Insights

Intention and Action: An Unrehearsed Reading Experience of Unmediated

By Brad Bolchunos

Actors Garland Lyons, left, and Matthew Ostrowski listen during an unrehearsed reading of a draft of the script Unmediated.

I struggle to make choices in all aspects of life, let alone as a playwright. Whether the decision involves my career advancement, my breakfast cereal, or my protagonist’s path, all the alluring possibilities seduce me into ponderous paralysis. If I choose poorly in a script, I tell myself, I could find myself trapped in doubt-drenched revision work for years.

But experiences surrounding an unrehearsed reading of a full-length draft I wrote, Unmediated, reminded me how making choices and acting upon them could help to set me free from this fallacy.

The trap is not making decisions and sticking to them.

As a dramatist, my goal is to develop drafts into solid, stage-worthy full-length work. But reaching those finish lines will require me to bring revisions—not just early drafts—to completion, and that means making hard choices.

To make decisions less difficult with Unmediated, my goal was to use the reading, talkback, and playwright-director retrospective to define intention, clarify focus, and pursue objectivity about the play.

Director Scott Stroot, left, works with actors Lauren Hanson, Murren Kennedy, and Kathleen Barnebey.

Director Scott Stroot, left in this composite image, works with actors Lauren Hanson, Murren Kennedy, and Kathleen Barnebey.

Defining Intention via Description: Before the Reading

Despite my challenges with decisions, I began this particular journey with a solid personal choice.

I selected a play I had drafted years ago, but shelved because of misgivings. I correctly reasoned the span of time since then would provide some “built-in” personal objectivity (and more experience as a dramatist) for a fresh look.

Before the reading, I met with the dramaturg, Ciji Guerin, as well as Scott Stroot, the director of my reading, and corresponded with both online. I sought to learn as much as possible from the draft as written, but toward that end, I welcomed the director’s thoughtful and detailed suggestions focused on clarifying stage directions and what should be read aloud in this format, and the dramaturg’s focus on getting me to define my intention in writing the play: what am I writing about?

Both of them started by trying to get me to isolate a basic description of the play.

“When a troubled reporter meets a mystic with mood swings, he discovers a window to a new world fluttering behind a curtain of cosmic chaos. ‘Unmediated’ … takes a darkly comedic path into a forest of questions about the nature of truth and fear of the unknown — a journey described as ‘transcendental noir.’ As Hal Turnin investigates a cult in the woods, he finds himself caught between the demands of his managing editor, the pressures of a rattled county commissioner, the riddles of a peculiar property owner, and the advances of a mysterious woman who knows too much. They navigate dangers real and psychological in a place where natural recognition hits the edge of extrasensory perception, and life-or-death consequences hang on the balance of insight and fear.”

I was channeling my inner Rod Serling.

My dramaturg encouraged a tighter description: “Unmediated explores the experience of Hal Turnin, a journalist who, while investigating a cult, finds himself struggling to perceive the difference between what’s real and what his fear is driving him to imagine.”

I admitted that while this description was in the ballpark, and the theme of fear is important in the play, I felt like the core concept of the play encapsulates something different. As I was working with my director to prepare the script for the reading, crossing out parenthetical actions and so forth, I kept finding myself asserting that my story’s thematic conflict is more about the conflict between reality and misconceptions.

My goal with the play is to show, again and again, my protagonist and other characters discovering how, in reality, things are not what they initially seem.

So I ventured an adjustment to the description: “Unmediated explores the experience of Hal Turnin, a journalist, who, while investigating a cult, finds himself struggling to perceive the difference between what’s real and what his preconceptions are causing him to misconstrue.”

At this point, my dramaturg was happy. “That makes sense. I can see that in the draft. During the talkback, I’ll try and guide the audience, Socratically, into revealing to us how they see that intent alive in the script.”

An additional excellent point my director raised is that so far I have not stated a result: “Is the conflict resolved or not? What is learned, or not? Consider whether each of your characters learns anything about the world and/or themselves as a result of the actions of this play.”

Initially, I thought this remark meant I hadn’t yet defined my intent thoroughly enough. But my dramaturg informed me that these questions aren’t related to intent. They’re related to plot.

If my intent is to write a play that explores a character’s conflict between reality and misconceptions, then, to pertain to intent, the first question would need to be restated as: “How does the conflict’s resolution (or lack thereof) deepen our understanding of the conflict between reality and misconception?” The second would be reframed as: “How does what the protagonist learns at the end of the play reflect their struggle with the conflict between reality and misconception?” The third point would be restated as: “Consider whether each of your characters learns anything about the world and the inherent conflict between reality and misconceptions that exist in the world around them. Consider whether each of the characters learns anything about themselves due to the conflict between reality and misconceptions as it is depicted in the dramatic action of this play.”

Navigating Responses: During the Reading and Talkback

I was honored to receive support and guidance in this process from my dramaturg and director, as well as an excellent cast of actors—Murren Kennedy, Lauren Hanson, Kathleen Barnebey, Garland Lyons, and Matthew Ostrowski—and a supportive audience of fellow playwrights and NWTW company members.

Several reactions during the reading and comments after it revealed the humor worked better than expected, a couple of the characters were portrayed differently than I anticipated, and a few moments I thought would play effectively fell flat.

