Chapter+2

In the 1955 production of //Saint Joan// at the St. Martin’s Theatre in London, the actor playing the Bishop of Beauvais was also obliged to apologize to this audience. In place of the lines as Shaw had written them, ‘You are alone, utterly alone...’, he rambled on uncertainly, ‘You are on your own, you know, that’s what you are. You’re on your own...’ until he had to admit defeat. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said to the audience, ‘but this is an extremely difficult play to learn, so you’ll have to bear with us.’ Then the fourteenth- century bishop departed into the prompt corner and emerged with the script and a pair of twentieth-century hornrims. Quoted by Grandreth, Gayles in //Great Theatrical Disasters//. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1982, p. 29.

George S. Kaufman once sent a telegram to one of his leading men in the middle of a performance. When William Gaxton returned to his dressing-room during intermission of Kaufman’s Of Thee I Sing, he found the telegram from the playwright. I read: “Am watching your performance from the rear of the house. Wish you were here.” Quoted by Peter Hay in //Theatrical Anecdotes//. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987, p. 170. __CHAPTER II__ __Playwriting__

__Characteristics of Composition__

A play is a story written to be performed on the stage by actors. No other form of literature needs other individuals beside readers to realize its full potential. So until spoken a play is merely a set of words on paper. You might think of plays as similar to the lyrics of a song which require music to bring them to life.

The plays of the Roman playwright Seneca are a possible exception. Seneca wrote “closet dramas,” that is, his plays were originally intended to be read not performed on the stage. It is a rare playwright today who does not want her/his plays to be performed, however.

Once a play moves to the stage it takes on a special and unique characteristic different from what it was on the page. It must rely on the particular talents and abilities of the actors. And, as we know, each performer is unique and may shape the words of the playwright in different and often penetrating (or distorting!) ways.

Another unusual feature of the live presentation of a play is its temporality. As you are aware, spoken words are temporal. Actions begun and competed are also temporal. The written play once staged exists in this special temporal world, clock time, if you will. For those who hear a play read or staged it starts at a particular moment in time, say 8 P.M., and ends at another, say 10 P.M. Shakespeare describes it as the “Two hour traffic on the stage.” Or put in contemporary jargon, once the performance has ended it’s history.

The story around which the play is built is a set of interconnected incidents that have a beginning, middle, and end. It is possible for the play to focus on one aspect of a story and not the whole of it. For this reason, the story should be viewed as a larger unit than the plot. For example, the story of a famous athlete who kills his lover and is brought to trial and eventually acquitted is elaborate. A playwright may choose to concentrate on only one particular aspect of that story, say the athlete’s childhood, rather than on all the incidents of the story when writing a play.

A play may also be referred to as a script, especially when it is in manuscript form. But even after the play has been published it may still be called a script by the actors and the director. It is also known as a text because it contains the written or printed words and stage directions of a play.

A great deal may be learned from the titles of plays. The title usually gives the reader or audience clues about the characters and the dramatic action. Titles such as //The American Dream//, //A Midsummer Night’s Dream// , and //The Matchmaker// were carefully chosen by their authors to express something essential about the play and its meaning.

At the heart of most plays is the plot. The plot is really just a sequence of events most of them significant which have a beginning, middle, and end. The plot line is the particular sequence of actions from one point to another from beginning to end.

Normally, plays are divided into acts and scenes implying that each unit has some degree of autonomy. Acts are ordinarily larger units than scenes. Playwrights usually follow the conventions of playwright that was prevalent at the time they were composing. Shakespeare, like other playwrights of his day, uses a five act structure divided into multiple scenes. Ibsen, writing several centuries later, divided his works into acts but not into scenes, a practice which was common among his contemporaries.

For purposes of analysis people in the theatre tend to divide plays into even smaller units, the most common of which is the French Scene. A French Scene occurs whenever a new character enters or exits the stage. Each time that happens a new French Scene occurs. Although the idea of identifying scenes this way was the produce of French neo-classical playwriting of the late seventeenth century identifying French Scenes in a play is still a convenient and useful means of analyzing and understanding the actions and events which happen in a play.

Directors and actors today may divide the French Scenes into even smaller units called beats. A beat begins when a new factor is introduced. Normally that factors is introduced into a conversation between characters. Many such small beats are found in all plays.

When composing a play, a playwright may choose to develop a scenario before beginning to write. A scenario is really just an outline of the events that are envisioned to take place. Scenarios were made popular by the commedia dell’arte actors in mid-sixteenth century Italy. Instead of developing play scripts the players confined themselves to scenarios centering around different humorous domestic situations to maximum the opportunity for stock characters to freely improvise on the basic situations in which their characters found themselves. In this way, actors could take advantage of their knowledge of a particular audience they were playing before introducing local references and humor in a way they could not easily do if they were confined to a scripted play.

