Stakes

Stakes are what the Character has to gain or lose as a result of pursuing their Action - it's amount of risk they're taking onstage in front of the audience. There's an appropriate amount of risk for each scene, based on the Characters, Given Circumstances, Motivation, the Action, and the intention of the playwright. For example, in one scene, winning a game of cards may not mean much to anyone involved - they're using potato chips instead of betting chips. In another scene, winning a game of cards may mean life or death. How many times have you heard about someone betting their soul in a game of cards? The first scene is low-stakes: not much risk. The second scene is high stakes: a lot of risk.

Stakes are important in theater because plays feature something we don’t often see in real life: a person trying to accomplish one goal for an extended period of time. Whatever that Action is, the Character finds it important enough to pursue it for as long as your play might be, whether that’s 10-minutes, or 9 hours (it's possible). Finding a reason why that goal is so important to that character will make writing your play easier, because you’ll find they’re more willing to try interesting and varied Tactics, which will move the story forward. Actors love to "dig in" to a Character's stakes, and Directors can set up the Conflict in your scene by helping the actors find exactly why their Actions are so important. Finally, seeing a Character who wants to take risks is generally more interesting for an audience than seeing a Character who doesn't.

Determining Stakes - The Kitten Example
Let's say your play is about a kitten - this kitten is on the roof of one apartment complex, and wants to get to the roof of another. She sees a clothes line between the two buildings. So, your kitten decides to try to walk across the clothes line.

What does the kitten hope will happen? What does the kitten fear will happen? How much is she risking?

In this case, the kitten hopes she'll make it across to the other building, but she's afraid she'll fall, which would either cause serious injury, or death. So, she's risking her well-being to get to the other side. Seems pretty high stakes, and probably worth watching.

Ultimately, if you want to determine the stakes of any given scene, or moment, ask yourself the following questions:

What does this character hope will happen? What does this character fear will happen? How much is this character risking? Can the character undo what happens in this scene?

Hopefully, your answers will be: "[Something Important]. [Something Important]. A lot. No."

High Stakes
When a Character’s stakes are high, they have a lot to lose or gain. The outcome of the scene will permanently alter the characters’ lives, and they won’t be able to go back and change it. Some examples of what they could be gaining, or losing, might be (but are not limited to):

- Their beloved.

- A family member.

- A dream.

- A job.

- A significant amount of money.

- A house.

- A limb/organ.

- Personal/Professional esteem.

Sometimes, the audience may be able to tell that a character has high stakes simply by the way they act, not necessarily through Exposition. If a character runs onstage, out of breath, locks the door, and tells another character not to open it while she starts pushing a table in front of it, we understand there's a high-stakes situation happening, even if we don't specifically know why. The intensity of the character's action proves that it MUST be high-stakes.

Low Stakes
Characters with low stakes don’t have a reason to care enough about something in the scene to pursue it to the point that it is dramatically compelling. Whatever happens during the scene, their lives will not be permanently altered, and whatever happens, they’ll probably be able to get back to where they were to begin with. Characters with low stakes might only be risking:

- Pocket change.

- An acquaintance.

- A passing whimsy.

- A stranger's opinion.

- A conversation.

- A trinket.

It's Relative
It's important to remember that, while some situations are universally high-stakes, stakes are relative to the character. To one character, it may be very important that they get their mother's sweater. Another character may not care at all about their mother's sweater.

Rule of Thumb
A general rule of thumb is that if a character can reverse, dodge, or otherwise undo the consequences of a given Action, then that Action has low stakes, and is needs to be wratcheted up.

Adjusting Stakes - The Kitten Example
There are several ways to adjust stakes. One way is changing certain Given Circumstances. What happens if the line goes between two buildings that only have one floor, instead of two apartment complexes? Maybe the kitten will live after all! The stakes have been lowered, though she's still risking injury. Alternatively, what happens if the line goes between two skyscrapers? The kitten is certainly going to die if she falls - there's even less of a chance that she'll miraculously survive. The stakes have been raised so much that we're no longer measuring the chance of survival, we're measuring the size of the crater she'll leave.

Similarly, another way to adjust the stakes is to play with the Character's Motivation. Maybe this kitten's mother is waiting for her on the other building. Maybe there's a dog chasing the kitten and she needs to get away from it. This can be especially helpful when you have High Stakes situations. Sometimes, if the risk is too great, you have to ask yourself, "why would this character take that risk?" We might not buy that a kitten would walk a clothes line between two skyscrapers just for kicks.

Adding a mother and adding a dog are also examples of using characters to up the stakes - specifically, using the relationships between the kitten and the mother, or the kitten and the dog, to heighten those stakes. Some things are more important when they happen with a family member, some things become more important in front of complete strangers. Another good example of using characters to heighten the stakes is the difference between a scene that happens in public, and a scene that happens in private. If that Father/Son arguement scene is seeming a little stagnant, try placing it in the middle of a crowded stadium, and see what happens.

It could also be that you've chosen an Action that is less risky than it could be, or an Action that is too abstract to really have stakes. For example, confronted with the clothes line, the kitten could have decided to meow until someone saw she was up there and carried her across. She really stands to lose nothing if she fails at this, except her time, and it shows that she doesn't care too much about whatever she has to gain, since she's willing to wait for someone to take her over. Or, perhaps, confronted with the clothes line, she would monologue about the nature of separation. Again, what can she lose if she fails to think about the situation how she wants to? Not much. To adjust, try finding a new way to solve the problem that your character can really dig into. What if the kitten tries to convince her mother to come across to her?

Why Is This Onstage?
Sometimes when writing, it can be easy to get so caught up in other aspects of the script that you forget to give either one or all of your characters a reason to care about their Actions. An example of this might be a play set at a Starbucks where two friends meet to talk. After ten minutes of finely-crafted dialogue that oozes with colloquialisms and buzz-words that only best friends use with each other, they leave the Starbucks.

That’s all great, until you realize that we could see people talking to each other anywhere, and for less than the price of admission.

Not just anything is worth seeing onstage. We all go through a series of low-stakes situations every day, but if you set something onstage, you're carving it out of as a series of events that are worth presenting in front of a group of people. As playwrights, people pay us money, and give us a portion of their time. For Youth Ink!, it’s ten minutes. For some playwrights, it’s longer. They cannot put the play down and walk away. They cannot hit “rewind” if they missed something, or “fast-forward” to their favorite parts. They experience everything in the real time they’ve paid for. After they’ve given us their money and their time, we are expected to produce a meaningful experience for them, in that real time.

When characters have a reason to care about what happens onstage, the audience has a reason to care about what happens onstage. Without stakes, an audience member could easily ask “why should I care?” As a playwright, you need to have at least one answer to that question for every moment in your play. Otherwise, you risk the audience looking down at their program instead of paying attention to your story.

Stakes and Comedy
While there are few hard-and-fast rules to comedy, most funny things usually involve broken expectations. So, comic characters often treat low-stakes situations as though they were high-stakes. The sitcom, Seinfeld, is almost entirely based in this dynamic. Characters spend whole episodes trying to dodge a woman with "Man-hands," get soup from a particular store, and so on. Ultimately, their lives won't be permanently altered by any of these situations, but because it is high-stakes for them, it's enough to drive the story of the episode.