Chapter 7

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Chapter 7 Dramas Conventions

• All that lives by the fact of living, has a form,
  and by the same token must dieexcept the work of
  art which lives forever in so far as it is form.
• Luigi Pirandello

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Chapter Summary

• Playwrights have common strategies for developing
  plot, character, and action, for manipulating
  time, and for ending plays.
• Taken all together, dramatic conventions are
  agreed-upon ways to communicate information and
  experience to audiences.

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Writing Strategies Stage Directions

• Instructions for director, designers, and
  performers
• Includes facts about
• Setting
• Props and scenery
• Music cues
• General impressions of stage environment
• Usually developed by playwright

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Writing Strategies Stage Directions

• Tennessee Williamss stage directions for A
  Streetcar Named Desire (excerpt)
• The exterior of a two-story corner building on a
  street in New Orleans which is named Elysian
  Fields and runs between the L N tracks and the
  river. The section is poor but, unlike
  corresponding sections in other American cities,
  it has a raffish charm. The houses are mostly
  white frame, weathered grey, with rickety outside
  stairs and galleries and quaintly ornamented
  gables. . . .

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Writing Strategies Stage Directions

• Shakespeare
• Information about time, place, mood presented
  mostly through dialogue (weather lines)
• First 11 lines of Hamlet
• Place (castle battlements)
• Time (Tis now struck twelve)
• Weather (Tis bitter cold)
• Mood (I am sick at heart)
• Action (Not a mouse stirring)

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Writing Strategies Exposition

• Information about whats going on, what has
  happened (antecedent action), and characters
• Classical exposition
• Usually conveyed through dialogue
• Often presented in formal prologue to action of
  play
• Modern exposition
• Usually conveyed through dialogue
• Less formal information presented in casual
  exchanges between characters

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Writing Strategies Point of Attack

• Refers to moment early in the play when story
  begins
• Macbeth
• Scene in which King Duncan learns of victory in
  battle
• Point of departure for action of play

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Writing Strategies Plot

• Complication
• Unexpected development that increases emotional
  intensity
• Usually toward middle of play
• Crisis
• Turning point of action
• Event that makes resolution of the plays conflict
  inevitable
• Climax
• Moment at which conflict is resolved
• Point of highest emotional intensity

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Writing Strategies Plot

• Resolutions and endings
• Restores balance to world of play
• Satisfies audiences expectations
• In absurdist plays, represented in completion of
  cycle

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Writing Strategies Plot

• Simultaneous plots
• Two stories told concurrently
• Used to represent lifes variety and complexity
• Secondary plot (subplot) resolved before main
  plot

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Conventions of Time Dramatic vs. Actual Time

• Audiences experience time on different levels
• Actual duration of play
• Dramatic time (time span covered in world of
  play)
• In play, time may be expanded or compressed
• Time may jump forward or backward by months,
  years.
• Chronological sequence may be disrupted.
• Unity of time (Aristotle)
• Actions of play should unfold in real time.

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Conventions of Metaphor Figurative Language

• Metaphor
• Equating two unlike objects
• The moon is a balloon.
• Simile
• Comparing two unlike objects using like, as,
  than, or similar to
• The moon is like a balloon.

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The Play-within-the-Play

• A favorite technique of Elizabethan playwrights
• Examples
• Shakespeares Hamlet
• Hamlet stages a performance of The Murder of
  Gonzago to assess Claudius guilt.
• Brechts The Caucasian Chalk Circle
• Narrator links inner play (chalk-circle test)
  with outer play (dispute over land).

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The Play-within-the-Play

• Modern applications
• Used to highlight lifes theatricality
• Stage a metaphor for self-imposed illusions
• Example
• Peter Weisss Marat/Sade
• Depicts production of a play by inmates of insane
  asylum

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Core Concepts

• Dramas conventions are a set of time-honored
  tools for communicating with audiences.
• There are conventions for providing background
  information, manipulating time, ending plays, and
  telling more than one story at a time.
• The insertion of an inner play within the larger
  one was a favorite device of Elizabethan writers
  to enliven the productions theatrics.
• In the modern theatre, the play-within-the-play
  is a means of demonstrating lifes theatricality.