Ever wonder what goes on in the mind of a playwright?
Our Author Insights series features personal essays from playwrights, offering a behind-the-scenes look at the ideas and experiences that shaped their work.
Below, read “Finding Your Voice Together”, where playwright Maggie Smith reflects on the origin of Exquisite Corpse. You can also download a free PDF that pairs the essay with short, classroom-ready activities for students.
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Finding Your Voice Together
Maggie Smith
Like a few of the girls in this script with their poems, I wrote this play for fun. Or at least, it started that way. I was thinking about my favorite memories from high school, and two major ones popped up right away— Creating our school’s literary magazine, and writing an Exquisite Corpse with some of my best friends. That class made me who I am today. Quite literally, I wouldn’t be a playwright without my teacher suggesting it to me one afternoon in class, when I told her I wanted to write a story with only dialogue and little prose. In fact, some poems in this play were taken from my high school notebook (with edits here and there).
I used to think of myself as a “serious” writer, just like Darcy does, though I’m proud to say that I never forced my peers to stay overnight to finish a literary magazine. All of my work was more dramatic, using big words I had just learned in English class and writing about sad subject matter. At least until my junior year, where I realized that, no, I don’t have to force myself to be serious when writing. I’m allowed to have fun. That’s when I truly felt my life change around. I loved writing, but it used to be difficult for me. When I tried to write pieces that were darker, or more tragic, I never knew what to write or where to go with the plot. I was at my happiest writing dialogue, which is where I found my real passion: Comedy. I wouldn’t be where I am today without my high school creative writing course. So of course I had to write a play inspired by it.
It started with a memory, then gradually transformed into the script that exists today. I began to think about poetry as an art form, what makes some poems “classics” and others forgotten. Why are some voices amplified over others? Is art ever “good,” or is it just art? With these questions in the back of my mind, the characters began to take shape, each with their own opinions on the topic and their own poetic voices.
The only way to truly highlight these voices is by heavily emphasizing the ensemble nature of this piece. Every character supports each other on the journey they take over the next hour and a half. Each gets their own moment to shine with their poetry, telling us more about these characters than any monologue ever could. As straightforward as some characters may seem, their poems unlock a deeper part of themselves that they could never speak out loud. They have a lot to say, but no real way to say it. That’s where poetry comes in. Regardless of whether or not they actually want to be in this class, it gives them a well-needed outlet to get their complicated emotions out in the open, rather than bottling it up. The only real way they can achieve their goal of creating this magazine is by sharing some of their most personal work with the others.
The story only finds its completion when their voices become one. An Exquisite Corpse is a technique created by surrealists, combining all of their different voices in order to create one poem together, each only allowed to write a single line for the poem. While some versions of the poem have a specific pattern to follow (ex. article, adjective, noun, verb, preposition, article, adjective, noun), other versions have no form outside of the activity’s most basic rules. When the class makes their poem together, they are making a product of all of their stories, all of the vulnerabilities they shared throughout the evening. And with a poem having such an impact on the girls, it’s only fair that the literary magazine be titled after it.