At the heart of the plot of all plays is the dramatic action. Aristotle in his Poetics identified dramatic action as the first element among six which makes up a play. The others are character, thought, diction, music, and spectacle. Dramatic action takes the characters through a series of circumstances that help to reveal who they are, what they mean to each other, and eventually lead us to the conclusion of the events surrounding them

Actions in which characters struggle to obtain a goal often make for gripping drama or raucous comedy. Conflict is usually the chief ingredient in most dramatic action, conflict either within an individual, between individuals, between groups of individuals, or between individuals and forces outside their control. Something (goal) is wanted (motivation), something stands in the way of that want (obstacle), resulting in conflict.

An action should be plausible if it is to be believed. As an audience we must be persuaded to buy into the dramatic action. It should not stretch credibility beyond reasonable levels. When we participate in the theatre event we normally are willing to suspend our disbelief and momentarily to be absorbed by the events that are occurring on stage.

Fortunately, not all plays follow a set structure or formula. But many share common similarities. At some point usually but not always early in most plays we come to learn important information about the characters and the situations that surround them. Often the material has to do with the past or past events that have a bearing on the dramatic action which is unfolding. This is called exposition.

Closely connected with this idea is the idea of discovery which reveals information about a character. Discovery occurs when a character learns something of vital importance about himself or herself, something that will have a direct bearing on her/his actions. Hence, some plays have discovery scenes.

There is usually a moment in a play when some act upsets the equilibrium that exists when the play first began and serves to move the plot forward. That moment is called an inciting action. It is also called point of attack.

As the play progresses there is usually a complication that develops which intensifies the dramatic conflict or moves it in a new direction. Plots are normally made up of a number of such complications which ultimately lead to a resolution of the conflicts.

Dramatic action also has elements of foreshadowing throughout which hint at events which are to come later as the play develops.

Toward the end of most plays are moments when tensions are at their highest and when the plot or theme is finally revealed and resolved. One way to bring this about is through a deus ex machina which is through some mechanical device which is unmotivated. The term comes from the Greek times when a mechane was used to lower a god to the stage interceding in the events and putting matters to right.

Plays function on the basis of relationships between characters. Aristotle in his Poetics named character the second important element of the six parts of a play. Plays usually have more than one character as part of the plot. When the characters speak to each other they primarily communicate in dialogue.

Like the titles of plays, the names of characters are usually carefully chosen by playwrights and generally fit their intentions to communicate specific ideas about the play and its meaning.

Although on the surface the dialogue may seem straightforward it may have many layers of meaning underneath. This is know as subtext.

At times a character has a monologue, that is an extended speech which is overheard by another character or characters.

When a character is alone on stage he or she may deliver a speech, usually extended, revealing internal thoughts or feelings which help us to judge them and their actions. This technique is called a soliloquy. It is sometimes used as an Epilogue, Prologue, or Curtain Speech.

If there were no obstacle beyond which a character or characters had to overcome, the dramatic action would not proceed.

Dramatic irony may occurs when a character fails to recognize a truth which is evident to the audience but not to him or her. His or her lack of awareness of a hidden truth in what is said or done constitutes dramatic irony. It may also be a condition that is the reverse of what was expected, or a statement whose intended application is different from its literal or intended sense, as when Oedipus says he will seek the killer of King Laius as though Laius had been his father -- which he was.

__Process of Development__

Reading:

Perhaps the first reading that a play should have is by the playwright in the quiet of his or her room. Some writers like to compose while standing and even read sections of their work pacing about in a room they find comfortable for such endeavors. It is here that they may make necessary adjustments. But clearly this does not give the playwright an idea of how the work will sound when spoken by others.

Without access to trained actors, a playwright may find it difficult to hear his work read. Whether the reading is with trained actors as a cold reading or by a group of friends, the purpose is still the same. The playwright, pencil and paper in hand, is the principal member of the audience listening for how the work flows and ready to take notes that will help him/her make improvements. It is necessary to regard this reading as a way to better understand what might be done to improve the work. It is not designed primarily to solicit praise or harsh criticism, even though it may deserve one or the other.

All the participants should be willing to contribute to the process as well. If there is an invited audience to listen, they too may be asked to offer suggestions for identifying the strengths and weaknesses they sense at this stage in the work.

Hearing a reading by others may be difficult for the writer since it is a part of him or her, something in which great time may have been invested. Having a facilitator moderate the discussion may be helpful in making sure the intentions of the reading are clearly in focus.

Workshop Production:

If the playwright is lucky, the work will enter a workshop setting. Workshops are set periods of time, sometimes as long as a week, in which directors, actors, and playwrights participate with the aim of carefully going through the play. During this time, the playwright hears his work read and discussed by people who may be interested in seeing the work develop into a fully staged production but who believe that it is not yet ready to be seen an audience.

Participants are there to see that the playwright has a voice in making adjustments, rewriting, focusing, and clarifying his/her intentions. Events such as these are as useful and pleasant as the individuals involved.

At this point there is no attempt to form a judgment about the success or failure of the work, only a desire to visit the script with the playwright and interested members of the theatre community.

Staged Reading:

A staged reading is a point during which the actors, scripts in hand, work through blocking with the help of a director using simple furniture or black cubes to represent chairs, sofas, etc.

