ABSTRACT
After transcribing their interviews, playwrights must select the content from the transcripts that they might wish to employ in the final script. The three main components of most plays – verbatim or fictional – are its themes, its characters and the plot: subjects which are discussed in this chapter. Suggestions are provided on how to identify themes in the transcription material that playwrights might wish to explore or expand upon in the script, a process which can help them clarify the main areas that they want their script to cover, checking all the while that those themes align with their own objectives for the piece. This work consists mainly of greatly reducing the amount of interview material, looking for only the most relevant and dramatically powerful excerpts.
Just as the dramatic content cannot be invented for a verbatim play but must evolve from what has been said in interviews, the characters in the play cannot be invented either, since they will have originally been people who were interviewed. The playwright must therefore now determine who the principal characters are to be.
After the main decisions about the themes of the play have been taken and some thought given to the principal characters, the plot of the drama must be developed. Suggestions are provided about how to begin and end a script, and how to inject dramatic tension as well as humour at appropriate moments. Finally, the playwright is encouraged to settle upon the interview content that is seen as most suitable to the play’s theme and direction.
