Plays for the Future (Part 3)

So I've written about rescuing old scripts and how I'm trying to make them available for a new age of readers and performers.  Now another tricky step.  Preparing them or publication.The problem here is that every publisher has a different way of formatting scripts for the page and they will want them prepared in their format even before considering them. Over the years I have developed my own style which works well in the hands of the actors.  This is not unlike the way film scripts are formatted with plenty of empty space .  for actors to write notes and to insert text small text changes in the rehearsal room.  And with the use of scripts on tablets it looks clean and easy to read on the screen. So  I prefer now when writing a new play is to write directly in this format, and as I'm updating old scripts I want them in this format too.

Here is an example of the way I like to do it from "She Opened the Door":

THE MOTHER

Did you ever feel this place was haunted?

THE MAID

No.  No.   Only by the Missus....  she has a weird presence.  She shuts herself away in her bedroom  in the attic for most of the day but sometimes....  she haunts the house like a ghost

THE MOTHER

When they were digging the well they found a pile of skeletons six foot deep.   All piled on top of each other.  They come from Roman times so they weren’t Christian.  That’s what they’ve built her home on.  Heathen foundations.

She says it again Louder

Heathen unnatural foundations this house has.

THE OTHER WOMAN returns arguing with EMMA.  They are carrying costume hats and scripts

EMMA stops

EMMA

What?   What did you say?   This is a Christian household.

THE OTHER WOMAN

I though your son had eschewed all that.    I thought he had become a humanist.  We have had many discussions on the subject.  I wish I could agree with him on every point he makes

EMMA

Humanist he may be but he still accompanies me to church on Sunday.

THE MOTHER

All I was saying that there were skeletons buried in the garden.   They found them when they were building the house.

But publishers tend to follow a format that saves space and paper. Thus(from Sherlock Holmes and the case of the Vanishing Author):

Budd: Well, what do you think?  
Doyle: It’s a bit grim.  
Budd: Nonsense. It’s a room of great character. You’ll do well here. Look at the height of the ceiling. That’s grandeur.  
Doyle: It’s a mausoleum. I can hear the voices of the dead.  
Budd: That’s just the plumbing, Old man. By jingo, this is big enoughto be a second Lord’s. Here bowl me one of your famous googlies.
(Budd seizes a bat. Doyle bowls. The ball eludes Budd.)
Doyle: Howzat?  
Budd: All right. No need to be a Clever Dick.  
Doyle: It was only a dolly drop, old man.  
Budd: I didn’t want to pull it through the window.  
Doyle: See if you can get your bat to this.
(He makes to bowl a fast bumper. Budd pulls away)
Budd: Oh look there’s a separate room for all your equipment.


I suppose they both have their advantages but for me it means I have to format everything in at least two styles and that is very time consuming as no software however sophisticated can change one into the other.



So, which one do you prefer? Is one better for reading and one for working in the rehearsal room as I suppose or do you have different views?

Plays for the Future (Part 2)

So, phase two of my stumble through the detritus of my writing career.  Having begun to make sense of the files already in digital format (although difficult and time consuming to drag into the modern world) I have now moved to  the pre computer age. In the later days  I had a good electronic typewriter and scripts are relatively easy for the OCR software to scan and produce a digital form that bears some resemblance to the original. (Sorry, OCR means Optical Character Recognition and it's a fiendishly clever piece of software that renders what it scans in words and letters that are in a  format that computers can use).  Anyway, as I said, relatively straightforward with a good, clear original but going back further, scripts were cyclostyled.  That is, typed by typists using big old machines onto stencils and then run though a machine the squeezed ink through the stencil onto paper. This was the only way of reproducing several copies so that cast members had a script each.  However, these stencils reproduced very erratically and the quality of the reproduction was in line with the ability of the typist and the newness of the typewriter.  As these got older the letters became worn away and many couldn't punch through the film leaving these scripts with  gaps, letters missing and general haziness because of the medium.

The mighty Gestetner Duplicating Machine

So this is the material that I'm working from now.  Faded, yellowing on thick, old fashioned paper, sometimes barely readable to the human eye let alone by OCR software. Oh, and one other handicap, most of these old scripts have been stored in a succession of wet old sheds and garages.  The paper has rotted and mice and slugs have made away with large chunks.  Trying to make sense of these crumbling documents is more archeology than reproduction.  Sometimes I have a few handwritten notes that can guide me but often I have to interpolate paragraphs and pages using my rather inadequate memory.  What I shall do to reclaim the plays that have  vanished altogether, I'm not sure.

Plays for the Future

As the rubbish bin of history yawns before me, I become fearful that there will be no memory of all that effort I poured into all those plays.  So I'm in a frenzy to get all my work digitised and available on line for future generations to wonder at. It is my heritage (and all my children will inherit as, being a playwright there is only a large overdraft at the bank for them)  This is not an easy process and promises to take as long as it did to write the stuff in the first place.

I have been using a computer for the past seventeen years so there is a fair chunk already in digital format.  But that in itself presentrs its own problems.  When I first bought a computer there was, even then, a war between apple and microsoft so I installed a program called Claris works which enabled files to be opened in both systems. Joy, I was ahead of the field.  As I updated my computers, I transferred the files with their .cwk designations and installed the program on every machine.  And then Claris works was discontinued.  But I wasn't worried because I was able to keep on installing the programs I had and I continued using this now outdated format.  Until the fateful day when I discovered that my latest machine, not only would not open the .cwk files but also would not install the Claris Works program.  Now I am in trouble.  A considerable amount of work on a memory stick irretrievably lost.  But then a brainwave.  I would buy a primitive enough machine to install the old program, translate everything on the stick into .rtf and carry it forward to be opened by my latest version of Office or Open Office.

Have you tried buying a 486 computer recently?  Basically, they don't exist.  All those millions of machines that went to scrap and not one to be had anywhere outside a museum.  In the end a computer engineer I know persuaded a very elderly person to part with their cherished wood veneer antique and I paid good money for something I'd thrown away myself years before.

With the new (antique) machine humming and whirring I discovered that it wouldn't perform a bulk transformation so I had to open every single file I'd made in seventeen years and click "save as".  OK, that's still an ongoing project.  But that's not the half of it.  Now I've go to format all those into a form that is compatible with modern digital publication.  I'll tell you about that later.  And the more pressing problem of how to get my dozens of typescripts scanned and copied.  You'll love that.