This process ordinarily takes as few as 12 hours and no more than 40. By putting the play “on its feel,” as it were, the play begins to take on the dimension for which it was intended. Here too the playwright is expected to work closely with the actors and directors to shape, rewrite, even trim the work.

Usually the staged reading culminates with an invited audience who assembles to see the work and comment on it.

Fully Staged Production:

Eventually, if the playwright is lucky, the play will receive a fully staged production. This means that like other works, it will receive a performance with scenery, costumes, lights, and all the necessary production values for which it was intended.

Productions are usually expensive propositions, no matter what the theatre company that elects to do them and thus many plays go through readings, workshops, staged readings but are never produced on the stage.

__Knowledge of the Theatre__

Playwrights write for the theatre. Quite obviously the more they know about the theatre the better. At the very minimum they should have a working knowledge of the language of the stage space, such as upstage, downstage, down right, down left, and so forth. They will find it useful to have a reading knowledge of plays of many different periods and styles. For example, they should know the work of William Shakespeare for certain and have reading knowledge of Moliere, Sophocles, Ibsen, Brecht, among many, many more. By developing a knowledge of the work of past playwrights they will most certainly begin to gravitate to the writers they know and like best, including contemporary authors whose work they may find challenging. It also helps to have some understanding of the traditions of the theatre, including its history and the famous actors, directors, and designers who have peopled it.

Nothing can take the place of going to the theatre and experiencing live performances for themselves. Simply relying on video or film examples does not help a playwright to understand the unique chemistry that exists between actors and audience.

__Careers in Playwriting__

Like so many other professions, playwriting has its drawbacks. Among the thousands of playwrights that are currently writing, relatively few of them enjoy prominence and financial success. Unless and until their work is recognized and sought after they will more than likely need to supplement their income with other jobs. The sources of subsidiary income are too numerous to mention but some playwrights are teachers, freelance writers, editors, bartenders, temporary secretaries, and so forth.

To achieve success it pays to do research into the opportunities that present themselves to playwrights. Two books may be helpful–//The Playwright’s Companion: A Submission Guide to Theatres and Contests in the U.S.A.// and //Dramatists Sourcebook//, both of which may be found in the public library. Each contains useful information concerning materials discussed below.

Contests:

There are many play competitions around the country every year. Like the lottery they do not necessarily pay dividends on their investment. But invest a playwright must, if he/she wants to succeed in this game. When applying for any competition, it is always wise to following the specific application guidelines, just as those who apply for grants are strongly advised to do.

Theatre Companies Seeking New Works:

A number of theatre companies, many of them important venues for new work are constantly seeking new plays. As with competitions, the specific application procedures should be scrupulously followed. Among the more important regional theatres are Actors’ Theatre of Lousiville, Ensemble Studio Theatre of New York, the Goodman Theatre of Chicago, the Hartford Stage Company, The Long Wharf Theatre of New Haven, and The Mark Taper Forum of Los Angeles. Among Off-Off-Broadway companies seeking new works are Intar Hispanic-American theatre, La Mama, Negro Ensemble Company, New Federal Theatre, Pan Asian Repertory Theatre, The Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre Company, among several others in Manhattan. Off-Broadway venues seeking new plays are The American Place Theatre, Circle Repertory Company, Manhattan Theater Club, Playwrights Horizon, among a few others. Commercial Producers usually read scripts submitted by literary agents and rarely openly solicit scripts from playwrights.

Copyrighting the Work:

It is always a good idea for playwrights to copyright a work before they send it out. It is also wise to become a member of The Dramatists Guild of New York, a national organization which provides a wide range of services to members, including comprehensive contracts and royalty collection services. There are also other organizations that are helpful to playwrights–Theatre Communication Group (TCG) and various regional PEN American Centers.

Literary Agents:

Like other members of the entertainment profession, playwrights may want to seek the services of a literary agent. Agents are paid by you through fees or percentages of your royalties or contract to represent your work to producers and theatre companies. Because agents often have inside contacts that trust their judgment, at some point in time a playwright may need to seek their assistance in marketing their work to best advantage. The Association of Authors’ Representatives in New York publishes useful advice to writers seeking agents. In the absence of an agent, playwrights depend on the services of the U.S. Post Office and other mail services.

Grants:

Grants are also available for writers, sometimes relatively handsome amounts, to buy them time to write. The National Endowment of the Arts and many state arts endowments may provide funds for playwrights seeking time to write. Consult the internet or the local library for information about when and how to apply.

__Oleanna; Example of a Play in Production__

//Oleanna// by David Mamet opened in New York October 25, 1992. After tryouts out of town, it was produced at the Orpheum a proscenium house located at 126 Second Avenue at 8th Street in the East Village of Manhattan. The Orpheum was once part of the Yiddish theater strip which eventually became a movie and variety house.

The play was directed by Mr. Mamet. It has three short acts.

Mr. John Lahr reviewed the production in //The New Yorker//. Nov. 16, 1992 in an article entitled, “Dogma Days.” It is reprinted here in part.

