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I have decided to get serious about this blog. Uh oh… I don’t know exactly what led me to this conclusion. I was sitting around Saturday night and found myself suddenly in blogger land. I was reading articles about how to configure my WordPress blog so that the category showed up and not the obscure ?=58 number thing; and how to modify the metatags in the page; how to use Feedburner to boost your hits and track who’s looking at your site; and then “top ten” or “top twenty” things to do to make your blog work–one of them being: stay focused on what your interest is, don’t be all over the place. Well, my interest in playwriting and playwrights. So, by God, that’s what I’m really going to start focusing this thing on. Not that I’ve strayed, but I have been emphasizing reviews and that sort of thing more lately than just thoughts on playwriting itself.

There are two things that have brought me “back” to my point of origin…well, maybe three. 1) Jonah Knight’s ridiculously cool offer to allow other playwrights to take up the mic and do a show on his podcast Theatrically Speaking; 2) hitting Technorati after my marathon blogger night and finding some cool playwright sites that I now feel compelled to read and connect with; and 3) again, my desire to actually create a successful blog that deals with something I feel very passionate about.

I scoped out a few playwright blogs and was pretty interested in the whole “Authority” ranking that Technorati uses; but I found out pretty quickly that the “authority” is not related in any way to the content. It clearly is more of a time and endurance rating and friend rating, as the “authority” one seems to have is directly related to when the blog was started. One that had a high authority for a ‘playwright’ and ‘poet’ wrote two paragraph long entries about tv shows, ddt, juvenile gossip bordering on slander, and long articles about his own plays (in third person). Another seemed more interested in his kids than anything else. All of which is fine, but it demonstrates the point that blogs whose subject matter becomes watered-down and slides off the point will quickly lose their power–but not authority, clearly.

One blog that I did find through Technorati that I have found very enjoyable so far is Intermission. The first entry I read was entitled Pocket Notes, and had some good moments, including the one where the in-laws stare at you as if your an idiot while you try to recover from the invitation to morning Mass and also try to hold a play idea in your head all at the same time. Who hasn’t been there? (Jews, Protestants, and Atheists pipe down.) But the point is the same and depressingly comic. I found the evaluation of the various notepads enlightening and am now deeply covetous of the Miguelrius, which I shall have to purchase. When I was carrying notepads I stuck with the cheapo .25c Memo pads with the plastic spirals at the top. They fit nicely my back pocket and were insanely cheap. Of course, they fell apart after a beer or two was spilled on them.

Then there was the opera clip from Britain Has Talent, or whatever that show is. My wife showed me this clip and I was as thunderstruck as I think anyone in that audience was. Truly amazing. So, now I’m beginning to bond (mentally) with this person. Then the links come, which include Theatrically Speaking, so we’re on the same page now. And then this whole playwriting process thing opens up:

“And so, I am writing the new play, amazed by its ferocity in spewing forth onto the page. There are elements which my Editor’s Mind balks at, trying to dictate other ideas or directions. I know my muse well enough by now, to go with where the story and the characters take me. They are usually right. My Editor’s Mind is usually wrong, wanting to go someplace familiar and safe…I always do that when I’m writing. Shove the Editor’s Mind aside, and choose the path that’s scary. You know scary, don’t you? It’s the thing in your stomach that churns when you are not in control.” ¹

And all I can help think is how beautifully put that is. There are several things that strike me about this. First, I’m dumbfounded as I just finished doing a podcast for Theatricallly Speaking and I talk about the necessity of uninhibited writing, of letting the words flow onto the page and the mad rush of it; I also speak of what is referred to above as the “Editor’s Mind” that is, the internal critic or the “internal censor,” but the description above is a bit more precise and I know exactly what is being referred to. This is the problem of my most recent play, loosely titled A Howl in the Woods–the one that’s getting the reading at CPT in Little Box. Two times after extensive re-writing I have hung an ending on the play. The first time I knew it and asked aloud, when do you stop writing and start directing something toward a goal? And when are you pushing something too much and need to stop? I had no real answer, and this time the director called me on it. He was like, “I really like the play, there was so much that was unexpected and there were new ideas coming out at every turn, and the transformations of the characters (they go through many) were great, etc., and then there’s the ending…” I said “Sorry to disappoint you.” And he shrugged and then admitted, “you did, a little bit.” And why did that happen? Because I stopped listening to my unconscious mind and caved to my conscious mind, my “Editor’s Mind” the one that said to my inner voice “I know where this is going better than you do, so step aside.” Well, it doesn’t know better. And I need to learn the valuable lesson described in the Intermission blog entry: to listen to my muse; to go where I don’t feel safe and smug; to “choose the path that’s scary.”

Thanks for the good advice.

