I tuned in halfway through a streamed Zoom reading of my play Silent Sky that Dramashop in Erie, Pennsylvania, was producing to pivot their recent production online after the world turned upside down. I almost missed watching it actually, as these days are a swirl of alternating responsibility and tedium, but the kids were finally satiated (full of mac and cheese and iPads) and I made it to my desk and clicked on the link and… there were my ladies, my characters, my women (and one man) telling our story together. But the wind was truly knocked out of me by hearing… the stage directions.  

I honestly thought my play on Zoom was going to be some version of unwatchable but no. It worked. They did a smashing job. In this form, I saw every expression and drank it up, every eyebrow twitch and glare and glance and loved it. 

But my breath was taken away by the stage directions. They chose to read them out loud with an off-screen narrator, and hearing them delivered like any speech in any play was an invigoration. It felt almost illegal hearing them, like knowing something I’m not supposed to. Like catching a person in a lie, or reading a diary. 

“Henrietta drops a glass plate—it cracks.”
“Peter steps towards her—god he loves her—but then—”
“Peter starts to go—stops—wants to apologize—doesn’t.”
“A scuffle behind the door as Will is dragged away.”
“Blackout but for stars everywhere.”

They’re all a little tantalizing. And while I usually enjoy seeing these actions staged dexterously and vitally by great directors, I suddenly realized that I missed hearing them. Hearing them feels like a discovery, a facade shattered, a love letter exposed, a secret code used at the last minute to unlock the truth.

It happened again when watching I and You streamed online. And again watching The Revolutionists streamed by Santa Clara University students. Hearing the simplest directives of those insistent stage directions, again the stage directions. 

I’m in this for the stage directions, I realized. 

Stage directions are the very reason I write plays at all. Stage directions are how I fell in love with theater. Watching actors brawl, kiss, grab, break, weep, clutch, die, soar, exit, enter. The moments that gripped me are the ones that orbit around a stage direction that propels a truth-telling action. The truth is what people do, not say. I crave plays that move, soar, leap, dive, embrace. Give me action, give me bodies in motion, give me nonverbal communication!

Stage directions are the thing a line almost never is: honest. Aristotle, of course, tells us that actions define a person not their words. I love a speech, but inherently what I’m waiting to see is what that speech causes. Does the speech cause an exit, or does it cause someone to fall to their knees and apologize, or does it cause them to cut their throat? Does the joke beget a laugh or a punch or a smooch? What do all those beautiful spoken lines do?

Stage directions are the doings. The bravery, the crisp action, the perfect gesture. Stage directions are slips of simple poetry that tell you the meaning of the whole world. 

When I teach playwriting I talk about how the climax of a play is all ramping up to a character-revealing choice followed by a character-defining action. That action is often contained in a stage direction.

Hamlet
(HAMLET stabs the king)

A Raisin in the Sun
WALTER: (he looks the man absolutely in the eyes) We don’t want your money. (He turns and walks away.)

The Glass Menagerie
(TOM smashes his glass on the floor. He plunges out on the fire-escape, slamming the door. LAURA screams—cut by door. Dance-hall music up. TOM goes to the rail and grips it desperately, lifting his face in the chill white moonlight penetrating narrow abyss of the alley.)

These are the great moments of theater. They are brutally violent, or brutally still, or brutally impulsive.

The whole play is contained within these stage directions. A play’s full force moments as well as a play’s subtle rebellions. This is a play about when Hamlet stabs the king. This is a play about when Walter says “no” with all unwavering confidence. This is a play about when Tom leaves his family forever. 

What an invigoration. I will write only stage directions from now on. I will write untamable stage directions. I will unleash the impossible between two parentheses. 

(She stops writing her piece when she hears a tapping on the window by her writing desk. What’s this, the playwright thinks as she heads to her window to see for herself. She opens it, leans out, gasps. HER YOUNG SON climbs in the window holding a scrapped knee. He tries not to cry but when she clutches him fully in her embrace, he cries like something far more insidious is wrong than just his knee. He whispers something in her ear. She takes this in and tries not to get mad at the older boys who bullied her son… She makes a decision and whispers it in his ear. His eyes light up and he nods. The roof of their home splits open revealing the starriest sky. Her desk transforms into a spaceship and she helps her son get in. The ship tilts back at a severe angle, nose to the sky, ready to launch. She gives the thumbs up. He returns the gesture.)

WRITER: Let’s go for a ride, kiddo.

(They launch.)