Abbey Theatre - Amharclann na Mainistreach

The sixth workshop took place on Tue 3rd August. Bryan Delaney did a three hour workshop on language and dialogue.

Prior to the workshop the participants read George Orwell’s essay ‘Politics and the English language.’ Bryan used this as a starting point to explore some key aspects of language that all writers should bear in mind. In particular the difference between abstract/generalised language and language that is specific and image-driven. Orwell stresses the idea that writers should not use stale imagery and should be responsible for minting new images and striking, original word choices in everything they write. We discussed several of the ideas raised in Orwell’s essay, in particular the notion that it is the writer’s duty to avoid prefabricated language and cliché and instead make every line fresh and unexpected.

We then went on to look at examples of the kind of abstract and generalised language that Orwell derides in his essay. To do this we looked at excepts from politicians’ speeches where it was practically impossible to find a single image or indeed a single instance of language that was specific about anything whatsoever. It was amusing to see how political language seems expressly designed to avoid being pinned to any clear meaning and indeed to be deliberately general and abstract to the point of saying nothing at all, yet appears to say something of the greatest importance with considerable earnestness and sincerity.

To contrast with this, we then looked at examples of very specific and image driven passages from the prose of Cormac McCarthy’s ‘Blood Meridian’, where every word choice was striking and unexpected, every image arresting and fresh. We read these passages out loud to hear the cadence and muscularity of the language and it was astonishing to see that in contrast to the abstract and generalised language of political speech, every sentence had been highly wrought to create a whole array of effects on the ear while at the same time launching an extraordinary sequence of images in the imagination. We explored in detail how the accuracy and precision of the language were key to creating these effects.

This led us to a discussion of how language functions in good writing, ie. as a launch pad for the most personal and private flights of imagination in each reader. As the word itself suggests, the imagination is all about images – the highly individual pictures that each person paints in his mind when reading and the sense impressions that go with them. When thought of in this way, the function of language in good storytelling is to create a kind of ‘cinema of the mind’ (to borrow a phrase from Robert Olen-Butler) where the language of the text is just a blueprint for this rich experience of images in the head.

So how does all this apply to the very specific beast that is dramatic dialogue? We then discussed how these various qualities of language can be yoked onto the dialogue of a play. Words are the playwright’s paint and, no less than the writer of prose, we need to make them interesting and fresh. Effective dialogue is full of tension, both in content and texture – choppy, interesting rhythms, unusual word selection. We need to work with imagery, rhythm, tempo and sound to make the language kinetic and vivid. But the key requirement in all this is that the dialogue needs to accomplish all the above while still keeping the language absolutely rooted in character, situation and the register of the speaker. This last aspect is the cardinal rule. The dialogue of a play can of course be heightened and stylised to almost any degree as long as it remains true to the rules that the play has set up for itself. But once the aesthetic rules of a particular play are established, any breach of these rules will puncture the audience’s belief in the world of the play and they will buy out of the action.

We discussed how the dialogue in plays gives the impression of real speech but is, in fact, not real at all. Instead, it is a highly wrought and artificial language that ‘represents’ real speech but is also designed to perform several specific dramatic functions at once. Good dialogue moves the story forward, reveals character, creates tension and carries surface meaning as well as rhythm, cadence and subtext. But most importantly, effective dialogue is not conversation but action. It is underpinned by strong motivations and the character’s impulse towards his objective – getting what he wants in the play. In this sense, good dialogue does not begin with the words, it begins with the need to speak. This has clear implications for the playwright: characters must be motivated to say what they say, and then say it with economy. Only a rising conflict will produce healthy dialogue. It doesn’t matter how witty or impressive the language is, it will soon become boring if it has nowhere to go, ie. if it is not yoked onto the driving needs of the characters taking action to pursue their goals. We spent a good deal of time exploring this aspect of dialogue.

Having discussed at length the qualities that make for good dialogue, we then read excerpts from a number of different playwrights – John B. Keane, David Mamet, Martin Crimp, Eugene McCabe, Sarah Kane, Tom Murphy, Harold Pinter and Mark O’Rowe. We read passages that were selected specifically to demonstrate the various aspects of language and dialogue that we addressed earlier in the workshop. Some excerpts were selected to demonstrate how dialogue operates as dramatic action, others for their heightened/stylised quality, others for their music and rhythm, others for their striking word choice and texture and all of them together to demonstrate that even across an array of writers as diverse and varied in style, nationality, theme and texture, from the urban to the rural, from England to Ireland and America, the same qualities of language we discussed in the workshop were common to all these playwrights.

Although no playwright would ever keep all this in his head when he sits to write a scene, it was nevertheless very useful for us all to spend some time reflecting on language and dialogue in this concentrated way. The purpose of the workshop was to sensitise us once again to the delights and rigours of the spoken word so we can try to make the speech in our plays as exciting, layered and vivid as possible.