In [amazon_link id=”0786887400″ target=”_blank” ]Aristotle’s Poetics[/amazon_link], Aristotle begins by discussing basic principles. He specifically notes:

1. Epic composition;
2. the writing of tragedy and comedy;
3. the composing of dithyrambs;
4. and the greater part of making music with flute and lyre,

taken collectively, are imitative processes.

Imitative processes is hard to nail down, as the meaning is not precise for English translation, and I have been left with the impression (from the translator, [amazon_link id=”0472061666″ target=”_blank” ]Gerald F. Else[/amazon_link]) that it means actions that imitate other actions that have occurred elsewhere at another time.The types of imitative art mentioned above are differentiated by different means, different objects, and different methods of imitation.

With regard to different means, Aristotle states that there are a variety of media in which poetic composition can take place, but always through at least two of the following media: rhythm, speech, and melody. He comments on the arts of lyre and flute music or panpipe produce their imitation using melody and rhythm alone; another uses speeches or verses alone (hence, speech and rhythm), bare of music, either mixing the verses with one another or employing on certain kind; likewise, a person could mix all the kinds of verse.

Different objects begins by stating that those who imitate imitate men in action, and that these men must be worthwhile or worthless people. Thus beginning the distinction between tragedy and comedy: tragedy dealing with superior persons; comedy with inferior persons.

Finally, there are different modes of imitation: by narrating part of the time and dramatizing the rest of the time (speaking and acting), as Homer composes, this is a mixed mode; by straight narrative; or by all persons performing the imitation, or acting, in a straight dramatic mode.

Aristotle wraps it all up by stating again that "Poetic imitation–shows these three differentiae: in the media, objects, and modes of imitation." As stated, "So in one way Sophocles would be the same kind of imitator as Homer, since they both imitate worthwhile people, and in another way the same as Aristophanes, for they both imitate people engaged in action, doing things." 19

Aristotle attributes the development of poetry to two sources: "(1) the habit of imitating is congenital to human beings from childhood;" anyone who has children will know that this is decidedly the case; "(2) the pleasure that all men take in works of imitation." That is, men enjoy watching imitations of past actions or supposed actions. Television and movies are the best answer to the truth or falsity of this assertion. 20

Comedy is an imitation of those who are inferior; though not necessarily villainous. It is a form for imitating what is ugly, or ludicrous, or distorted.

Epic poetry is defined by Aristotle as (1) good-sized (2) imitation (3) in verse (4) of people who are to be taken seriously; however, its verse is unmixed and the Epic is of a narrative style.

In difference, Aristotle notes that Tragedy "tries as hard as it can to exist during a single daylight period, or to vary but little, while the epic is not limited in its time and so differs in that respect." The translator of my volume, [amazon_link id=”0472061666″ target=”_blank” ]Gerald F. Else[/amazon_link], notes that this, in his opinion, does NOT refer to the idea of "representing the events of a single day" but rather the "actual length of the respective poems, and therefore of the respective performances." That is, a Tragedy should be performed in one day, but an Epic can take as long as it wants. Our professor notes that this misconception: "representing the events of a single day" led to the Renaissance notion of "Unity of Time." 89

Tragedy consists of Six Elements

Aristotle defines Tragedy as "a process of imitating an action which as serious implications, is complete, and possesses magnitude; by means of language it has been made sensuously attractive–is enacted by the persons themselves and not presented through narrative; through a course of pity and fear completing the purification of tragic acts which have those emotional characteristics." 25

Since the imitation is performed through action (acting), the "adornment of their visual appearance–will constitute some part of the making of tragedy; and song-composition and verbal expression also, for those are the media in which they perform the imitation." 26

I find the last comment very interesting as it suggests that the language, cadence, accent, and other features of the spoken words of the actors are, in fact, as much a part of the appearance and so could be equated with the costumes. I always felt that the language, cadence, accent, rhythm, etc. is a part of the writing, that is integral to the actual process of penning the play ("verbal expression") which it is but to categorize it with the costumes and external features of the action, rather than as an internal feature of the writing, is highly intriguing to me and suggests a strong course of action in looking at playwriting.

Also, "since it is an imitation of an action and is enacted by certain people who are performing the action, and since those people must necessarily have certain traits both of character and thought (for it is by way of these two factors that we speak of people’s actions as having defined character); and since imitation of the action is the plot, for by ‘plot’ I mean here the structuring of events, and by the ‘characters’ that in accordance with which we say that the persons who are acting have a defined moral character, and by ‘thought’ all the passages in which they attempt to prove some thesis or set forth some opinion it follows of necessity, then, that tragedy as a whole has just six constituent elements: plot, characters, verbal expression, thought, visual adornment, and song-composition." 26-7

The "elements by which they imitate are two: verbal expression and song composition; the manner in which they imitate is one: visual adornment; the things they imitate are three: plot, characters, thought–and there is nothing more than these. These then are the constituent forms they use." 27

Hence, means, objects, and methods.

I’ll continue this at a later time.