In the process of writing a play, Robert Galinsky states, “I’ve discovered there’s not one right way to do it.” There are many different ways to produce a successful stage story in the performing arts. One of the plays I was writing utilized the advice of Robert McKee, an incredible story structure artist. His main tip is this: Writing is rewriting, is rewriting, is rewriting. The willingness to review and revise your playscript is the key to optimizing your story. Reading McKee’s books and articles is the first step to a performing arts education.

Focusing on the story is one of the most effective ways to write plays. Galinsky recommends that writers should “write the story. Rewrite the story. Rewrite the story again and rewrite it some more. Don’t be afraid to honestly appraise the story, and be willing to eliminate weak plot points or write better ones.”

Every time your characters want to speak, don’t let them. If a brilliant line comes to mind, jot it down. But don’t start writing with dialogue. Start writing with the story and develop a plot.

When your story is really cooked, and you love it, now, open the door and let the characters start talking. They’re dying to speak. They will know what to say because the story is so strong.

That’s one way to do it. But another way to write your play is if you know the characters so well that you can let them go ahead and speak. Galinsky says, “I put them in a room on a piece of paper, and I get them to start talking. I will create an outline while they’re talking, and they help me discover where we are going with this conversation.”

Don’t think there’s a right way or a wrong way to write a play. There are many different ways that depend on where you’re at in your life and what you’re interested in and excited about. Robert Galinsky loves writing the story, story, story until they’re ready to speak. But, he also knows “the five characters inside and out, so I’m going to let them start talking and keep talking.”

All of a sudden some gems of lines can come up, and they’re driving the plot. That’s exciting, too, because when you’re an audience watching a story-driven performance in the theater, it’s different than film. Because the performance is story-driven in the theater, it’s great when the characters take a twist or turn that you don’t expect. And many times, that is only going to happen because of the characters’ response with dialogue, not necessarily their thinking about where the story should go. Watching a play can be an online performing arts education if you are aware of these drama elements.

It’s important for me to look at theater as a field. Yes, a part of that is the industry, which can be very exciting. There’s so much more to explore. Theater doesn’t simply involve a kind of making of a show for a particular audience in a particular theater. It can mean many things. This is an essential element to teach in any performing arts education, even in online performing arts education.

“It happens in small communities, in large communities. It happens with professionally trained individuals, also within community members. It happens in spaces that are, again, about the texts, others that are physical. It takes on all these forms. In many ways, the exploration of theater is an ongoing thing that will keep changing, growing, and developing,” says Ruben Polendo.

You must see theater as a field, for those in theater or who have an interest in theater. The exciting thing is that you have an agency to navigate that field as a theater artist. Regardless, we all navigate the field differently.

“Theater has this odd reputation, which I want to dispel. I want to just push that away. That reputation is one in which people imagine being for this rarefied few. That you go there and everyone’s wearing a tuxedo. They’re watching whatever is playing with opera glasses. It’s just the most alienating, foreign not-for-us scene out there,” states Harvey Young.

That’s not the case at all. Theater, from its roots, has been about people coming together to watch performances. It began as street festivals, street fairs. Think of your favorites as an outdoor concert where people gather, and the community is there. People are expressing their delight, their pleasure. That’s the kind of energy that theater strives to capture. To put into a building and invite people.

That’s the core, base, the root. If you think about what theater gives you, the theater provides that chance to be a fly on the wall. It gives you a chance to spy, to listen, to encounter the stories, the experience, the lives of people who are not your own. It’s a bit voyeuristic. That’s part of the pleasure of it too.

It’s like you are getting access to stories and experiences you haven’t seen before. In some cases, if it’s musical theater, you’re watching not only those “fly-on-the-wall experiences.” You’re also encountering true virtuosity. You’re watching Lin-Manuel Miranda freestyle in certain moments. For example, In Love Supreme.

Theater creates proximity. You’re in the same room as the actors. You’re breathing the same air, and you’re in the seeing moment. It’s not like TV. It’s not like the movie theater; you are there. Your interaction, physicality, and coughing can change the spirit, dynamic, and mood of what’s taking place. That’s why people love theater so much. It feels different when you are there.

Walter, at some point in the show gets a check from his mother because she’s like, “I have to support him, He’s a man, he need to feel like a man.” She gives him the check and the friends that he was thinking were going to hook him up, steal the money. They’re gone so then the family has to make a decision. Meanwhile, the homeowner association in this neighborhood where the new house is, sort of, come late to the table to understand it’s a black family and they want no parts of that. They send a representative to come basically buy out the family to give them a check to not move into the neighborhood and so this is also playing itself out.

By the end of the show, they dismiss him and they’re all back together as a family. They’re back as a place that can contain all these tensions that we have watched play themselves out with each individual character who has a collection of traits and a way that they walk through the world. We also see a way that they think about the world and a way that they relate to people, which is in many ways different than any other character. Then the question comes, “They’re all one family, so at what point do they have the connection and where is the connection?”

That’s what I think the play is about and that’s how you sort of as an actor say, “Where do those sort of live?” I would suggest that, even if I was scoring it or if I was musically directing it. In this incident that happens, what is being revealed and what is being played with? What is being exposed? What opportunities do the characters have to transcend where they are, to think new stuff, to take a chance and to think something new? I think that would be an important way to sort of think about it. That’s how I would analyze the script. That’s how I would see my way through this artificial thing called a play, that happens to be called Raisin in the Sun. Online performing arts education suggests asking, what human stuff can be brought out that anyone in the audience can relate to? Because everybody comes from a family, whether they are inside of that family or outside of it. Everybody sort of has a location. Everybody has a way of thinking about the world and moving through the world, which is uniquely theirs. Performing arts have a way of connecting everyone, no matter the background.

The question for all of us is, how do we live together? How do we connect together? How do we connect as a family? What binds us, and then how do we overcome the obstacles that come to us? Do we do that in separate ways, or do we need to come together to do that? That’s one way of sort of approaching a script analysis on this play that I think could be really useful because you see a whole lot of stuff. Then the trick is, where do you see yourself?

“Do you know what this money means to me?” says Walter Lee Younger. Do you know what this money could do for us, mama? Mama, I want so many things.

Lena Younger replies, “Yes, child.”

Walter Lee Younger then says, “I want so many things that they’re driving me kind of crazy.”