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The New York Times
October 28, 2012 Sunday
Late Edition - Final
How to Find Opening Lines That Electrify
BYLINE: By ERIC GRODE, JOSHUA HARMON, FRANCINE VOLPE, SIBYL KEMPSON,
COLMAN DOMINGO, LISA D'AMOUR, DAVID WEST READ and THERESA REBECK
CALL me Ishmael. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
Throw in Tolstoy's uniquely unhappy families, Orwell's 13-striking
clocks and Nabokov's loin-firing Lolita, and literature is packed with
gangbuster first lines.
Theater doesn't seem to concern itself with front-loading quite as
much, maybe because it's a lot easier to put down an unsatisfying book
after Page 2 than it is to leave your seat at 8:03 p.m. Still, that
doesn't prevent playwrights from laboring long and hard over the first
words we hear. ''I never can get very far until I get the first line
right,'' says the prolific A. R. Gurney, who over his career has
written more than 40 such lines. ''Well begun is half-done.''
To get a sense of how and why they begin the way they do, Eric Grode
spoke with several writers of new plays. These excerpts from their
comments (and stage directions) have been edited and condensed, but
the lines from their plays are quoted verbatim.
[Parts omitted]
Red Dog Howls
By Alexander Dinelaris
CLOSED Oct. 14 at New York Theater Workshop
PREMISE A man named Michael Kiriakos stands holding an envelope that
links him and his family to the Armenian genocide of 1915.
MICHAEL There are sins, from which we can never be absolved. Sins, so
terrible, so ... unimaginable, that if, or when, we finally
acknowledge the depths of our complicity, we will be changed forever.
We will drift through the rest of our days on earth not as human
beings, but as specters. Soulless and empty, continually muttering a
single prayer. Not for forgiveness, because we know that for us,
forgiveness doesn't exist. Not to forget, because the memory of our
crime is the only source of genuine emotion we will ever know again.
[A beat.] What we will pray for, very simply, is death. There are --
[A beat.] There are sins, from which we can never be absolved. I know
this ... because I have committed one.
MR. DINELARIS ''This play is always straddling Michael's personal
journey as well as the Armenian genocide, and so I wanted this
particular line to address both. ... It's repeated at the end, when
you look at it through a different lens. We're always looking for that
surprising inevitability: I can't believe this is happening, and yet I
always knew this would happen. And so the opening of the play starts
you on that path.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/theater/how-to-craft-an-opening-line-to-electrify-a-theater-audience.html
From: Baghdasarian
October 28, 2012 Sunday
Late Edition - Final
How to Find Opening Lines That Electrify
BYLINE: By ERIC GRODE, JOSHUA HARMON, FRANCINE VOLPE, SIBYL KEMPSON,
COLMAN DOMINGO, LISA D'AMOUR, DAVID WEST READ and THERESA REBECK
CALL me Ishmael. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
Throw in Tolstoy's uniquely unhappy families, Orwell's 13-striking
clocks and Nabokov's loin-firing Lolita, and literature is packed with
gangbuster first lines.
Theater doesn't seem to concern itself with front-loading quite as
much, maybe because it's a lot easier to put down an unsatisfying book
after Page 2 than it is to leave your seat at 8:03 p.m. Still, that
doesn't prevent playwrights from laboring long and hard over the first
words we hear. ''I never can get very far until I get the first line
right,'' says the prolific A. R. Gurney, who over his career has
written more than 40 such lines. ''Well begun is half-done.''
To get a sense of how and why they begin the way they do, Eric Grode
spoke with several writers of new plays. These excerpts from their
comments (and stage directions) have been edited and condensed, but
the lines from their plays are quoted verbatim.
[Parts omitted]
Red Dog Howls
By Alexander Dinelaris
CLOSED Oct. 14 at New York Theater Workshop
PREMISE A man named Michael Kiriakos stands holding an envelope that
links him and his family to the Armenian genocide of 1915.
MICHAEL There are sins, from which we can never be absolved. Sins, so
terrible, so ... unimaginable, that if, or when, we finally
acknowledge the depths of our complicity, we will be changed forever.
We will drift through the rest of our days on earth not as human
beings, but as specters. Soulless and empty, continually muttering a
single prayer. Not for forgiveness, because we know that for us,
forgiveness doesn't exist. Not to forget, because the memory of our
crime is the only source of genuine emotion we will ever know again.
[A beat.] What we will pray for, very simply, is death. There are --
[A beat.] There are sins, from which we can never be absolved. I know
this ... because I have committed one.
MR. DINELARIS ''This play is always straddling Michael's personal
journey as well as the Armenian genocide, and so I wanted this
particular line to address both. ... It's repeated at the end, when
you look at it through a different lens. We're always looking for that
surprising inevitability: I can't believe this is happening, and yet I
always knew this would happen. And so the opening of the play starts
you on that path.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/theater/how-to-craft-an-opening-line-to-electrify-a-theater-audience.html
From: Baghdasarian