Deciding on Time Period for a Play

Video Transcript

"STEVE CAVERNO: Hi. My name is Steve Caverno on behalf of Expert Village, and today I'll be talking to you about playwriting basics. Now, time. We'll look at this subject. Where do you want to set your play? Do you want to set in old time Victorian England? Or do you want to set in the modern world where people wear jeans and play video games? We'll look at this. First off, you go with period. Period talks about what time period you set in. Let's say "Jake's Women" is set in the modern day or could be set in the modern day or you can perform it in the '80s when it was written. Or "Moliere's Tartuffe" was set in France, so these are in the old times, and these are some of the ways where you can see the time period happening. Also, time span; how long does your play take place over from the beginning of the play till the end? Do you have multiple scenes taking place over the course of a week or do you have one single scene taking place in real time? And these are some of the things that you might want to think about. You could have a play like Eugene O'Neil's "Long Day's Journey into Night" which takes place at the beginning of the day and then ends at the end of the day. Or you could have a play like A.R. Gurney's "Love Letters" which spans the entire adult lifetime of two characters and their love affair over that lifetime. These are some things that can factor into doing a play. Of course, A.R. Gurney's "Love Letters" would depend on having a certain setting where you could have an older actor perhaps pretending to be a younger actor. And those are some of the things. If you want a really realistic play, you probably don't want to span an entire lifetime. And in time, this can factor into how you might consider writing your play."