From Page to Stage

How do theatremakers bring a text to life?

When we recount stories to our friends, we often jump around in time, get lost in tangents, and circle back to illuminate passing anecdotes before finally stumbling our way to a conclusion we might not have originally anticipated when we began. Our gestures, our tone of voice, and even the way we’re dressed can dramatically affect the way those listening to us interpret what we’re saying. Those same rules apply to theatre. How a story is told is just as important as what the story is about when it comes to gleaning meaning from a piece.

In the play Jonah, playwright Rachel Bonds tells the story of Ana through a series of fleeting vignettes. Over the course of the narrative, these windows into her past and present piece together to give audiences a glimpse into the complicated coming of age which shaped the woman she is today. However, before we dive into this winding web of words, it’s important to understand the function of nonlinear storytelling, how stage directions leave room for artists to express their creative intentions, and learn how the collaborators behind this piece worked together to bring Jonah to life.

Nonlinear Storytelling

What does it mean to tell a story nonlinearly?

The last time you heard the word “linear” was likely in your high school algebra class, but what does that term mean in the context of storytelling? Luckily, our experience in mathematics might actually be able to help us conceptualize this narrative device. Much like a line on a graph, a linear story is told in unbroken, chronological progression–with each scene leading naturally into the next. There are no interruptions along the straight path from point A to point B.

In contrast, a nonlinear story deliberately mixes up this journey. In keeping with our mathematical analogy, the narrative throughline of a nonlinear story can be seen jumping up, down, and all around the graph on its path from Point A to Point B. Most commonly, this is done through anachrony, the “discrepancy between the order of events in a story and the order in which they are presented in the plot.” However, there are plenty of other literary devices one can use to tell a story nonlinearly aside from messing with its chronology. Below are just a few more ways writers can reimagine the structure of their work:

1. Focalization - shifting the perspective the narrative is told from between different characters.
2. Setting - shifting between different locations to tell an overarching narrative.
3. Diegetic - shifting to secondary narratives that exist within the context of a larger story.

There are numerous examples of nonlinear stories in popular media, from literature to film and television. A Mercy by Toni Morrison, Pulp Fiction by Quentin Tarantino, and the classic Middle Eastern folktale One Thousand and One Nights all disrupt traditional linear storytelling structure in unique ways to accomplish dramatic effects.

What effect(s) does non-linear storytelling have?

Andrew Piper and Olivier Toubia’s “A Quantitative Study of Non-linearity in Storytelling”, explores a multitude of reasons writers might choose to employ nonlinearity in their narratives. Mainly, in choosing to tell a story nonlinearly, the writer is able to strategically manipulate the dissemination of information to the audience. As a result, regardless of whether the text was fact or fiction, nonlinear stories were observed to inspire feelings of “‘suspense,’ ‘curiosity,’ and ‘surprise’” within their readers. While challenges inevitably arose due to nontraditional structure making specific event recall more difficult for some, “modulating the order of events” was also seen as an effective way to conjure a gap in information that “heightens audience curiosity and thus attention and interest,” making their stories all the more gripping.

Stage Directions

What are stage directions?

Stage directions can be defined as “short, practical performance or reader-oriented instructions… that typically start, end and intersperse a printed play.” For example, below is an excerpt from Jonah:

ANA 

Quiet.

(He holds up his hands in acceptance.)

JONAH

I like your room. 

ANA

Shut up.

JONAH (looking at a photo)

I do! It’s nice.

(He picks up a photo.)

Is this your mom?

ANA

Yeah. And my two sisters.

As you can see, written in parentheses are brief instructions we in theatre refer to as stage directions, and when included as part of a text, they can serve all sorts of different functions. Most importantly, while reading a script, stage directions can help the audience reconcile the gap between reality and the suspension of disbelief demanded by live theatrical performances. As Dr. Shokhan Rasool Ahmed puts it in her article “Stage Directions: From Page to Playhouse” for the International Journal of Development Research, stage directions “shape how the reader imagines, say, Macbeth taking place both on stage and in Scotland at the same time.”

Meanwhile, stage directions can serve a more practical function for theatremakers themselves. For instance, an actor would use stage directions to inform their performance, while a props master would look to the stage directions to identify which physical objects are required by the piece for the story to be told. However, this does not mean that stage directions leave no room for creative choices to be made. In another excerpt from Jonah, we can see how an artist might be challenged to use their imagination in order to bring a text to life: The stage directions read:

The door flies open, darkness beyond. [Jonah] disappears backwards through the door, sucked into the darkness. Danny appears in the open doorway.

In this scene, playwright Rachel Bonds makes a very distinctive choice: to employ abstract descriptions in her stage directions. What does it mean to be “sucked into the darkness?” Think about it for yourself for a moment. And don’t worry; there is no right answer. After all, these words are deliberately ambiguous. By dipping into the realm of unreality, Bonds maintains her artistic intent while leaving the door open for creatives to project their own meaning onto her work. This means that unless the intention is for the production to be a replica, no subsequent iteration of Jonah will ever look exactly the same as the one you will attend. Each director, lighting, scenic, and sound designer who approaches this text is given the flexibility to play with their artistries to realize Bonds’s writing on stage in a way that satisfies their own dramatic objectives.

Creativity, Conversations, & Collaborations

In an interview for Upstage, Bonds expresses her desire for collaboration with the design team. She emphasizes the importance of conversation because,

[M]aybe there's something that I can change in the writing because the set designer's like, ‘Well, what if we did this?’ I'm like, ‘Whoa, that's way more elegant of a choice.’ And then I can shape a scene because of a design choice.

For Jonah in particular, she recognizes the ambiguity and disjointed nature of those stage directions and explains that they grew out of the form matching the content. Within the play, Ana is excavating her memories and integrating those experiences into her adult life which, to Bonds, means that everything should feel “magical, slippery, eerie.” Her text is an emotional map and it is up to director Danya Taymor and designers, like scenic designer Wilson Chin, to make those emotions tangible to the audience.

So what does Chin think of those ambiguous stage directions like people getting sucked into darkness? “I love that stage direction! I take whatever clues I can get to design a world that feels uniquely created for this text, story, and action.” In this case, that one slightly magical, slippery, or eerie stage direction informs the “vibe,” that the set will try to match. In a design presentation on the first day of rehearsals, Chin further articulated how he wants the set to feel like a curation of memories, like we the audience are only being shown what Ana wants us to see. It should feel familiar but redacted. Like a family photograph, but distant or alien. He identified some specific ways that might be accomplished which will remain a mystery for now. You as an audience member will discover them when you see the production.

In response to this design presentation, Taymor notes that Chin’s set has also been crafted to give the cast lots of room to explore and play with how to physically accomplish the emotional intent of the stage directions. The creative process is highly collaborative, and the scenic design alone is not responsible for executing a playwright’s vision. The production also has a sound designer who is grappling with how can sound support those moments of magic; a lighting designer who is excited to explore how to replicate the experience of a glitch in memory; and a costume designer who is curious about the relationship between our bodies and what we wear. All of these artists have been inspired to answer these questions, and more, by the text of Jonah.

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