Chapter 5

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Chapter 5 Theatrical Writing Perspectives and
Forms

• If art reflects life it does so with special
  mirrors.
• Bertolt Brecht

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Chapter Summary

• Playwrights use a variety of dramatic forms to
  express their understanding of human experience.
• Tragedy and comedy are the oldest and most
  familiar forms, but there are many other ways to
  classify plays and to label the playwrights
  visionthe way he or she perceives life in
  theatrical terms.

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Dramas Perspectives

• Dramas forms fall into several categories
• Tragedy
• Comedy
• Tragicomedy
• Melodrama
• Farce
• Epic
• Absurd

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Dramas Perspectives

• Dramatic forms reflect ways of understanding
  human experience.
• Each form provides clues as to how the play
  should be understood.

5
Tragedy

• More than an unhappy ending
• Makes a statement about human frailty
• Well-known tragedies
• Oedipus the King, Sophocles
• Medea, Euripides
• Hamlet, Shakespeare
• Ghosts, Henrik Ibsen
• Death of A Salesman, Arthur Miller
• Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams

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Tragedy

• Tragic hero
• Chooses opposition rather than compromise
• Freely chooses his or her fate
• Inevitably experiences a fall (a transition from
  happiness to pain)
• Asserts will and intellect against imperfect
  world
• Tragic realization
• Usually takes two forms
• Despite suffering and calamity, order exists.
• In a random and indifferent universe, the heros
  struggle is admirable.

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Tragedy

• Aristotle on tragedy
• The Poetics (c. 335-323 BC)
• Tragedy an imitation of an action
• Tragic hero of good character (but not too good)
• Heros fall brought about by some flaw or error
• Inspires pity and fear, which leads to catharsis
  (purging of emotion)

8
Tragedy

• Euripides Medea
• Medea wants revenge on husband, Jason, who has
  left her and married another woman.
• She murders Jasons new wife and father-in-law.
• Wishing to completely ruin Jason, Medea murders
  their two sons and escapes to Athens.

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Tragedy

• Euripides Medea
• Depicts unreliable world in which nothing and no
  one may be counted upon
• . . . What we thought
• Is not confirmed and what we thought not God
• Contrives. And so it happens in this story.
• Euripides, Medea

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Comedy

• The comic playwright is interested in society
• Social values
• People as social beings
• How to live in society
• Deviation and comedy
• Unlike in tragedy, deviation from social
  expectations is scorned.
• Individual will is a threat to social order.
• Harmony is the central value.

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Comedy Differences between Comedy and Tragedy

• Tragedy
• Individual
• Death
• Error
• Suffering
• Pain
• Separation
• Inflexible
• Defeat

• Comedy
• Society
• Endurance
• Folly
• Joy
• Pleasure
• Union/Reunion
• Flexible
• Survival

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Comedy

• Comedic vision
• Sanity, reason, moderation
• Usually ends in a celebration of life and union
• Wedding
• Dance
• Banquet
• Shakespeare Alls well that ends well

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Comedy

• Molieres Tartuffe
• Disguised as a priest, Tartuffe ingratiates
  himself to the merchant Orgon and his mother, who
  take him in.
• All but Orgon and his mother recognize Tartuffe
  as a fake.
• Orgon offers Tartuffe his daughters hand in
  marriage.
• When Tartuffe attempts to seduce Elmire, Orgons
  wife, she vows to expose his depravity.
• By the time he is found out, Tartuffe throws the
  family out of the house and attempts to have them
  arrested.
• Tartuffe is arrested instead and taken to prison.

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Comedy

• Molieres Tartuffe
• Play ends with resolution of family conflicts.
• The society at the end of the play is freer and
  less rigid than at the beginning.
• Comic vision
• Human error stems from folly.
• Conflict will end in resolution, for the better
  of society.

