ROFFEKE: In 2016, you wrote a stage play that ran Off-Broadway in New York City and have written many other plays. What do you enjoy about writing screenplays that you find challenging when writing stage plays, and vice versa?
LISTENING RAVEN: Wow, good question! I like how with a stage play, actors can get up on stage and read the dialogue days after putting it on paper. That's the case with a stage play-type-format. That's huge. Its cool how something will come out that you didn't know about your dialogue. And then there are times a good actor will read it and you realize you laid a big fat egg.
If that's never happened to you, you're lying. Everybody's written some bad stuff.
And then there's times an actor will read something that turns out great.
Stage plays however have to be on one set. I love flashbacks and jumping to different places. Screenplays allow for that freedom.
Screenplays are a visual art. I feel the writer can inspire the director to some degree. Great directors are awesome. Then the camera, light, sound people along with folks putting down the little railroad tracks as I call them.
Sometimes when writing a stage play, I wish it were a screenplay. And then when its a screenplay, I wish it were a stage play.
When two actors are engaged in an amazing moment, the stage allows for more time. The difference between a 12 second exchange is so much different than an exchange that goes on just 24 seconds. Screenplays should move a little quicker when it comes to dialogue. You have to show the audience with images and quick cuts. Stage gives the writer more time to elaborate with dialogue.
You can lose your audience in a matter of seconds in a screenplay. The audience these days want things to move along and move fast. Especially in a comic exchange.
That's just how it is.
In a stage play, the audience knows going into the theatre there is going to be a lot of dialogue. You're not going to have realistic looking bombs, explosions, car chase scenes and people jumping off buildings, into a pool of fire, and coming out to chase down the bad guy in slow motion.
But, if a great actor(s) are engaged in a stimulating conversation with engaging dialogue, it works in a screenplay or stage play.
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Look out for Listening Raven's answer for Question 3: "Your portrayal of women in "Rez" is non-stereotypical, does not show them as being "voiceless, or silent...an object of desire, and victims of violence...without agency" (Illuminative's "The Time is Now: The Power of Native Representation in Entertainment", page 26) Did you purposely set out to portray the women in this more positive and realistic light or was it just a happy accident?"
You can read his answers for Question 1 HERE
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