Mamet likes to jump the audience into the middle of a dramatic situation, and let it piece together the jigsaw of the story from the tantalizing chunks of speech his characters scatter around the stage. Here we encounter the professor on the phone, trying to close on the new house that is the first fruit of his tenure (newly granted but not yet confirmed). Across the stage, Carol, turned away from him, sits morosely on a bench. John is all orders and authority; Carol is subservience in a schmatte. Carol has arrived for an unscheduled appointment, and her professor is obviously in a rush. “Words are acts,” Mamet has written, and when John and Carol finally talk to each other the authority both of John’s position and of his knowledge makes the gap between them almost unbridgeable. John brusquely cuts through Carol’s tentative opening question. “Let’s take the mysticism out of it,” he says, sternly trying to teach Carol how to negotiate and to think like an adult. The line haunts the evening. Mystification of power is precisely the point on which John will be shafted. Carol has no apparent powers of analysis–something John demonstrates by reading a snatch of her failing essay. “‘I think that the ideas contained in this work express the author’s feelings in a way that he intended, based on his results,’” he says, and breaks off in understandable professorial frustration. “What can that mean?” Carol asks the same question, not just about his lectures but about his language. Carol continually interrupts the discourse for definitions of John’s educated vocabulary. Words like “predilections,” “paradigm,” “transpire” throw her. She demands meaning but hasn’t the language to define her feelings to herself or to the world. Her adamant dimness is rightly interpreted by John as anger. In their stutter-speech, which Mamet orchestrates with overlapping rhythms, interjected phrases, emotional retreats, and attempted advances, the drama of their missed communication is made transparent and startling. No American playwright is more expert than Mamet at externalizing the sludge of consciousness and dramatizing both the meaning and the music in our stammerings:

Carol: I’m just: I sit in class I ...I take notes... John (simultaneously with “notes”): Yes, I understand. What I am trying to //tell// you is that some, some basic...  Carol:...I...  John:...one moment: some basic missed communi...  Carol: No, no, no. I’m doing what I’m told. It’s //difficult// for me. It’s //difficult// ...  John:...but...  Carol: I don’t...lots of the //language// ...   John:...please...  Carol: The //language//, the “things” that you say...   John: I’m sorry. No. I don’t think that that’s true. Carol: It //is// true. I...  John: I think...  Carol: It //is// true.

By making Carol’s situation so immediately poignant, Mamet sets a cunning trap for the sympathies of the audience. “//Teach// me. //Teach// me,” she pleads, with that combination of fierce vacancy and ambition which distinguishes the American undergraduate. “I’m not your //father// ,” says John, who is nonetheless put in a parental role by her show of powerlessness. Carol literally calls out John’s power. She has no command of language, no knowledge, no psychological understanding. But she has the pedigree of the underprivileged:

Carol: It //is// true. I have problems...  John:...every...  Carol:...I come from a different //social// ...   John:...ev...  Carol: a different economic...  John:...Look: Carol: No. I: when I //came// to this school: John: Yes. quite...(Pause) Carol...does that mean nothing...?

The issue of class does mean something to John. From their different positions in the pecking order, he has arrived at the secure place Carol wants a university education to get her to. After twenty years on the tenure track, John is now set to move into the upper middle class and to shift his son from public to private school. He interrupts their talk to make a note to himself about the school tax. “Is it a law that I have to improve the city schools at the expense of my own interest?” says John, whose liberality is confined to the classroom, and doesn’t extend to society. “Is this not simply ‘The White Man’s Burden?’” John recognizes in Carol not only the same class struggle he underwent but the same educational struggle. His career in academe and his iconoclastic views on education are his revenge on early learning difficulties, which he spells out to Carol to assuage her panic. He immediately names her feeling of humiliation, and later shows her the dynamic of her terror, saying, “Why was I born to be the laughingstock of a world in which everyone is better than I? In which I am entitled to nothing. Where I can not learn.” He is pedantic but decent. “Men are the puppy dogs of the universe,” Mamet wrote in his essay collection, “Some Freaks.” And so John seems. He takes Carol’s failure as his own, and in a rush of pedagogic vainglory he throws away the offending essay, takes up her educational challenge, and gives her a comradely hug. John becomes a latter-day Professor Higgins, offering to recap the course for her in private tutorials, and easing her anxiety about grades by promising her an A. When Carol asks why he’s doing this for her, he replies, “I like you.”

John, like Mamet, is a self-styled provocateur; he holds to the antique notion that education should encourage thought, and argues that the job of a teacher is to provoke. “To make me mad is your job?” says his incredulous, pragmatic pupil. John is a bit of a wag. he swaggers in speech, and the idioms that Carol finds impenetrable are metaphoric turns of phrase that intelligently tease received opinion about higher education. He talks of college as “warehousing of the young,” as something that prolongs adolescence; refers to tests as “hazing”’ and, like the American sociologist Thorstein Veblen, whose argument about higher learning Mamet cunningly glosses, characterizes university education as a “ritual” of “something-other-than-useful”–what Veblen called “a by-product of the priestly vicarious leisure class.” Carol is a zealot who, having got educational religion, can’t comprehend backsliders. As the audience soon discovers, John’s skepticism about education marks him as a heretic.