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Tragicomedy

• Traditional tragicomedy
• Mixed dramatic form
• Serious or potentially tragic work that ends well
• Shakespeares tragicomedies
• Alls Well that Ends Well
• Winters Tale
• Modern tragicomedy
• Play with mixed moods (Chekhovs quiet
  desperation)
• Endings indeterminateneither tragic nor comic

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Tragicomedy

• Examples of modern tragicomedy
• Three Sisters, Anton Chekhov
• Characters endure unfulfilling marriage, work,
  family.
• Only option is survival Weve got to live.

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Tragicomedy

• Examples of modern tragicomedy
• Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett
• Characters wait for someone who never arrives.
• Humor and energy mixed with anguish and despair.
• Characters laugh at their plight without being
  able to change it.

(c) Robbie Jack/ CORBIS
Waiting for Godot
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Tragicomedy

• Modern American tragicomedy
• Depicts characters who are amusing and serious
  without being foolish or superficial
• Angels in America, Tony Kushner
• Transcends indeterminate endings typical of
  modern tragicomedy
• Replaces despair with idea of social change

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Melodrama

• Combination of music and drama in which dialogue
  is delivered over musical background
• Pygmalion, Jean-Jacques Rousseau
• 19th century melodrama
• Serious play
• Usually about a character who faces death or ruin
  at the hands of a villain
• Uncle Toms Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe

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Melodrama

• Melodramatic vision
• Struggles are external, not internal.
• Hero triumphs when pushed to the extreme.
• Endings clear-cut, unambiguous.
• Melodrama represents the way we see the world
  most of the time
• Failures attributed to external factors, faults
  of others

21
Farce

• Depends on skillfully exploited situation, not
  character development (comedy of situation)
• Presents life as mechanical, aggressive, and
  coincidental
• Characters
• Two-dimensional broad outlines
• Reminder that fools and impostors exist alongside
  the noble and virtuous
• Extreme exaggeration of parody (Eugene Ionesco)

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Farce

• The psychology of farce (Eric Bentley)
• Allows us to experience social taboos without
  consequence
• Violence without harm
• Adultery without consequence
• Brutality without reprisal
• Aggression without risk
• Appeals to audiences secret thoughts and
  innermost fantasies
• Way for audience to indulge antisocial fantasies

23
Farce

• Eugene Ionescos The Chairs
• An elderly man and woman frantically fill empty
  stage with chairs.
• They are preparing for the arrival of an Orator.
• When the Orator arrives, the couple hurl
  themselves out of windows to their deaths.
• Only then does the audience learn that the Orator
  is mute.
• Interpretation
• Ionescos way of portraying world without meaning

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Bertolt Brecht Epic Theatre

• Reaction against theatrical Western traditions
• Wanted to represent historical process in
  theatre
• Thought of stage as platform for debate of
  political and social issues
• Rejected well made play
• Epic theatre episodic and linear (like history)
• Characters
• Represent individuals and collective beings
• Specific and allegorical at the same time
• Social function key to identity, characterization

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Bertolt Brecht Epic Theatre

• Epic theatre as eyewitness account
• Actors should differentiate from characters.
• Actor/eyewitness never becomes character/victim.
• Actors are free to comment on characters.
• The alienation effect
• Jarring audience out of sympathetic feelings for
  characters
• Encourages audience to be objective, to think

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Absurdist Theatre

• Presents irrational situations without comment or
  judgment
• Characteristics
• Unrecognizable plots
• Mechanical characters
• Incoherent dialogue
• Dream/nightmare scenarios
• Gives audience a sense of being in an absurd
  universe

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Absurdist Theatre

• Eugene Ionesco
• The absurd is anything without a goal . . .
  When man is cut off from his religious or
  metaphysical roots, he is lost all his struggles
  become senseless futile and oppressive.
• Meaning simply what happens onstage
• Plays
• The Chairs
• The Bald Soprano
• The Rhinoceros

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Absurdist Theatre

• The American absurd
• Edward Albees The Zoo Story
• Introduced the absurd to American playwriting

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Core Concepts

• Dramatic forms reflect the playwrights vision
  and sentiments about the world.
• Genres are theatrical ways of labeling a
  playwrights view of the worlds substance,
  shape, and meaning.