At the talkback, aside from expressing my thanks for the actors’ talent and the attendees’ generosity in engaging with the work, I held to saying nothing and simply focusing, listening, and taking notes. My job was to hear the draft as written to reveal where it is at in its state of development. Even with the span of years since I wrote it, I recognized I am too close to the work to be sufficiently objective at this stage.

The dramaturg began the talkback by asking the actors, playwright, and director to quietly listen to the audience’s feedback without response. She then turned to the audience and asked, “From what you saw and heard, what story did you see unfolding in the play?” She followed the audience’s lead on where to take the conversation next.

Overall, the audience could see the story was about a damaged newsman looking for connection in a small town and finds it through a news story about a cult. They could tell that, in the story, a lot surfaced that was not as it first seemed, and something magical or mystical was happening, but they didn’t understand what it was. They were, on the whole, confused about the world of the play and how that world worked. So it would seem to me that they got a gist of the storyline I was trying to write, more or less—but because the world of the play isn’t clear, they could not really make sense of the story.

After the dramaturg completed the conversation with the audience, she turned to the actors. She asked them, “Where did the script support you in your pursuit to discover your overall character arc, and where did you find it not giving you the information you needed to do your job?”

Actors responded that, although they didn’t always see what their motivation was, at the scene level they got the essence of who they were, and what was happening, and loved the humor and the playfulness of the dynamics happening in each scene.

But their character arcs didn’t make sense to them. A couple of them felt they were playing a completely different character at the beginning of the play than at the end of the play and had no idea if there was a reason for that change or if the script was just inconsistent. Others were lost about what actions their characters took at different times, and how they got where they were at the end of the play. Eventually, the actors came to agree that the world of the play was too inconsistent and undefined for them to see their journeys through it.

Choosing to Move Forward: After the Reading

In light of the reading, I suspect I was trying to accomplish too much in one piece. I was so seduced by all the possibilities that I did not sufficiently focus on a single story, the story I meant to tell.

What should I do next? A powerful rejoinder to my issues with making choices came forth in the debrief session with the director and dramaturg a few days after the reading.

The director and dramaturg and I learned our independent conclusions aligned: the work needs development. It is not ready for production and is not yet at a stage where I am ready yet for further collaboration with a director. First, I need to finish a draft that clearly expresses my intent.

“You’ve got the pieces, but [in the current draft] I’m not buying it,” the director said.

“You have all these motifs talked about in the dialogue, but you’re not implying them in the dramatic action or connecting them so that they define your world,” the dramaturg said—the same observation from the perspective of her different role. “You have all the thematic material you need. You could go in at least six directions that I can see. In my experience in working with you, you want your play to be all things. But no new development process can work until you know what story you are trying to tell and why you’re trying to tell it.”

The cast engages in feedback.

My immediate strategy now is to begin by working with a French scene breakdown of the current draft, a helpful tool in analyzing the event chain. The goal is to ensure I do not “throw the baby out with the bathwater,” and unintentionally eliminate anything important in the existing draft. Once the analysis is done, the French scene breakdown will show what story information is revealed when and what story information isn’t revealed at all. This process should allow the logic issues to reveal themselves. Then, I’ll have to figure out what to do about them.

As the director and dramaturg pointed out, at this stage, I am not trying to generate a “better” idea to improve the script, to please others, or to make it more interesting. Instead, my initial goal is to hone in on and then not waver from my original core impetus—why I wrote the piece in the first place, my intent with the play. I need to continue to sustain my commitment to it so it can serve consistently as a filter of my ideas and others’ feedback.

As I strive to move forward, additional advice and realizations may be helpful for fellow playwrights:

Selecting intention for the play is not the same as selecting a voice. The voice I bring to the work is mine, regardless of what concepts I explore.
Selecting a form (form follows function) is not the same as selecting a style. A play designed to explore a conflict can have a comedic touch in telling the story, should I choose to retain that quality.
Sharing my experience of the process, as with this written reflection, is another way to work through how much I struggle to get out of an emotional, subjective perspective on my work.
Catching myself mourning alternate possibilities even before I have fully realized them, I need to remind myself of my goal to complete a well-crafted play. I can’t accomplish that without making choices that will eliminate other paths.
Encouraging myself to eliminate what I must, I can remind myself to set aside what does not belong in this script and use it in another; I must simply tell myself, “not this play, not this time.”

In the end, what the play is about can be only one thing. I must choose to be hell-bent on sticking with that intent.

Director Scott Stroot, (lower left), listens to cast members Lauren Hanson, Murren Kennedy, Kathleen Barnebey, Garland Lyons, Matthew Ostrowski, and playwright Brad Bolchunos (upper right), as one of the audience members, Niels Truman (lower right), greets a newcomer.

What’s Next

In our next article we’ll look at a director’s insights about participating in an unrehearsed reading.

Editor’s Note: Northwest Theatre Workshop presented a considerably revised draft of Unmediated in a staged reading, directed by Ciji Guerin, as part of its Founders’ Showcase at Taborspace two years after the unrehearsed reading. Actors in that performance included Jack Harvison, Garland Lyons, Andrea White, Amelia Hillery, and Enrique Andrade, with Stage Manager Paulina Jaeger-Rosete.

The creative team of the staged reading of Unmediated include, clockwise from left, Enrique Andrade, Amelia Hillery, Jack Harvison, Andrea White, Garland Lyons, Andrea White, Ciji Guerin, Paulina Jaeger-Rosete, and Brad Bolchunos.