When John and Carol square off in Act II, John is no longer the master, although at first he fondly thinks he is. His power and his blocking have changed. he sits face to face with Carol, who is now dressed in greens and blacks that hint at the paramilitary, and tries to shortcut procedure by reasoning her out of her accusations of sexism, racism, and elitism before the Tenure Committee reconvenes, by which time he will have lost his new house and his deposit. “You think, you think you can deny that these things happened; or, if they //did//, if they //did// , that they meant what you //said// they meant,” Carol says. Every gesture in Act I, every exchange, every idea has been taken out of context and turned into an indictment. “What give you the //right// ,” she says, in higher dudgeon, “to speak to a woman in your private, yes. Yes. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. You feel yourself empowered....To //strut// .. To //posture// ....And //confess// to a taste to play the //Patriarch// in your class. To grant //this//. To deny //that//. To embrace–your students.” Mamet’s storytelling that the audience receives each willful misinterpretation like a body blow, audibly catching its breath at Carol’s arguments. Carol, who lacked words before, has got educated in a hurry by what she refers to as her Group, and she speaks now with the righteous fervor of a woman whose day has come. This transition is jarring but intentional. She has acquired a new voice and a new vocabulary, whose authority precludes ambiguity. She adopts political correctness as an intellectual carapace that substitutes dogma for thought, mission for mastery. Naming is claiming, and since Carol won’t work to master a world she can’t comprehend, she changes the frame of reference to a world she can. She advocates a kind of linguistic affirmative action, forcing John to define “paradigm,” for example. “It’s a model,” he says. Carol counters, sharpish, “Then why can’t you use that word?” And later, when she requires a simpler definition for the word “transpire,” she rounds on John with the full malice of her envy, offering “happen” as an alternative. “Then //say// it. for Christ’s sake. Who the //hell// do you think that you are? You want a post. you want unlimited power. To do and to say what you want. As it pleases you–Testing, Questioning, Flirting...” This policing of language leads inevitably to a policing of the curriculum. Carol holds out the possibility of reprieve from the Tenure Committee if he’ll agree to a new reading list, from which his book, among many, has been banned. “If you can choose them, others can,” Carol tells him. “What are you, God?” Here, in a series of exchanges, Mamet exposes the central paradox of political correctness, which demand diversity in everything but thought.

Carol remains staunch. She is the embodiment of Mamet’s mischievous assertion that “women don’t give a tinker’s damn about being well-liked, which means they don’t know how to compromise.” Carol’s rigidity is a sign of her insecurity. Her ruthless orthodoxy is skillfully shown as her means of controlling her enormous anxiety of ignorance.

__Views of a Practitioner__

Thornton Wilder (1897–1975) is among the best known and most respected playwrights of the USA. He was also an accomplished novelist, as well as a playwright. He spent some of his early years with his parents in China. He attended Oberlin College and received his BA degree from Yale University in 1920. He took an MA in French Literature from Princeton. In 1965 he received the first National Medal for Literature at a special White House ceremony. Among his plays are //Our Town//, written in 1938. //Our Town// expresses Wilder’s belief in the eternal value and joy of every day living despite intimations of hypocrisy and strife. The play received the Pulitzer Prize. //The Skin of Our Teeth// came out in 1942. It was inspired by James Joyce’s //Finnegans Wake//. His play //The Matchmaker// was published in 1954 and is discussed in Chapter IV.

Below is an essay outlining his views on playwrighting entitled, “Some Thoughts on Playwriting.” The essay appears in //The Intent of the Artist//, edited by Augusto Centeno. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1941, pp. 83-98.

Four fundamental conditions of the drama separate it from the other arts. Each of these conditions has its advantages and disadvantages, each requires a particular aptitude from the dramatist, and from each there are a number of instructive consequences to be derived. These conditions are: 1. The theatre is an art which reposes upon the work of many collaborators; 2. It is addressed to the group-mind; 3. It is based upon a pretense and its very nature calls out a multiplication of pretenses; 4. Its action takes place in a perpetual present time.

I. The Theatre is an Art Which Reposes Upon the Work of Many Collaborators

We have been accustomed to think that a work of art is by definition the product of one governing selecting will.

A landscape by Cezanne consists of thousands of brushstroke each commanded by one mind. //Paradise Lost// and //Pride and Prejudice//, even in cheap frayed copies, bear the immediate and exclusive message of one intelligence.

