A sentence that has been rolling around in my head since I first read it: "As a playwright, I am basically a professional character developer". This strikes me as a novel idea, and completely wrong. But who am I to say? I record it here merely because I want to be able to return to it, if not its source.
As a concession to current usage, my plays always include a first page which lists names under the heading "Characters," but it has never set well with me. "Persons in the play" might be a better description, or "roles," but definitely not "characters" which presupposes a reality behind the names, or the parts. (It may be part of an actor's technique to create a character, but certainly lies outside the purview of the playwright.)
As Montaigne said, Que sais-je?
As a concession to current usage, my plays always include a first page which lists names under the heading "Characters," but it has never set well with me. "Persons in the play" might be a better description, or "roles," but definitely not "characters" which presupposes a reality behind the names, or the parts. (It may be part of an actor's technique to create a character, but certainly lies outside the purview of the playwright.)
As Montaigne said, Que sais-je?
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