Tell It Slant (Young Playwrights Programme)

The following blog is from an article I wrote for the Bunbury Banter Theatre Company’s Young Playwrights Programme, published on the 8th of April, 2020.

Words are delicate,

but used in countless misshapes,

thus language mistakes.

Words are my thing. I love them. In person I may not be the best speaker or thinker or anything, but when I have time to think, like when I work behind a screen, then I believe I can reach my current full potential. I love words. I take care with my words. I am only three lines in and I've read over this article several times just to try and be sure that it is grammatically accurate, as succinct as possible as well as full and clear as possible, and that it just sounds nice. Often I go over what I have written and said so much that I start to deconstruct our language and worry about if it is as efficient as it could be (It's not). If I have to re-read the aforementioned phrase "I take care with my words" one more time I don't think it's going to sound like English to me anymore, but I need to trust myself, and my audience.

In life, this passion for words and language often fed into my anxiety. I've been told off in college for "making up words" when I used "Emergent Situation" instead of "Emergency". To me, "Emergency" connotates danger, while the situation I was using it in relation to was not one of danger, instead it was one where a set of unrelated elements emerged and created a new and unexpected outcome; a new situation emerged. This has happened countless times for me. Each time it has fed into my anxieties and in recent years I have stopped trusting my audience. I catch myself before I use words like "incremental" or "copious" that aren't very common and in their stead I use words like "gradual" or "a lot of", respectively, that are more common but less applicable to what I was talking about. It doesn't help that in recent months my trust in others have started to decline as people I work with very often have little care for the meanings of words. When "fridge" and "freezer" are treated like they are interchangeable, double negatives become mere negatives, and "the back" can refer to behind the counter, the kitchen, the back, the shed, the outside, the office, the toilets, or, apparently uncontroversially, the front, then I just have to adapt, and so my confidence in trusting my audience falls. Also, all words are made up...

I hope you get me,

and I hope I get you too,

This is a Haiku.

I found my new hesitation to use my vocabulary and understanding of words to their fullest potential problematic when I recently started trying to write poetry. I found myself writing a whole verse describing a feeling that could simply be summarised in a single word; "Sonder". Since I was focusing on being clear, the poetic aspect diminished to a mere rhyme, and upon re-reading I found that the poem was held back so much by this. I didn't trust my audience to know what "Sonder" meant. It was a neologism though, coined less than a decade ago, so how would they know? I almost gave up on poetry then and there; this inner conflict could never let me settle with anything I wrote. Then I read Emily Dickinson's "Tell all the truth but tell it slant". The idea of the poem, both expressed through the what's being said, what's actually being said, what's not being said, and how it's all being said, is essentially the point of good poetry. Say what you mean, but say it in a way that could be open to new meanings, tell it in a way that is interesting or entertaining, tell it in a way that expressed your point but also makes the readers think. You can try your best to ensure as many people understand what you mean, but never let it detract from what you really mean. What I now believe is really important, however, is that you trust yourself.

I recently watched "Iphigenia in Splott". I loved it, the message was one that resonated with me and the performance by Sophie Melville was powerful. However, when it started, to be honest with you, I found the dialect difficult. The Welsh accent, the confident city tongue, and the coarse language that let every unclear word slide into the next. It took a minute for me to start understanding the words the character was using, and then another few minutes for me to get into the swing of it. It could have been easy for Gary Owen, the writer, to simply have the character speak clearly, with a more common accent and standard British pronunciation, but that would not have been Effie. The character came from Wales, from a certain background, a certain life, with certain experiences and a certain attitude. To have her enforce a clear pause between each word would have detracted from the story, from the kind of person she is and the kind of message Owen is trying to tell. The way Effie spoke was difficult for me, a member of the audience, to understand at first, but I would have it no other way because that raw and real character and performance made the whole play for me, and I loved it.

When it comes to meaningful speech, just saying what you mean may be fine, but I now believe that it should also be meaningful. If you just say a simple rhyme, it makes a memorable line. For emphasis on a word, you repeat, repeat, repeat it. Associate articles in art with approaches of amusing alliterations. Language presents a wide variety of ways to say what you mean without just merely being plain. King's "I Have A Dream" speech is not necessarily poetry, but is does have plenty of allusions, alliteration, anaphora, repetition, and more. If Doctor Martin Luther King Jr spoke plainly then it would be far less memorable and far less impactful; it would be a educational manifesto rather than a powerful meaningful speech. Dialogue is poetry. You must dazzle them gradually. A thousand meanings can be conveyed in a few lines, and discovered through delicate inspection, making a work far more memorable and effective in delivering its message or messages.

Being unclear is a benign trauma of mine but if I spend too much time trying to explain what I mean then audience members who already know the words that would explain it more succinctly would be put off, and if I do use those words then those who don't know the words can learn from other sources. I need to trust my audience. If I try to please everyone, I will please no one. Many words are not yet universally accepted or understood or even known but that is okay, as neither are people.

Words are my thing. I love words. I've just finished reading "Lost at Sea" by Morna Young and although the strong Doric dialect is far from how I speak and read, the language makes the play beautiful and rich. When I write, I am going to trust myself. I am not going to sacrifice time or plot or theme on ensuring my plays are universally accepted or clear enough for every single person to understand. If there is a word or term or phrase I believe would benefit from an explanation but not within the work itself, then I would add a glossary, much how Morna Young did. I am going to trust my audience. If I use six long complex uncommon words in quick succession then, sure, I will attempt to reword that so it is more comprehensible to more people, but I shan't squander a "sonder" for a worse non-terse hearse of a verse. I truly value words and their meanings so I will use them to their full potential. I will be me, words and all. Tell all the truth but tell it slant.

Language plays with us,

and we play with language too,

wordplay becomes you.

Glossary:

 - Deconstruct; analyse (a text or linguistic or conceptual system) by deconstruction, or reduce (something) to its constituent parts in order to reinterpret it.

 - Aforementioned; denoting a thing or person previously mentioned.

 - Emergent; in the process of coming into being or becoming prominent.

 - Incremental; relating to or denoting an increase or addition, often in minuscule or insufficient quantities, especially one of a series on a fixed scale.

 - Copious; abundant in supply or quantity, often near maximum or above maximum supply or quantity.

 - Applicable; relevant or appropriate.

 - Sonder; the profound feeling of realizing that everyone, including strangers passed in the street, has a life as complex as one's own, which they are constantly living despite one's personal lack of awareness of it.

 - Neologism; a newly coined term or meaning.

 - Slant; slope or lean, diverge, present from a new angle, or a particular point of view.

 - Detract; diminish the worth or value of (a quality or achievement).

 - Benign; gentle and kind, or not harmful.

 - Succinctly; in a brief and clearly expressed manner.

 - Doric; the popular name for Mid Northern Scots or Northeast Scots, refers to the Scots language as spoken in the northeast of Scotland.

 - Non-terse; not brief.