It is true that in musical performance we meet with intervening executants, but the elements of interventions is slight compared to that which takes place in drama. Illustration: 1. One of the finest productions of //The Merchant of Venice// in our time showed Sir Henry Irving as Shylock, a noble, wronged, and indignant being, of such stature that the Merchants of Venice dwindled before him into irresponsible schoolboys. He was confronted in court by a gracious, even queenly, Portia, Miss Ellen Terry. At the Odeon in Paris, however, Gemier played Shylock as a vengeful and hysterical buffoon, confronted in court by a Portia who was a //gamine// from the Paris streets with a lawyer’s quill three feel long over her ear; at the close of the trial scene Shylock was driven screaming about the auditorium, behind the spectators’ back and onto the stage again, in a wild Elizabethan revel. Yet for all their divergences both were admirable productions of the play. 2. If there were ever a play in which fidelity to the author’s requirements were essential in the representation of the principal role, it would seem to be Ibsen’s //Hedda Gabler//, for the play is primarily an exposition of her character. Ibsen’s directions read: “Enter from the left Hedda Gabler. She is a woman of twenty;-nine. Her face and figure show great refinement and distinction. Her complexion is pale and opaque. Her steel-gray eyes express an unruffled calm. Her hair is of an attractive medium brown, but is not particularly abundant; and she is dressed in a flowing loose-fitting morning gown.” I once saw Eleonora Duse in this role. She was a woman of sixty and made no effort to conceal it. Her complexion was pale and transparent. Her hair was white, and she was dressed in a gown that suggested some medieval empress in mourning. And the performance was very fine.

One may well ask: why write for the theatre at all? Why not work in the novel where such deviations from one’s intentions cannot take place?

There are two answers: 1. The theatre presents certain vitalities of its own so inviting and stimulating that the writer is willing to receive them in compensation for this inevitable variation from an exact image. 2. The dramatist through working in the theatre gradually learns not merely to take account of the presence of the collaborators, but to derive advantage from them’ and he learns, above all, to organize the play in such a way that its strength lies not in appearances beyond his control, but in the succession of events and in the unfolding of an idea, in narration.

The gathered audience sits in a darkened room, one end of which is lighted. The nature of the transaction at which it is gazing is a succession of events illustrating a general idea–the stirring of the idea; the gradual feeding out of information; the shock and countershock of circumstances; the flow of action; the interruption of action; the moments of allusion to earlier events; the preparations of surprise, dread, or delight–all that is the author’s and his alone.

For reasons to be discussed later–the expectancy of the group-mind, the problem of time on the stage, the absence of the narrator, the element of pretense–the theatre carries the art of narration to a higher power than the novel or the epic poem. The theatre is unfolding action in the disposition of events the authors may exercise a governance so complete that the distortions effected by the physical appearance of actors, by the fancies of scene painters and the misunderstandings of directors, fall into relative insignificance. It is just because the theatre is an art of many collaborators, with the constant danger of grave misinterpretation, that the dramatist learns to turn his attention to the laws of narration, its logic and its deep necessity of presenting a unifying idea stronger than its mere collection of happenings. The dramatist must be by instinct a storyteller.

There is something mysterious about the endowment of the storyteller. Some very great writers possessed very little of it, and some others, lightly esteemed, possessed it in so large a measure that their books survive down the ages, to the confusion of severer critics. Alexandre Dumas had it to an extraordinary degree; while Melville, for all his splendid quality, had it barely sufficiently to raise his work from the realm of non-fiction. It springs, not as some have said, from an aversion to general ideas, but from an instinctive coupling of idea and illustration; the idea, for a born storyteller, can only be expressed imbedded in its circumstantial illustration. The myth, the parable, the fable are the fountainhead of all fiction and in them is seen most clearly the didactic, moralizing employment of a story. Modern taste shrinks from emphasizing the central idea that hides behind the fiction, but it exists there nevertheless, supplying the unity to fantasizing, and offering a justification to what otherwise we would repudiate as mere arbitrary contrivance, pretentious lying, or individualistic emotional association spinning. For all their magnificent intellectual endowment, George Meredith and George Eliot were not born storytellers; they chose fiction as the vehicle for their reflections, and the passing of time is revealing their error in that choice. Jane Austen was pure storyteller and her works are outlasting those of apparently more formidable rivals. The theatre is more exacting than the novel in regard to this faculty, and its presence constitutes a force which compensates the dramatist for the deviations which are introduced into his work by the presence of his collaborators.

The chief of these collaborators are the actors.

The actor’s gift is a combination of three separate faculties or endowments. Their presence to a high degree in any one person is extremely rare, although the ambition to possess them is common. Those who rise to the height of the profession represent a selection and a struggle for survival in one of the most difficult and cruel of the artistic activities. The three endowments that compose the gift are observation, imagination, and physical co- ordination. 1. An observant and analyzing eye for all modes of behavior about us, for dress and manner, and for the signs of thought and emotion in one’s self and in others. 2. The strength of imagination and memory whereby the actor may, at the indication in the author’s text, explore his store of observations and represent the details of appearance and the intensity of the emotions–joy, fear, surprise, grief, love, and hatred, and through imagination extend them to intenser degrees and to differing characterizations. 3. A physical co-ordination whereby the force of these inner realizations may be communicated to voice, face, and body.

