World Rules Refined

A couple of comments on this post inspired me to refine the concept of Rules of the World (ROTW).

I think there is a distinction between rules that define how world of the play would function if it were reality, and rules that define the conventions of how the play is presented to the audience.

The question "What is the role of women in the 'world'?" and my question "Where do the bodies end up?" fall into the former category. Pookie's observation about time and Erik's thoughts on language fall into the latter category.

I tend to think first about the reality of the world I want to write about, and then what conventions I'm going to use to convey those to the audience.

I recall a day in workshop at Ohio University. I had written a play with a ghost. (Really, its better than it sounds.) The workshop accepted the ROTW that ghosts were real. But Charles Smith went on to ask how the ghost manifested on stage: a special light, a sound, did the ghost always appear from one spot, etc. He said in effect: "Fine, ghosts are real in this play. But how are you going to show that to the audience?"

Is this purely an academic distinction? Or is the line between ROTW and stage convention so blurred as to be useless?

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What is a subplot anyway?

I'm working on a new play and I'm considering including a sub-plot. Except I don't know what a sub plot is.

Having never tried to implement one, I've though of a sub-plot as some sort of secondary storyline that somehow parallels or comments on the main plot. But as I've started conceiving the structure of my newest play, I'm finding that definition doesn't help me in practice.

I apologize for the obtuseness that's about to follow, but because the new play is being targeted at a specific theater, I don't want to get into public details at this time.

So - I have a protagonist, and I've articulated his main goal for myself. I've set up a likely antagonist who provides an obstacle to that goal. And then I realized I had left a character out of this central push-pull. This third character causes the death of the protagonist's father, and is central to a major theme of the play.

My carefully constructed framework began to crumble before my very eyes. If I included this third character in the antag/protag conflict, I would water down my central dramatic question. But I don't want to give up this third character and his themes!

So I thought: subplot.

I'm focusing now on the "plot" in subplot. Rather than being a secondary consideration of the protagonist, the subplot will have its own sub-antagonist and sub-protagonist. There will be points of intersection where the plots complicate each other, and a catastrophic intersection (the death of the main-protag's father).

I think the play will look something like this:



Notice I'm thinking here of plot as generated by the push-pull of the protag/antag pair.

My attempt at sub-plot raises further questions for me. What's the difference between a plot/subplot structure and a multi-plot structure like Crash or Arcadia? What's the difference between plot/subplot and a structure where there are secondary protagonist concerns? For example, pick any action movie where the hero has to save the world and also is marriage is falling apart.

I think I'm going to re-read King Lear and look at that plot structure. How are other (living!) writers working on subplots?

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The Reveal

The playwright slowly pulled pack layers of craft to reveal...

What exactly is a "reveal?" I use the term all the time - but recently I realized that not everyone using the term means the same thing.

Yesterday, I participated in the Many Voices Project at Chicago Dramatists. During the feedback to the short play written by Tyla Abercrombie, an audience member said something to the effect of "And then we had the reveal that the woman had committed suicide..." I've been replaying that sentence over and over in my head. Because certainly we learned that the woman had committed suicide. But was it a reveal?

Note - the post show discussion at Many Voices Project raised some questions for me about the purpose of such discussions. Consider this an open call for people to hold forth on what post-show discussions should and should not be.

This isn't a critique of Tyla Abercrombie's piece. Rather, the audience member's comment inspired some thoughts on the concept of a "reveal." It also made me wonder if a low threshold for the concept of a reveal could explain why so many writers confuse the introduction of new information with dramatic action.

Tyla Abercrombie's piece was touching and funny. In the piece, two women are discussing the funeral of their friend - a funeral from which they have just returned. We learn much about the woman who passed - she had a fierce sense of humor, she was a lesbian, she was estranged from her family, and yes, that she killed herself. This information is doled out to us as these two friends laugh and grieve.

But to me, a reveal is much more than transmitting new information. A reveal is the appearance of information we have been hungering for. A reveal is, well, a revelation.

In other words, in order for a piece of new information to rise to the level of reveal it must be connected to the dramatic question of the piece. A reveal is closely linked to a perception shift - after the reveal, our understanding of the world of the play completely changes.

For example, in a murder mystery, the identity of the murderer is a reveal. If along the way, we learn that the detective's mother was also a murder victim, it might give us insight into his motives, but it is not a reveal.

Importantly, a reveal is not simply withheld information. We've all sat through scenes in which characters speak cryptically, avoiding directly naming the subject of their conversation. Often, when we finally learn the subject, the circumlocution is groan-inducing.

