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The Mystery Play

Continuing my consideration of Michael Wright’s book, [amazon_link id=”1585103403″ target=”_blank” ]Playwriting in Process: Thinking and Working Theatrically[/amazon_link]:

Wright writes,

“I try to encourage my students to think of watching a play as being involved in a mystery no matter what the style or subject matter of the play may be. The audience is there to figure out what’s going to happen (in conventional theatre)the concepts ‘suggest rather than spell out’ and ‘show, don’t tell’ are about giving the audience the chance to try to figure things out for themselves, of sustaining its agreement by actively engaging its imagination.”

What’s Most Important

Wright goes on next to talk about what he considers the two most important components of plays: dialogue and behavior.

[amazon_link id=”1585103403″ target=”_blank” ]Wright[/amazon_link] discusses the complexity of dialogue: namely, it goes beyond what is said and how: the richness, symbolic nature, imagistic expression, etc. It includes also what is not said, or left unsaid. It include subtext. [amazon_link id=”0060391685″ target=”_blank” ]Bob McKee[/amazon_link] in his book [amazon_link id=”0060391685″ target=”_blank” ]Story[/amazon_link] states that it is commonly held in screenwriting that if your characters are talking about what they’re talking about, you’re fucked. That is to say, what characters are talking about hides or masks their motivations. This fact is one of the big flaws in my play The Empiric. There are too many times when people are saying out loud what people don’t say out loud: people hide stuff. There is much that people would rather die than say aloud. How do you show what pains a person, without having that person state it? That is subtext. That is mastery of dialogue and behavior. That is theatricality.

As examples, Wright uses “I’m fine.” Think of your encounters with people in the morning at work.

Me: “Hi, Bob, how are you today?”
Bob: (Smiles) “I’m fine.”

Me: “Hi, Bob, how are you today?”
Bob: (Scowls) “I’m fine.”

Subtext is in behavior. With regards to behavior, is your character flighty? Is she clumsy? Is she hysterical? How do any of these behaviors play out in a scene? What do they reveal about the character–without that character ever saying a word?

So give your audience something to see and figure out–let them discern what a character is about based on what that character does and let them judge if what she says jibes with what she does.

Plays are meant to be seen. You need an audience.

As Wright states,

“a play is a human event that is being observed by other humans–it is witnessed”

[amazon_link id=”1585103403″ target=”_blank” ] Wright[/amazon_link] speaks of the “witnessed present,” that any play we watch happens right now, in the present. It doesn’t matter if the play was written 500 years ago, or 20 years ago, when we, as an audience, watch it, it takes place in the present: right before our eyes.

Wright notes that,

“it’s our present at the same instant, because the problems of the characters reflect our own lives. We may not have the literal dilemmas that Oedipus struggles with but we all have to deal with issues of morality and personal integrity”

Next, Wright points out that thinking theatrically is “rooted in an awareness of the existence of the other”–that is, the play is being performed by real people right in front of you–they are aware of you, and you are certainly aware of them. This reciprocality of awareness make the event itself more real.

[amazon_link id=”1585103403″ target=”_blank” ] Wright[/amazon_link] comments that we all like to watch others. That it’s a natural human tendency which goes a long way toward explaining the ascendency of “reality” television. He writes,

“we know without hearing a word that the couple over there is arguing, or the man sitting to our left is really nervous. We read these things in the behavior of the people, but we also feel these things because we are in the same environment. When we’re in a theatre, we are focused by a successful show by the same kind of immediacy one experiences [in life]. There is no filter between you and what’s acting on your sensory receptors: we listen, watch, and feel the human struggles on the stage directly.”

4 Points on Theatricallity

For Wright, thinking theatrically means writing with all of these elements in mind:

1. to write dialogue that is crafting language: both text and subtext and delving into the inner feelings of characters;
2. creating revealing behavior that allows us to “witness the struggle with those feelings;”
3. Using the stage space in the most imaginative ways possible to engage the audience “emotionally, intellectually, and viscerally.”
4. Crucially, expressing your imaginative impulses–that is, as I said in my podcast regarding “censoring” and Intermission has said about the “editor’s mind”; follow your instincts and don’t squash what rises up from your unconscious.

At the end, [amazon_link id=”1585103403″ target=”_blank” ]Wright[/amazon_link] asks,

“The question that plagues all playwrights is how do we craft stories and people who are truly theatrical? How can we use the real potential of the space we call a stage?”

This is the challenge of Thinking Theatrically.

[amazon_link id=”0472061666″ target=”_blank” ]The Poetics[/amazon_link]: Simple and Complex Plots

“Among the simple plots and actions the episodic are the worst. By ‘episodic’ I mean on in which there is no probability or necessity for the order in which the episodes follow one another. Such structures are composed by the bad poets because they are bad poets" 34

“Furthermore, since the tragic imitation is not only of a complete action but also of events that are fearful and pathetic, and these come about best when they come about contrary to one’s expectation yet logically"

“Some plots are simple, others are complex" By ‘simple’ action I mean one the development of which being continuous and unified in the manner stated above, the reversal comes without peripety or recognition, and by ‘complex’ action one in which the reversal is continuous but with recognition or peripety or both. 35

” ‘Peripety‘ is a shift of what is being undertaken to the opposite in the way previously stated"[that is, as defined in a note] the events do not just ‘happen,’ as was intimated" but are initiated by the hero with a certain purpose in mind a purpose which is then frustrated by the outcome"and this in accordance with probability or necessity.

I just realized another error in my construction of The Empiric, namely, that the action is not undertaken consciously by the protagonist, Jacoba, everything in the play just happens, passively, the only acting person is Nicolas, who is acting to do harm to the main character.

Example: “In [amazon_link id=”0140444254″ target=”_blank” ]Oedipus[/amazon_link], the man who has come thinking that he will assure Oedipus, that is, relieve him of his fear with respect to his mother, by revealing who he once was, brings about the opposite. 36

“And ‘recognition’ is, as indeed the name indicates, a shift from ignorance to awareness, pointing in the direction either of close blood ties or of hostility"

So, the point being, that Jacoba should undertake whatever action she is undertaking consciously and with an intention, a defined and known purpose, the consequence of which turns out to be the opposite of what she had expected or intended, and the ultimate recognition, therein, of what has befallen her in the course of her action and the world’s response to it.

“The finest recognition is one that happens at the same time as peripety, as in the case with the one in Oedipus.

“But the form that is most integrally a part of the plot, the action, is the one aforesaid; for that kind of recognition combined with peripety will excite either pity or fear (and these are the kinds of action of which tragedy is an imitation according to our definition), because both good and bad fortune will also be most likely to follow that kind of event.

These then are the two elements of plot: peripety and recognition; third is the pathos" a pathos is a destructive or painful act, such as deaths on stage, paroxysms of pain, woundings, and all that sort of thing. 37

[From the notes] “The pathos is the foundation stone of the tragic structure. Its emotional potentialities will be explored" Peripety and recognition are limited to complex plots, indeed they constitute the definition of a complex plot. The pathos, on the other hand, can equally well be embodied in a simple plot (e.g., [amazon_link id=”1446076407″ target=”_blank” ]The Medea[/amazon_link]). In fact it appears that the happening or threatened happening of a pathos is the sine qua non of all tragedy.