An actor must //know// the appearances and the mental states; he must //apply// his knowledge to the role; and he must physically //express// his knowledge. Moreover, his concentration must be so great that he can effect this representation under conditions of peculiar difficulty–in abrupt transition from the non-imaginative conditions behind the stage; and in the presence of fellow-actors who may be momentarily destroying the reality of the action.

A dramatist prepares the characterization of his personages in such a way that it will take advantage of the actor’s gift.

Characterization in a novel is presented by the author’s dogmatic assertion that the personage was such, and by an analysis of the personage with generally an account of his or her past. Since, in the drama, this is replaced by the actual presence of the personage before us and since there is no occasion for the intervening all-knowing author to instruct us as to his or her inner nature, a far greater share is given in a play to (1) highly characteristic utterances and (2) concrete occasions in which the character defines itself under action and (3) a conscious preparation of the text whereby the actor may build upon the suggestions in the role according to his own abilities.

Characterization in a play is like a blank check which the dramatist accords to the actor for him to fill in–not entirely blank, for a number of indications of individuality are already there, but to a far less definite and absolute degree than in the novel.

The dramatist’ principal interest being the movement of the story, he is willing to resign the more detailed aspects of characterization to the actor and is often rewarded beyond his expectation.

The sleepwalking scene from //Macbeth// is a highly compressed selection of words whereby despair and remorse rise to the surface of indirect confession. It is to be assumed that had Shakespeare lived to see what the genius of Sarah Siddons could pour into the scene from that combination of observation, self-knowledge, imagination, and representational skill, even he might have exclaimed, “I never knew I wrote so well!”

II. The Theatre is an Art Addressed to a Group-Mind

Painting, sculpture, and the literature of the book are certainly solitary experiences; and it is likely that most people would agree that the audience seated shoulder to shoulder in a concert hall is not an essential element in musical enjoyment.

But a play presupposes a crowd. The reasons for this go deeper than (1) the economic necessity for the support of the play and (2) the fact that the temperament of actors is proverbially dependent on group attention.

It rests on the fact that (1) the pretense, the fiction, on the stage would fall to pieces and absurdity without the support accorded to it by a crowd, and (2) the excitement induced by pretending a fragment of life is such that it partakes of ritual and festival, and requires a throng.

Similarly the fiction that royal personages are of a mysteriously different nature from other people requires audiences, levees, and processions for its maintenance. Since the beginnings of society, satirists have occupied themselves with the descriptions of kings and queens in their intimacy and delighted in showing how the prerogatives of royalty became absurd when the crowd is not present to extend to them the enhancement of an imaginative awe.

The theatre partakes of the nature of festival. Life imitated is life raised to a higher power. In the case of comedy, the vitality of these pretended surprises, deceptions, and //contretemps// becomes so lively that before a spectator, solitary or regarding himself as solitary, the structure of so much event would inevitably expose the artificiality of the attempt and ring hollow and unjustified; and in the case of tragedy, the accumulation of woe and apprehension would soon fall short of conviction. All actors know the disturbing sensation of playing before a handful of spectators at a dress rehearsal or performance where only their interest in pure craftsmanship can barely sustain them. During the last rehearsals the phrase is often heard: “This play is hungry for an audience.”

Since the theatre is directed to a group-mind, a number of consequences follow:

1. A group-mind presupposes, if not a lowering of standards, a broadening of the fields of interest. The other arts may presuppose an audience of connoisseurs trained in leisure and capable of being interested in certain rarefied aspects of life. The dramatist may be prevented from exhibiting, for example, detailed representations of certain movements in history that require specialized knowledge in the audience, or psychological states in the personages which are of insufficient general interest to evoke self-identification in the majority. In the Second Part of Goethe’s //Faust// there are long passages dealing with the theory of paper money. The exposition of the nature of misanthropy (so much more drastic than Moliere’s in Shakespeare’s //Timon of Athens// has never been a success. The dramatist accepts this limitation in subject matter and realizes that the group-mind imposes upon him the necessity of treating material understandable by the larger number.

2. It is the presence of the group-mind that brings another requirement to the theatre– forward movement.

Maeterlinck said that there was more drama in the spectacle of an old man seated by a table than in the majority of plays offered to the public. He was juggling with the various meanings in the word “drama.” In the sense whereby drama means the intensified concentration of life’s diversity and significance he may well have been right; if he meant drama as theatrical representation before an audience he was wrong. Drama on the stage is inseparable from forward movement, from action.

Many attempts have been made to present Plato’s dialogues. Gobineau’s fine series of dialogues, //La Renaissance//, and the //Imaginary Conversations// of Landor; but without success. Through some ingredient in the group-mind, and through the sheer weight of anticipation involved in the dressing up and the assumption of fictional roles, an action is required, and an action that is more than a mere progress in argumentation and debate.

III. The Theatre is a World of Pretense

It lives by conventions; a convention is an agreed-upon falsehood, a permitted lie.

Illustrations: Consider at the first performance of the //Medea//, the passage where Medea meditates the murder of her children. An anecdote from antiquity tells us that the audience was so moved by this passage that considerable disturbance took place.

