Download Chapter 6 - School of the Performing Arts

Chapter 6 – Structures of Seeing
The play is a quest for a
solution.
—David Mamet
Chapter Summary
• To read the printed page of a script is to experience
much of the playwright’s art.
• Words on a page have the potential for becoming human
speech, movement, and sound.
• Playwrights use many kinds of play structures and
dramatic conventions to aid in the telling of their stories.
Drama
• Drama from Greek verb dran (“to do” or “to act”)
• A pattern of words and actions with potential for “doing”
or “becoming” living words or actions
• Pattern of words = dialogue
Drama as Imitation
• Origins of drama lie in childhood play, imitation.
• Why do we imitate?
– To process ambivalent feelings about the world
– To master the unknown
• Drama is imitation:
– Allows us to confront and transform our fears of the
strange
Drama as Imitation
• Similarities between drama and play:
– Begin with imagined scenario
– Entertain
– Contribute to a sense of well-being
– Fixed rules
– Imitate human events
Drama’s Elements
• Plot:
– Sequence of events with a beginning, middle, end
• Character:
– Physiological and psychological makeup of persons in
the play
• Language:
– Spoken word, symbols, and signs
• Meaning:
– Underlying idea (theme, message)
• Spectacle:
– Music, lighting, scenery, properties, etc.
Drama’s Elements
• Time:
– Symbolic time (as opposed to duration of
performance)
• Action:
– Not the same as plot
– Source of play’s inner meaning
– Spiritual and psychological forces that drive the play
Play Structures
• Western drama based on central conflict
• Usually follows progression:
– Exposition
– Confrontation
– Crisis
– Climax
– Resolution
• Three primary ways of organizing progression:
– Climactic
– Episodic
– Situational
Play Structures
• Climactic structure:
– Cause-to-effect arrangement of incidents
– Characters move quickly toward climax
– Ends in climax and quick resolution
• Episodic structure:
– Traces character’s journey to final action
– Looser: doesn’t force characters into climax
– Ends with understanding of what journey means
• Situational structure:
– Situation, not plot, shapes the play
– Situation has own inner rhythms
Play Structures
• Situational structure of Ionesco’s The Bald Soprano:
Play Structures
• Samuel Beckett’s monodrama:
– Old dramatic techniques inadequate for expressing
psychic distress
– Monodrama:
• Stream-of-consciousness monologue
• Presents conscious and unconscious thought
processes of speaker
Recent Structures
• Solo performances:
– Long history:
• Shamans
• Medieval mimes, minstrels, jugglers
– Modern incarnations:
• Theatrical biographies
• Experimental theatre (“Off Off Broadway”):
– Low budget
– Exploring moral and social fringes
Recent Structures
• Performance art:
– Single performer “doing” and “redoing” in presence of
spectators
– Solo texts:
• Improvisatory
• Reduced emphasis on literary forms and language
• Nontraditional narrative, nonlinear storytelling
• Lack of unity and coherence
• Confrontational attitudes
• Presentational performance styles
– Material based on autobiography, personal response
to political, social, cultural environment
Recent Structures
• Anna Deavere Smith’s Fires in the Mirror:
– Biography of people involved in 1991 Crown Heights
riots in Brooklyn
– Plays each role herself—brings “voices of unheard”
onstage
– Shows how each character’s perspective reflects his
or her background
I try to represent multiple points of view and to capture the
personality of a place by showing its individuals.
—Anna Deavere Smith
Recent Structures
• Postmodernism in theatre:
– Reaction against modernism
– “Doubling”:
• Placing contradictory experiences within the same
frame of reference
• Celebrates fragmentation of experience
– Explores randomness, subjectivity of “truth”
– “Assemblages” and “collages”:
• Compilations of diverse fragments of text, image,
impressions, etc.
Recent Structures
• Theatre of Images:
– Term coined by Bonnie Marranca, 1976
– Describes postmodern work of Phillip Glass, Robert
Wilson, Lee Brener:
• Revolted against verbal texts (scripts)
• Created events dominated by visual and aural
images
• Abandoned cause-and-effect relationships, plot,
and character
• Actors juxtaposed against projected images, atonal
sounds, sculptured images, etc.
Recent Structures
• Theatre of Images:
– Robert Wilson’s A Letter for Queen Victoria:
• Elements of production “collage”:
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
Bits of overheard conversations
Clichés
Newspaper blurbs
Colors
Spot announcements
Television images
Film clips
– Communicates theme of imperialism indirectly:
• Pilots talk over sounds of gunfire and bomb blasts.
Core Concepts
• Drama is a special way of imitating human behavior and
events.
• Depending on the perspective of the playwright, imitation
can take several forms.
• For 2,500 years, Western playwrights have used
climactic, episodic, and situational play structures.
• Recently, playwrights have moved away from
conventions such as cause-and-effect relationships and
verbal texts.
• Playwrights are using new aural and visual technologies
to create postmodern “texts.”