Script Notes: Process of adaptation

How do you adapt a novel to stage? Why?

At its most basic, I adapt novels in order to bring people to the theatre. The shared experience of seeing a novel compressed and retold in theatrical terms can be very powerful. I hope that those in the audience who don’t know the novel will be sufficiently impressed by the story to read it for themselves. But above all, I aim to make a satisfying piece of theatre.

The process of adaptation

The first, very basic, consideration is time. A modern stage play for touring normally lasts no more than two and a half hours - including a fifteen minute interval. Cast sizes are limited: many small-scale touring companies cannot employ more than five actors.

With these constraints in mind, I work out the bare bones of the plot. I try to identify the main themes and concerns. Then I search for features that are specially suited to the stage. In Sunset Song the novel’s narrative voice readily turns into a very effective chorus. However, the constant presence of the Standing Stones, and Chris’s affinity with them, is not nearly so useful theatrically. Some characters and incidents are indispensable, others can be dropped without major damage to the main story - for example, Chris’s younger brothers are easy to lose, and in the end so is John Brigson. Sometimes several characters can be made into a single composite figure.

I try to create possible patterns of character-doubling for the actors, to exploit this necessity in a way that make theatrical sense, either by deliberate contrast of personalities, or by implying an underlying association. A suitable point must be found to place the interval in the play, at a moment of dramatic change and decision, and which makes an audience want to know what will happen in Act 2.

I believe language is very important. I try to use the rhythms and imagery of the novelist wherever possible, the special features of language which bring colour and life via speech. I try to build dialogue, conversation, argument and commentary from these. I try to avoid the trap of merely quoting lengthy descriptions of scenes, incidents and individuals: I prefer to show action and activity, and to employ non-naturalistic theatrical "short-hand" - multiple images of overlapping realities (see the treatment of Daftie Andy’s rampage). I don't shy away from inventing dialogue "in the style of" the novelist, if it's theatrically just; and I'm interested in coaxing verse or at least a consciously heightened and lyrical speech, from descriptive narrative. These sometimes become songs.

Sometimes it makes theatrical sense to shift the order of incidents to make a stronger impact - or simply to make things more easily understood. The play uses an open, fluid stage to travel freely and instantly in time and place, from Blawearie’s kitchen to the moor by the loch to Kinraddie kirk and anywhere else that the story has to go.

Theatre is collaborative: it's vital that all involved understand this, and that nobody' s contribution is beyond discussion and comment. Adapters - writers - must be ready to be flexible and open to suggestion and requests; prepared to explain in small detail what you're aiming for, and to deal with other contributors whose skills are not literary - but whose creative instincts can be very powerful.

A large part of an actor’s work is in the space between the words, and behind the words. A writer should recognize that possibility.