The following conversations were involved: 1. Medea was played by a man. 2. He wore a large mask on his face. In the lip of the mask was an acoustical device for projecting the voice. ON his feet he wore shoes with soles and heels half a foot high. 3. His costume was so designed that it conveyed to the audience, by convention: woman of royal birth and Oriental origin. 4. The passage was in metric speech. All poetry is an “agreed-upon falsehood” in regard to speech. 5. The lines were sung in a kind of recitative. All opera involves this “permitted lie” in regard to speech.

Modern taste would say that the passage would convey much greater pathos if a woman “like Medea” had delivered it–with an uncovered face that exhibited all the emotions she as undergoing. for the Greeks, however, there was no pretense that Medea was on the stage. The mask, the costume, the mode of declamation, were a series of signs which the spectator interpreted and reassembled in his own mind. Medea was being re-created within the imagination of each of the spectators.

The history of the theatre shows us that in its greatest ages the stage employed the greatest number of conventions. The stage is fundamental pretense and it thrives on the acceptance of that fact and in the multiplication of additional pretenses. When it tries to assert that the personages in the action “really are,” really inhabit such and such rooms, really suffer such and such emotions, its loses rather than gains credibility. The modern world is inclined to laugh condescendingly at the fact that in the plays of Racine and Corneille the gods and heroes of antiquity were dressed like the courtiers under Louis XIV; that in the Elizabethan age scenery was replaced by placards notifying the audience of the location; and that a whip in the hand and a jogging motion of the body indicated that a man was on horseback in the Chinese theatre; these devices did not spring from naiveté, however, but from the vitality of the public imagination in those days and from an instinctive feeling as to where the essential and where the inessential lay in drama.

The convention has two functions: 1. It provokes the collaborative activity of the spectator’s imagination; and 2. It raises the action from the specific to the general. This second aspect is of even greater importance than the first.

If Juliet is represented as a girl “very like Juliet”–it was not merely a deference to contemporary prejudices that assigned this role to a boy in the Elizabethan age–moving about in a “real” house with marble staircases, rugs, lamps, and furniture, the impression is irresistibly conveyed that these events happened to this one girl, in one place, at one moment in time. When the play is staged as Shakespeare intended it, the bareness of the stage releases the events from the particular and the experience of Juliet partakes of that of all girls in love, in every time, place and language.

The stage continually strains to tell this generalized truth and it is the element of pretense that reinforces it. Out of the lie, the pretense, of the theatre proceeds a truth more compelling than the novel can attain, for the novel by its own lows is constrained to tell of an action that “once happened”–”once upon a time.”

IV. The Action on the Stage Takes Place in a Perpetual Present Time

Novels are written in the past tense. The characters in them, it is true, are represented as living moment by moment their present time, but the constant running commentary of the novelist (“Tess slowly descended into the valley”; “Anna Karenia laughed”) inevitably conveys to the reader the fact that these events are long since past and over.

The novel is a past reported in the present. On the stage it is always now. This confers upon the action an increased vitality which the novelist longs in vain to incorporate into his work.

This condition in the theatre brings with it another important element:

In the theatre we are not aware of the intervening storyteller. The speeches arise from the characters in an apparently pure spontaneity.

//A play is what takes place.//

//A novel is what one person tells us took place.//

A play visibly represents pure existing. A novel is what one mind, claiming to omniscience, asserts to have existed.

Many dramatists have regretted this absence of the narrator from the stage, with his point of view, his powers of analyzing the behavior of the characters, his ability to interfere and supply further facts about the past, about simultaneous actions not visible on the stage, and above //all// his function of pointing the moral and emphasizing the significance of the action. In some periods of the theatre he has been present as chorus, or prologue and epilogue or as //raisonneur//. But surely this absence constitutes an additional force to the form, as well as an additional tax upon the writer’s skill. It is the task of the dramatist so to co-ordinate his play, through the selection of episodes and speeches, that, though he is himself not visible, his point of view and his governing intention will impose themselves on the spectator’s attention, not as dogmatic assertion or motto, but as self-evident truth and inevitable deduction.

Imaginative narration–the invention of souls and destinies–is to a philosopher an all but indefensible activity.

It’s justification lies in the fact that the communication of ideas from one mind to another inevitably reaches the point where exposition passes into illustration, into parable, metaphor, allegory, and myth.

It is no accident that when Plato arrived at the height of his argument and attempted to convey a theory of knowledge and a theory of the structure of man’s nature he passed over into story telling, into the myths of the Cave and the Charioteer; and that the great religious teachers have constantly had recourse to the parable as a means of imparting their deepest intuitions.

The theatre offers to imaginative narration its highest possibilities. It has many pitfalls and its very vitality betrays it into service as mere diversion and the enhancement of insignificant matter; but it is well to remember that it was the theatre that rose to the highest place during those epochs that aftertime had chosen to call “great ages” and that the Athens of Pericles and the reigns of Elizabeth, Philip II, and Louis XIV were also the ages that gave to the world the greatest dramas it has known.