So a reveal is a piece of information that changes our perception of the world of the play, and answers a question the audience has been asking. A reveal demands action of the characters in the play. Anything else is just new information.

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Paralogue

I've discovered a new species of short play: the paralogue.

We recognize a short play that has a dialog structure. Two or more characters talking, each having roughly the same amount of "air time." And of course there is the monologue - be it direct address, poetic, or the interior mental landscape of the character.

But lately I've noticed more and more paralogues. A paralogue is a scene with two (or more) characters, in which one character overwhelmingly dominates the scene. A recent example is Stephen Cone's "We Came Here Because It's Beautiful" present at Collaboraction's Sketchbook.

In Chris Jones' review, he suggests that the pieces juxtaposes an "erotically forward old woman with a nervous new bride." I find that an interesting take: the piece was so dominated by the old woman that I'm not sure it rises to juxtaposition.

Don't get me wrong: I absolutely loved Cone's piece. I'm just wondering what's happening here structurally. In longer works, I tend to view the Character Interuptus as a cheat to disguise a monologue. Character A holds forth while Character Interuptus occasionally interjects to give the illusion of a conversation.

But somehow the same situation seems less artificial in a shorter format. In the paralogue, the domination of one character seems less a trick and more a function of the relationship. What's more, it seems a function of the dramatic structure of the piece. I just can't quite put my finger on what the mechanics are.

Perhaps one way to ask the question is this: in a paralogue, what is it that prevents us from simply cutting the other character and running the scene as a direct address monologue?

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Theatricality: A Definition

Theatricality is a term we playwrights throw around quite a bit. It seems to be a catch-all phrase for describing the degree of "theater-ness" a play or production has. There should be a more concrete definition of theatricality.

Like all good little theorists, I'll start by reaching back to Aristotle. In the Poetics, Aristotle defines drama as a species of imitation. There is a lot of argument about what exactly he meant by mimesis but for these purposes, I propose that imitation is the process of representing a reality in such a way that the audience can make the connection between the representation and the reality.

Support for this definition can be found in the Poetics: "First, the instinct of imitation is implanted in man from childhood… and no less universal is the pleasure felt in things imitated.… The cause of this again is, that to learn gives the liveliest pleasure... Thus the reason why men enjoy seeing a likeness is, that in contemplating it they find themselves learning or inferring, and saying perhaps, 'Ah, that is he.'"

So there is a distance between the representation and the thing represented. It is this distance that the audience crosses when they learn or infer the connection between representation and reality.

In American Realism, it appears as if the goal is to make the distance between the representation and the object of representation as small as possible. Certainly, mainstream television and film strive to minimize that distance. Even in fantasy and action films reviewers comment on how "real" the effects are.

Note: I am not one of those playwrights who look down their collective nose at television and film. If a television or film producer is reading this: please, back-up a dump truck of money to my door.

In theater - often due to lack of resources or the limitations of live performance - we can't always make things as "real" as American Realism might demand. Too often, we try to get as close as we can, and hope our audience will forgive crowbars that bend when you swing them, lakes represented by trap doors and mis-timed splashes of water, and other ridiculous semi-real attempts to make the impossible happen on stage.

On the other hand, there are productions that engage the physical limitations of the theater space, and implement creative solutions to represent the impossible on stage. In those productions, we start talking about theatricality.

If realism is an attempt to minimize the distance between reality and the represented, theatricality embraces that distance. Theatricality celebrates the distance between the represented and real with a tenuous bridge of creative solutions.

I'm not speaking here of something like the helicopter in Ms. Saigon. Yes, a creative engineering feat was leverage to get that helicopter on stage. But in that case, the creativity was focused on hiding the mechanics from the audience. In a theatrical solution, the mechanics are visible. In a theatrical solution, the visible mechanics help generate meaning in the play.

A recent example would be the House Theater's Production of The Sparrow. In order to represent Emily's trip back to town, two actors sat in chairs as other cast members walked slowly past them, bearing framed pictures of the countryside. As an audience member, I found great pleasure in making the connection between the moving landscape pictures and my own cross-country trips. The motif of framed portraits came up again and again, and the production was able to build a sense of community (and its associated loss) with the used of these carried pictures. In this way a theatrical solution to "how do we get a car on stage?" becomes a way to build meaning in the work.

When I discuss a show's theatricality, I'm speaking of bridging the distance between the represented and the real with creative solutions that 1) do not pretend the distance doesn't exist and 2) use that distance as on opportunity to build an additional layer of meaning into the show.

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