by Tony Nigro
Carl Jung / Joseph Campbell
It’s a little known fact that Lewis and I do more writing to each other via email than we do for Split Edit. Most of the time it’s mundane stuff, but every so often a simple cross-country “hello” devolves into overwrought, coffee house-ready discussion. And rarely does it end in agreement. We’re talking no-holds barred, cage match kinds of emails.*
Dig a recent exchange below, in which we render a certain Joseph Campbell concept meaningless.
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Lewis: What book(s) do you recommend for learning the fundamentals of playwriting? And don’t say Aristotle.
Tony: Does it have to be playwriting in particular? Because there are fewer “rules” for the theater. Most of what I learned about playwriting I learned from reading and studying other plays (and Aristotle). For dramatic writing in general I like Christopher Vogler’s The Writer’s Journey, which basically simplifies Campbell’s Hero’s Journey and puts it into movie terms. I like using that book as a skeleton for an outline and for keeping characters straight as archetypes. I think it translates to theater and prose as well.
L: I’m not sure how I feel about the monomyth. It gets boring, not necessarily to watch, but to write. To keep with one structure gets tiresome. Granted, a lot of beautiful poetry was written in the sonnet form, but who the fuck reads sonnets anymore?
Audiences are stupid, and I don’t mean that they’re idiots. I mean these days, when someone sits down to watch something, they turn their brain off. Same with books. It’s a bit discouraging, but perhaps we can use that knowledge to our own nefarious ends. It’s like mass hypnosis where thousands of people voluntarily put themselves into a trance, open to any suggestions we want to give them. I’ll bet you $5 to $7 that teen pregnancy declines in the wake of the Twilight movies.
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