As we have discussed in class, voice is difficult to capture and even more difficult to make distinguishable from character to character. Words we write on a page sound different when they are read, and performed, out loud. The characters in Fences have a very distinct way of speaking in comparison with someone we would run into today, which does something for discerning them from the everyday person.
In developing the characters, their beliefs, and their back-stories, August creates frequent arguments among the characters as a tactic for giving the audience this necessary information. Troy is always griping about this or that and with Rose, Bono, Lyons, and Cory to banter with him back and forth, the audience learn about Troy’s character, his job, his relationship with his sons, and his opinions on baseball and white people excluding black people from sports in general. With Bono present while Troy interacts with Rose, Wilson shows the audience their relationship by showing Bono their relationship. The interactions about jobs, school, drinking, death, etc. give us the present, and how Troy is now. For a look into Troy’s past, August uses Troy’s sons as ignorant characters to whom Troy wants to tell a story. Teaching his sons lessons through his own experiences, Troy gives the audience information about why he is who he is, and why he thinks the way he does.
From reading Fences, I learned that the interactions between characters are really the most useful tool for playwriting. The idea of a play is to tell a story, to portray to the audience a situation/life/moral/idea, etc. Your characters are your number one tool because they speak; they use their words, their fictional knowledge, their fictional pasts, their fictional emotions, to tell and show the audience your story. The key, of course, is to make sure you, as the writer, can put your words together in such a way that when your characters get on stage and start saying those words, the words do what you intended and tell your story out of the mouths of your characters. That’s the hard part.
I agree, tension is a great way to reveal back- story subtly. Wilson never has to tell the audience about Troy’s history or beliefs, he always shows these things through character interactions, mainly conflicts and arguments. We can definitely all learn from this and use this method in our own writings.
ReplyDeleteAnother interesting facet of the play, I thought, was that all of this intense emotion is revealed and shown from the porch of a house! Simple setting, and simply dialogue between believable, interesting characters is all a play really needs to be moving and successful.
Yes yes yes yes yes, characters are the key. They're your most useful tool for communicating all that must be, well, communicated. And they offer the most reward. That is, plot told through good characters, theme communicated through good characters, these payoff more than any other approach.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting that you point to ignorant characters and then allow that they are Troy's sons in the same breath. That fact right there -- that this man talks and talks and talks and yet his own sons seem to know so little about his life and his past -- tells us so much. And so that's the ballgame here -- we learn his story because he tells us/them out loud, but also, we learn so much about him and his relationships and his family based on what/how he tells. Cool, no?
This is a play where strong characters meant strong exposition. They talked and they talked and they talked. I think it worked really well for fences. I guess I now wonder if it's possible to still have strong exposition if the characters are weak?
ReplyDeleteYes. That is the hard part. And Wilson pulls it off so well. We know exactly who these characters are based wholly on what they say and how they interact. I second Josh's question: if characters are not strongly opinionated, how do we show who these people really are? I think there are people who are weak. And I think there is a depth to that. How do we portray THAT type of character? That's just something I've been thinking about.
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