Introduction
Besides dialogue, the other form of writing that generates dramatic literature is stage directions. Stage directions perform a number of functions within the text. They tell the actors how to move and speak, they also describe the setting and props, they sometimes provide helpful information about how a play should be performed.
Stage directions appear as notes in the script and are often set off from the dialogue in some way. Sometimes they appear in italics or they can also appear in brackets or parenthesis. In performance, stage directions are not spoken out loud as part of the production, but when you are reading a play as a text, the stage directions provide essential information that helps you to visualize the play.
Stage directions sometimes also provide practical information for the creative team producing the performance, such as information about lighting, props, sets, etc. Because they are written for people familiar with the theatre, stage directions often use language that most readers are not familiar with to talk about the stage. For example, upstage is the part of the stage furthest from the audience, while downstage is the part of the stage closest to the audience. And stage left and stage right refers to the actor’s right and left not the audience’s.
Stage Directions
Function & Importance of Stage Directions
Stage directions can serve a multitude of functions for a play, depending on who is interacting with them. At their basic definition, stage directions are instructions in a playtext that tell performers what to do, where to go, what should be onstage, etc. On the surface, this may seem like a simple function: instructors from a playwright or director to actors in a performance. However, stage directions hold a lot of meaning when we analyze a play. If it’s worth specifying in a stage direction, it must be important. While many stage directions are indicators to performers (and readers) of when certain characters enter and exit, some stage directions go beyond entrances and exits. Some stage directions will tell a performer how to deliver a line, or what prop they should grab as they say something, or where they should walk along the stage as they speak or listen to another character. If the playwright or director is specifying details like these in the stage directions, that means these details are crucial to the performance, to characterization, to establishing setting or plot, establishing a mood or tone, etc. Ultimately, however, stage directions are suggestions rather than commands, unless they are crucial to maintaining a cohesive plot. Actors and directors are still free to interpret or edit out stage directions if they choose a different interpretation of their character than the playwright suggests.
When reading a playtext, stage directions give us valuable information about what’s going on in the play. Without the physical movement or actors in front of us and the visual spectacle of the stage, stage directions help us as readers visualize the scene of a performance. They can also provide crucial information for plot when no one is speaking, but actions are taking place: like “Hamlet stabs Claudius” or “Othello smothers Desdemona with the pillow. She dies.”
Here is a longer passage from the scene from A Doll’s House (The MAID referred to is the NURSE).
[RANK, HELMER and MRS LINDE go downstairs. The NURSE comes forward with the children; NORA shuts the hall door.]
NORA – How fresh and well you look! Such red cheeks! – like apples and roses. [The children all talk at once while she speaks to them.] Have you had great fun? That’s splendid! What, you pulled both Emmy and Bob along on the sledge? Both at once? That was good. You are a clever boy, Ivar. Let me take her for a little, Anne. My sweet little baby doll! [ Takes the baby from the MAIDand dances it up and down ] Yes, yes, Mother will dance with Bob too. What! Have you been snowballing? I wish I had been there too! No, no, I will take their things off, Anne; please let me do it, it is such fun. Go in now, you look half frozen. There is some hot coffee for you on the stove.
[The NURSE goes into the room on the left. NORA takes off the children’s things and throws them about while they all talk to her at once.]
NORA – Really! Did a big dog run after you? But it didn’t bite you? No, dogs don’t bite nice little dolly children. You mustn’t look at the parcels, Ivar. What are they? Ah, I daresay you would like to know. No, no – it’s something nasty! Come, let us have a game! What shall we play at? Hide and seek? Yes, we’ll play hide and seek. Bob shall hide first. Must I hide? Very well, I’ll hide first.
[She and the children laugh and shout and romp in and out of the room; at last NORA hides under the table; the children rush in and look for her but do not see her; they hear her smothered laughter, run to the table, lift up the cloth and find her. Shouts of laughter. She crawls forward and pretends to frighten them. Fresh laughter. Meanwhile there has been a knock at the hall door but none of them has noticed it. The door is half opened and KROGSTAD appears, he waits a little; the game goes on.]
Unlike Caryl Churchill, Ibsen writes very full stage directions, which in this extract take up almost as much space as the dialogue.
Furthermore, the directions indicate not only movement but sound. No lines are written for the children, but they are far from silent; they talk and laugh and shout. Nora’s questions in her first speech indicate something of what they say. Incidentally, her speech also indicates further action: ‘No, no, I will take their things off, Anne’.
Speech and stage directions together give us a picture of a mother happy to play with her children at their level. When she takes their outside clothes off, she ‘throws them about’ rather than putting them tidily away, as a responsible adult might, and the directions tell us that there is a good deal of romping about for Nora and the children, and that it is Nora who hides under the table. The scene contributes to our view of her as a vigorous, playful young woman, and links with the way she is represented in other scenes in the play. Nora’s passionate physicality is evident later, in a more sexual sense, in the scene when she dances the tarantella. And the way she addresses her children (‘My sweet little baby doll!’; ‘No, dogs don’t bite nice little dolly children’) recalls the way her husband has spoken to her in the first scene of the play (‘Is that my little lark twittering out there?’; ‘It’s a sweet little spendthrift, but she uses up a deal of money’).
Stage directions are perhaps the most obvious way in which a playwright will indicate how the text is to be performed, but they need to be interpreted as much as the speeches do, and will not necessarily be followed literally. Here, for instance, is the description of the Helmers’ living room with which the play text starts:
SCENE – A room furnished comfortably and tastefully but not extravagantly. At the back a door to the right leads to the entrance hall; another to the left leads to HELMER’S study. Between the doors stands a piano. In the middle of the left-hand wall is a door and beyond a window. Near the window are a round table, armchairs and a small sofa. In the right-hand wall, at the farther end, another door, and on the same side, nearer the footlights, a stove, two easy chairs and a rocking chair; between the stove and the door a small table. Engravings on the walls; a cabinet with china and other small objects; a small bookcase with well-bound books. The floors are carpeted, and a fire burns in the stove. It is winter.
This is her space (Torvald has his study offstage), and she is seen in it for almost the whole play, only being absent for the scene between Krogstad and Mrs Linde at the beginning of Act III. The visual impression should be of a claustrophobic interior, and this may be created in a literal way, following Ibsen’s instructions as closely as possible. But it may also be interpreted more freely. The last production that I saw, performed by Shared Experience, actually included in the set a fairly large doll’s house, large enough for adult characters to crawl in and out. This does not form part of Ibsen’s directions, but is one way of interpreting the claustrophobia that the directions suggest, as well, of course, as giving literal expression to the title of the play.
Approaching Plays. Licensed under CC BY SA 4.0 http://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/culture/literature-and-creative-writing/literature/approaching-plays/content-section-3
Summary
Along with dialogue, stage directions help you to fully visualize a play when you are reading it instead of seeing it performed. Stage directions describe where and when a scene takes place, how an actor should deliver their lines, and how the actor should move on stage. Sometimes stage directions even indicate an actor’s mood or reveal their motivation.
Even though stage directions themselves are never actually read out loud as part of a performance, the information that they provide for actors and theatre craftspeople is essential to generating the finished product of the performance. And as a reader, stage directions are crucial to you as a tools that helps you to imagine the play in performance.
