How to Direct Dialogue from Actors in Plays

Video Transcript

"STEVE CAVERNO: Steve Caverno, on behalf of Expert Village, here to talk to you today about dialogue. Now, we're going to go through dialogue directions. Okay, what are dialogue directions? "Dialogue directions" is basically telling an actor how to say a line. So, let's take the line "No, I'm not." This is a pretty generic line. It could be said "No I'm not." It could be said "No! I'm not!" It could be said "No-oh! I'm not." So, this could be like the last example, amused. "No, I'm not." It's kinda just laughing off or it could be angry, "No! I'm not!" Or it could be perhaps a little offended, "No. I'm not." So, you can kind of use a little description right before it in the "parentheticals." That's how you would use the prescription. Also, let's say, there's a need to say--say it softly. Perhaps you don't want people to interpret that it should be said softly. So, you want to say, "No, I'm not." So, at that point, you can give the actor some cues. Now, these aren't as common nowadays as they used to be in theater scripts. Most of the time, you want to leave the interpretation up to the actor but if there is an absolute essential moment of where you need to tell that actor how to say a line, where it's important for the context and it could be misconstrued and that would change the intent of the scene, you do want to maybe give them a little bit of a guide of how to say a line or what kind of context and what kind of intonation you would like for that line."