Linda Li Script analysis write-up

Script analysis write-up: What strategies did you use to analyze your script last week and what did you find from that technique? Also, how did you revise your piece based on the findings. 300 words. Post on blog.

The first strategy I have used to analyze our script is called "Beginning, Middle, End" (chunk/draw). This helps identify traits of character, plot, theme, turning points, points of conflict, change, and resolution. This also helps the audience to understand and visualize the plots. In our play Love Is Complicated, the characters we have are Steve, Sara, Marcus, and Natalie, Steve and Sara are married, Marcus and Natalie are married, Steve is a husband who stresses loyalty, unity of family, and he is very irrational and sensitive and protective about his wife Sara. Sara is a psychiatrist and also a wife. She was messing around with Marcus, who is Natalie's husband. The themes of this play are the longing for love, heartbreak, unfaithfulness, betrayal, complicated feelings, devotion, and so forth. The turning point is when Steve confronts Sara and Marcus in the restaurant. The conflicts of this story is mainly human versus human and human versus self. For example, Marcus and Steve confront because Steve is messing around with Marcus' wife because Marcus was messing around with Sara. Also, the internal mental conflicts within Sara's head are her relationship with Marcus without her husband knowing, whether she should remain faithful to Steve, and her husband's relationship with Natalie. The resolution is that Natalie and Marcus leaving,and Sara and Steve were having an argument. All of these points could help the audience to piece the information they get from each character together to get to know the characters better and to make the story flow better. 

The second strategy I have applied to editing my script is "Beat by beat", which helps work on timing, creating space, flow, tempo. When me and my partners were creating the plots and writing the script, we have tried  our best to follow common logic and chronographic sequence as best as we can. Creating a play does not mean for us to pack all things that we want in the play at the time, instead, it must be arranged in order and could be mostly understand by the audience. The audience might be disagree and surprised by what we have in the play sometimes, but that is actually our expectation to surprise the audience and to make ironic twist. After we roughly finished the whole play, we always scan through the whole play and script together to find out any errors and parts that do not make sense and do not flow and follow the pace of the play as a whole. Also, we actually act them out to determine the audience's feeling.

The third strategy that is helpful for us is the "Emotional Progression", which means adding colors and layers into your play to prevent the plots of the plays being too flat and boring. For example, we looked into our play and find out all of the unexpected relationships and interactions between the characters. Also, we have different lighting and props to help highlight the atmosphere of the scenes. We have Steve fighting Marcus near the end of the play, therefore, the layers of the scene would be constantly changing, and at last Steve would lay on the ground while Sara will be on the floor too to comfort him.

The fourth strategy is the "Seven Levels of Tension". The first layer is exhausted, means there is no tension in the body at all. The second level is laid back,which means things you have in the play are cool but lack credibility. The third level is neutral. This is the state of tension before anything happened and there is no story behind the movement. The fourth level is alert, which means we move around in the environment and react to things we have carefully observed. The fifth level is suspense, which could make the audience nervous and curious about what is going to happen. The sixth level is passionate, which means the suspense finally exploded and the climax of the play is about to come. The seventh level is tragic, the effects and attofmpshere resulted from the explosion of the suspension. In our case, our play actually goes through all of the seven levels of tension. We carefully match each scene we have with each level of tension. We tried our best to make the scene less flat by eventually adding the levels of tension of exposing more characters' traits and interactions between them. As we were carefully going through the scenes, we were always looking for ways that can make the story more emotional appealing and twisting.