We gain insight into their personalities, establish connections with them, and become invested in what happens to them because of what they say. Characters seem believable when their dialogue is modeled on real-life conversations. Whether based on historical figures or imagined by the playwright, characters must seem real to the audience. CharacterizationĪnother important purpose of dialogue is to reveal something about the characters on stage.
You will focus on stage directions in another section of this lesson. These words are not spoken aloud by the actors instead, these are stage directions that tell the actors what to do.
Notice also that some of the words in Gibson's script are in parentheses. Helen's disabilities are essential to the plot of The Miracle Worker. In her parents' heartbreaking conversation, the audience discovers that Helen Keller is blind and deaf. (She takes the lamp from him, moves it before the child’s face.) She can’t see! Keller: What, Katie? She’s well, she needs only time to. (She makes a pass with her hand in the crib, at the baby’s eyes.) The audience depends on the dialogue between the two characters to know what is wrong with this baby. Kate screams and Keller, her husband, runs to the nursery. In the opening scene of The Miracle Worker by William Gibson, a mother named Kate shines a lamp in the eyes of her ill daughter, Helen, lying in a crib. Playwrights are very intentional with each line of script so that the audience is aware of what is going on. The audience depends on the dialogue to follow the plot unfolding on stage. In a play, the audience is, in a sense, eavesdropping on these scripted and often revealing conversations. Most of the words in a drama take the form of dialogue. Occasionally, playwrights write monologues, in which one character gives a speech, but that is the exception. Robert Anderson writes, "When we go to see a play, it's the movement of the words rather than the movement of the scenery that delights us."ĭialogue, or conversation between characters, does most of the heavy lifting in drama. Because plays are performed live, there are no special effects or animation. While musicals like Annie have uplifting songs and delightful spectacle, drama is less about engaging the eye and more about engaging the ear.
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