1. Chapter 7 – Drama’s Conventions All that lives by the fact of living, has a form, and by the same token must die—except the work of art which lives forever in so far as it is form. —Luigi Pirandello

2. 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.

3. 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

4. Writing Strategies: Stage Directions Tennessee Williams’s 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....

5. 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”)

6. Writing Strategies: Exposition Information about what’s 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

7. 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

8. 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

9. Writing Strategies: Plot Resolutions and endings: –Restores balance to world of play –Satisfies audiences expectations –In absurdist plays, represented in completion of cycle

10. Writing Strategies: Plot Simultaneous plots: –Two stories told concurrently –Used to represent life’s variety and complexity –Secondary plot (subplot) resolved before main plot

11. 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.

12. 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.”

13. The Play-within-the-Play A favorite technique of Elizabethan playwrights Examples: –Shakespeare’s Hamlet: Hamlet stages a performance of The Murder of Gonzago to assess Claudius’ guilt. –Brecht’s The Caucasian Chalk Circle: Narrator links inner play (chalk-circle test) with outer play (dispute over land).

14. The Play-within-the-Play Modern applications: –Used to highlight life’s theatricality –Stage a metaphor for self-imposed illusions Example: –Peter Weiss’s Marat/Sade: Depicts production of a play by inmates of insane asylum

15. Core Concepts Drama’s 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 production’s theatrics. In the modern theatre, the play-within-the-play is a means of demonstrating life’s theatricality.