other problems of the day is meant. What I mean is grasped at first glance better, perhaps, by the word "theme." Yet "theme" does not convey the precise thought I wish to associate with the idea.
A theme is a subject—that much I wish to convey—but I choose "problem" because I wish to connote the fact that the theme of a playlet is more than a subject: it is precisely what a problem in mathematics is. Given a problem in geometry, you must solve it—from its first statement all the way through to the "Q.E.D." Each step must bear a plain and logical relation to that which went before and what follows. Your playlet theme is your problem, and you must choose for a theme or subject only such a problem as can be "proved" conclusively within the limits of a playlet.
Naturally, you are inclined to inquire as a premise to the questions that open this chapter, What are the themes or subjects that offer themselves as best suited to playlet requirements? In other words, what make the best playlet problems? Here are a few that present themselves from memory of playlets that have achieved exceptional success:
A father may object to his son's marrying anyone other than the girl whom he has chosen for him, but be won over by a little baby—"Dinkelspiel's Christmas," by George V. Hobart.
A slightly intoxicated young man may get into the wrong house by mistake and come through all his adventures triumphantly to remain a welcome guest—"In and Out," by Porter Emerson Brown.
A "crooked" policeman may build up a "system," but the honest policemen will hunt him down, even letting the lesser criminal escape to catch the greater—"The System," by Taylor Granville, Junie MacCree and Edward Clark.
Youth that lies in the mind and not in the body or dress may make a grandmother act and seem younger than her granddaughter—"Youth," by Edgar Allan Woolf.
A foolish young woman may leave her husband because she has "found him out," yet return to him again when she discovers that another man is no better than he is—"The Lollard," by Edgar Allan Woolf.
A man may do away with another, but escape the penalty because of the flawless method of the killing—"Blackmail," by Richard Harding Davis.
A wide range of themes is shown in even these few playlets, isn't there? Yet the actual range of themes from which playlet problems may be chosen is not even suggested. Though I stated the problems of all the playlets that were ever presented in vaudeville, the field of playlet-problem possibilities would not be even adequately suggested. Anything, everything, presents itself for a playlet problem—if you can make it human, interesting and alive.
What interests men and women? Everything, you answer. Whatever interests you and your family, and your neighbor and his family, and the man across the street and his wife's folks back home—is a subject for a playlet. Whatever causes you to stop and think, to laugh or cry, is a playlet problem. "Art is life seen through a personality," is as true of the playlet as of any other art form.
Because some certain subject or theme has never been treated in a playlet, does not mean that it cannot be. It simply means that that particular subject has never yet appealed to a man able to present it successfully. Vaudeville is hungering for writers able to make gripping playlets out of themes that never have been treated well. To such it offers its largest rewards. What do you know better than anyone else—what do you feel keener than anyone else does—what can you present better than anyone else? That is the subject you should choose for your playlet problem.
And so you see that a playlet problem is not merely just "an idea"; it is a subject that appeals to a writer as offering itself with peculiar credentials—as the theme that he should select. It is anything at all—anything that you can make your own by your mastery of its every angle.
1. What Themes to Avoid
(a) Unfamiliar Themes. If a subject of which you have not a familiar knowledge presents itself to you, reject it. Imagine how a producer, the actors and an audience—if they let the thing go that far—would laugh at a playlet whose premises were false and whose incidents were silly, because untrue. Never give anyone an opportunity to look up from a manuscript of yours and grin, as he says: "This person's a fool; he doesn't know what he's writing about."
(b) "Cause" Themes. Although more powerful than the "stump" or the pulpit today, and but little less forceful than the newspaper as a means of exposing intolerable conditions and ushering in new and better knowledge, the stage is not the place for propaganda. The public goes to the theatre to be entertained, not instructed—particularly is this true of vaudeville—and the writer daring enough to attempt to administer even homeopathic doses of instruction, must be a master-hand to win. Once in a generation a Shaw may rise, who, by a twist of his pen, can make the public think, while he wears a guileful smile as he propounds philosophy from under a jester's cap; but even then his plays must be edited—as some of Shaw's are—of all but the most dramatic of his belligerently impudent notions.
If you have a religious belief, a political creed, a racial propagandum—in short, a "cause"—either to defend or to forward, don't write it in a drama. The legitimate stage might be induced to present it, if someone were willing to pay the theatre's losses, but vaudeville does not want it. Choose any form of presentation—a newspaper article, a magazine story, anything at all—save a playlet for polemic or "cause" themes.
(c) Hackneyed Themes. What has been "done to death" in vaudeville? You know as well as the most experienced playlet-writer, if you will only give the subject unbiased thought. What are the things that make you squirm in your seat and the man next you reach for his hat and go out? A list would fill a page, but there are two that should be mentioned because so many playlets built upon them are now being offered to producers without any hope of acceptance. There is the "mistaken identity" theme, in which the entire action hinges on one character's mistaking another for someone else—one word spoken in time would make the entire action needless, but the word is never spoken—or there would be no playlet. And the "henpecked husband," or the mistreated wife, who gets back at the final curtain, is a second. Twenty years hence either one of these may be the theme of the "scream" of the season, for stage fashions change like women's styles, but, if you wish your playlet produced today, don't employ them.
(d) Improper Themes. Any theme that would bring a blush to the cheek of your sister, of your wife, of your daughter, you must avoid. No matter how pure your motive might be in making use of such a theme, resolutely deny it when it presents itself to you. The fact that the young society girl who offered me a playlet based on, to her, an amazing experience down at the Women's Night Court—where she saw the women of the streets brought before the judge and their "men" paying the fines—was a clean-minded, big-hearted girl anxious to help better conditions, did not make her theme any cleaner or her playlet any better.
Of course, I do not mean that you must ignore such conditions when your playlet calls for the use of such characters. I mean that you should not base your playlet entirely on such themes—you should never make such a theme the chief reason of your playlet's being.
2. What Themes to Use
You may treat any subject or play upon any theme, whatsoever it may be, provided it is not a "cause," is not hackneyed, is not improper for its own sake and likely to bring a blush to the cheeks of those you love, is familiar to you in its every angle, and is a subject that forms a problem which can be proved conclusively within the requirements of a playlet.
1. The Three Forms of Dramatic Treatment