Stage Play / Salvador Dali play

Well I have some suggestions. I think you should really rely on dialogue to carry a play. I admire your courage but every moment needs an imagination. The foundation of stage playing is in the spoken poem. To try copying real conversation takes away from your talent. I can hear everyday conversation any where but what I hope to hear is your humanity. The most powerful moment was Salvador  running off stage weeping. But that is not stage playing, that is for the actors and directors to decide. I hope that this was a helpful critique.

Thanks

The dialogue isn’t natural or period-appropriate, and the spelling and grammar are rather poor.  It’s a good idea, though; with a little work, it could be decent.

Since your concept of your subject matter is presented more as a performance piece rather than a conventional stage play, my first comment is that you must follow through on the concept.  Dali popping out of an egg is a wonderful idea.  Now I realize that what you have published here is far from a complete play, I can only discuss what I read.  You seem to drop the “Performance Piece” concept and fall into the stage play.  I can only hope that you will integrate more visual and audio activities as your play progresses.  I don’t know your plans for the play, meaning will it be a short play or a full length?  So far you’ve listed 8 main characters along with “multiple friends”.  Keep in mind your protagonist is Dali.  Focus on him.  Don’t be afraid to rid yourself of non-essential characters.  Developing a character from Adolescence through maturity is a tough job.  It’s almost like creating a separate character for each change in life.  I looked up “Surrealism” and noted an important thing – the works of Surrealists feature the element of surprise.  Try to incorporate that idea in your work.  Please submit additional work as you progress.

ballyden

Where do I begin critiquing this piece?  Should I start with spelling and grammar or with the overall tone…?

What starts out as an interesting premise for an introspective piece on art and theory and inspiration quickly becomes a musing of colloquialism and confusion.  Aside from the spelling and grammar mistakes (which I will not comment on further) this play loses its way immediately after the opening scene (which is brilliant in theory) due to the poor execution of Freud’s opening oration.  This little monologue should set the tone for the piece and for what your intentions are as the writer, but because there is absolutely unbelievable that Freud would have ever used that type of language (or lack of proficiency thereof) I find your suspension of disbelief, accordingly, improbable.  Read the play aloud and it should be quite apparent what needs to change.  If you are not familiar with colloquialism or are having difficulty assigning appropriate dictation styles to the characters then I would suggest a little research.  

The bit with the egg is brilliant.

The latter half of the dialogue--mainly between Salvadore and Papa--are more of the same pedestrian banter, resembling every other “parent-vs-child-artist story” in history.  Yes, the stereotype exists because it is often true, as is probably the case here, but because, again, of your desire to present something a bit more intellectual (to capture the world of the surreal) I think you need, accordingly, a bit more cerebral dialogue.  To use the age-old adage, much of this is cliche--we’ve heard it all before, just never from Salvadore Dali.  Conversely the familiarity makes it intimate and connects with the audience--I would just suggest you use this technique sparingly as your goal is to discuss what made Dali so outstanding; or use this technique broadly only to unify the audience with his brilliance (neither of which has been developed thus far).

I don’t know the history (as may be the case with many readers or potential audience for this piece) so it will be up to you to educate US on the intracacies of the plot.  I assume that your historical context is accurate and I enjoyed the relevance of Picasso and the inherent comparison, which I imagine would have been quite a viable argument during the time that Dali was active in his art.

  This resembles the kind of thing we did in AP Senior English when we didn’t want to do an oral report.  There’s nothing wrong with what you offer as a writer, but I don’t think that your finished product (so far) resembles your intention.  I feel like this is more of a sketch than a play, especially with such lazy language and formulaic situations in which you place your characters. All in all, again, I am quite fond of your premise, but I think you don’t deliver on your promise.

I liked the concept of the play, but from there it didn’t suit my fancy:

I found it highly unlikely for a father to promote his son to artistry, especially so in one that is characterized by the absurdist and abstract style of picasso, which, in most cases, was more provocative then it was accepted.  

There is a general stereotype around artists, especially at that time, about their possibilities and the financial stability that most individuals at that time thought was best for being well.

Also:  Freud was a most accepted figure during his time, for his psychological theories were so new and so fitting to his era that he was, quite possibly, the most famous figure in the western hemisphere at the time of the publication of “Interpretation of Dreams”.  If anything, he transformed the field of psychology as one of the most admired fields of study for many years—it took a bit for people to begin criticism, since, after all, what Freud had proposed was so new that it was incredibly hard to understand or grasp at that time.

I did enjoy though the writing, especially in your effort to unify why Dali decided to create such an original psycho-art style.

Not the clearest play, but it really has some potential. I like your use of metphors and the idea to do a play about Salvador Dali. I think that it might be a little more effective if you explained exactly what Salvador wanted to do with his work and added a scene or two to the end. Your beginning parralelling Feud talking and Dali being born is very good visually.  The main problem for you is that you just do not have enough dialoge, and that your dialouge is very short where you do have it. Your stage directins are good.

Well, I have to admit, you could’ve gone alot of places with it that just weren’t reached. The dialogue really bothered me. I can’t picture normal people talking like that and I didn’t relate to any of the characters. Ok, now that that’s over, I loved the stage directions at the beginning and I wish you would’ve ran with the whole interpretive thing and had more original ones towards the middle/end. I could kind of sense the tension between Dali and his father, but I was taken out of the story by the dialogue. In a play, the characters HAVE TO be able to carry the story, since there’s no prose. I would love to see where you go with this. Just work on your dialogue a bit. Overall, it was somewhat effective, but it has LOADS of potential.

That some mighty big shoes to fill their son ( seems to be almost a southern way of speaking I thought they were spanish). Picasso didn’t need any footsteps…he started when we was inside her mother (should be he started when he was inside his mother). I like the premise, but it doesn’t catch my attention right away.

I think it’s a great concept, and Dali is indeed such a fascinating character to use as your protagonist. I love the egg bit in the beginning, definitely sounds like something Dali-esque. Also, the conflict between the father and son was very well-done. It’s interesting seeing a great artist such as Dali as a teenage boy. Nicely done.

I think you have a great concept here. I am not entirely sure if all of your misspellings are intentional for the surrealistic slant or not though. For instance, you say “self” instead of “shelf”. and “foudation” instead of “foundation”. There are many more. The play on idea about Freud dream book, Dali, and the father with Picasso is clever. Unfortunately, Picasso wasn’t a cubist straight out of the womb though. ;-)