Approaches in Dramatic Techniques #

Aristotle #

(384 – 322 BCE) Aristotle’s Poetics laid some of the ground rules of what good literature should look like. He has become an authority of literary theory. Though a student of Plato, Aristotle differed from him on the fundamental issue of objective and subjective approaches. Aristotle criticizes orators who write exclusively from the intellect, rather than from the heart, praising the way Greek dramatists make their characters speak, especially in Sophocles, Oedipus Rex, and Antigone. Composers writing in the Aristotelian tradition appeal to our emotions and satisfy our psychological needs.

Action Drama is based on the theatre of illusion where the characters imitate real life and the audience experiences the predicaments of the characters vicariously. By identifying emotionally and psychologically, we are seduced by the actors to identify, empathise with the characters and aroused by their terror to pity and fear (Pathos) to a state of Catharsis, releasing our tension, soothing, cleansing or purging our souls. This can be ephemeral with no lasting consequences.

“Imitation is the highest form of flattery”.

Drama or re-enactments have been central to the most primitive societies as a form of entertainment and a method of passing on traditions through story telling. It has always attempted to provide a mirror to real life.

Aristotelian plots are linear, progressing from a beginning, a middle and an end with various techniques of wholeness, unity and purpose. It reaffirms a rational, ordered universe. They are known as Conventional Theatre,Theatre of illusion or Theatre of Action where the audience is deluded into thinking they are watching real time events through an invisible fourth wall. Our Interest in the outcome of the action provides the suspense. Aristotle puts high emphasis on structure, causation, unity, cohesion….

The characters are appropriate, realistic and plausible; the hero from a good family, going through a crisis with a reversal of fortune. Novelists too tend to obey Aristotle’s guidelines of “revelation” ; that most of the ideas and issues should be revealed not by the author telling us, rather by the actions, reactions, words and thoughts of the characters. Don’t tell us – show us. We the responders feel more dignified when we figure it out rather than when we are told directly.

Plot and character come first and ideas –what we call issues, themes, concerns or values can only be gleaned through experiences of empathy.

Plato #

Plato’s Republic** *outlined his views on good literature using the Epic Tales of Homer, The Odyssey and The Iliad as exemplary texts. Later classical works such as Vergil’s Aeneas, Dante’s The Divine Comedy, Milton’s Paradise Lost were written in this tradition based on an objective approach, appealing to reason - the mind - satisfying our intellectual needs rather than our emotive desires.

In a Platonic approach, we are distanced or alienated (estranged) from the action and critically evaluate it. Instead of getting emotionally involved we are detached and objective. We are made to feel emotionally disconnected to the action and detached from the characters. Instead of playing with our emotions, Epic Literature. affects the mind and moves us to action leading to social remedies. As the characters are singular,atypical orsuper heroic, we are not encouraged to identify with them.

Rather than focussing on individuals it looks at the broader scale and appeals to the masses, the collective psyche because it involves mass suffering. As Stalin put it: “one death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic”.

Suffering is degrading and dehumanising, leading to desensitisation or brutalisation, promoting the instinct of self-preservation. Epic Literature can often appear to be Nihilistic.

¹Nihilism is a 19^(th) C. Russian extreme revolutionary movement. A skeptic doubts, a cynic distrusts, while a nihilist rejects all traditions, beliefs, morals, values and aspirations. They are utterly negative, destructive and subversive, believing or valuing nothing.

“Someone who does not bow to any authority or accept any principle or trust”.

They appealed to disenchanted youths urging them to destroy a repressive society and rebuild it from scratch.

Rather than emotionally empathising or identifying with the main characters we become critical observers and respond rationally and intellectually. We assume a universe governed by chance, randomness, or caprice. Chaos rides supreme in a discordant world where evil often triumphs over good. The literature of the Absurd often uses this approach with limited plots, disconnected scenes, a montage, lack of sequence or structure and minimalism in props

The plots are often well known so we are interested in the course of the action not the result because of a lack of suspense. We dwell in the present, not the past or the future.

Epic Literature is realism rather than illusion so lacks subtlety and nuance. It tends to be direct, explicit, overt, didactic.

A good example would be Brechtian Epic Theatre which is different; dissident, divergent, variant, resistant, subversive. It is the Theatre of Realism and Intellectualism.

Epic Theatre: Brechtian #

Brecht’s techniques – Verfremdung – Estrangement

His definition: to take from an event or character that which is predictable, self evident, obvious and to arouse surprise and curiosity.

Brecht regarded conventional theatres of illusion as soft thinking; a narcissistic romanticism, - a desire to use the theatre for escapism. The principle of Einfuhlung (empathy) was regarded as theatrical seduction which clouded the minds of the audience to the true issues. He tries to divorce the audience from sentimental involvement or engagement and detach, distance or alienate us from the characters on stage. We are not meant to identify or empathise with them, rather stand back and judge them critically.

Brecht accused conventional theatre of promoting a cult of the hero, especially in Shakespeare which led to over-romanticizing and audience identification resulting in a lack of critical detachment. This glorification of a hero led in the direction of totalitarianism under one leader.

Features:

• Dissident, divergent, variant, resistant, subversive

• Theatre of Realism, Intellectualism

• Based on Plato’s Republic

• Epic Tales of Homer: The Odyssey, The Iliad, Vergil’s Aeneas, Dante’s The Divine Comedy, Milton’s Paradise Lost.

• Appeals to reason; the mind and satisfies our intellectual needs

– Objective

• Appeals to the masses, the collective psyche because it involves mass suffering.

• We are distanced or alienated (estranged) from the action and critically evaluate it. Instead of getting emotionally involved we are detached and objective. We are made to feel emotionally disconnected to the action and detached from the characters.

• Instead of playing with our emotions, E.T. affects the mind and moves us to action leading to social remedies.

Once you change someone’s mindset it has more long lasting effects.

• Didactic, explicit, overt, direct

We are interested in the course of the action not the result because of a lack of suspense.

• Often disconnected scenes, a montage, lack of sequence or structure. Minimalism in props

• Assumes a universe governed by chance, capricious fate. Nihilistic

• Fate is Chance, randomness, chaos, absurdity

• Suffering is degrading and dehumanising, leading to desensitisation or brutalisation, promoting the instinct of self-preservation.

Conventional Theatre. #

Dominant, traditional, orthodox…

Theatre of illusion, Theatre of Action

Based on Aristotle’s Poetics

Models: Greek drama – Sophocles, Oedipus Rex, and Antigone , Shakespeare, Ibsen, Williamson ..

• Appeals to our emotions and satisfies our psychological needs.

• Appeals to the individual responder.

We identify, relate, or participate and feel empathy with the main character. The vicarious experience of suffering arouses pity and fear leading to Catharsis, a purging of the soul, a release of tension, soothing to the soul. Trying to put you into the shoes of the main characters can be an immersive experience. In film “jacking in”, recording thrilling experiences through subjective camera angles, can replicate them in alluring immersive techniques so we can experience them vicariously.

• No lasting consequences – emotions ephemeral.

• Suggestive, implicit, ambiguous

• Interest in the outcome of the action

• Emphasis on structure, causation, unity, cohesion….

• Assumes a rational moral order in the universe

• Affirmative of sense of purpose.

Fate is controlled by Nemesis; divine retribution – poetic justice.

• Suffering is inherent in the human condition, leads man to a noble form of dignity

Absurdist Theatre #

The Literature of the Absurd had its origins in the Theatre of the Absurd, notably following the first and second world wars. This absurdity (that which has no purpose, meaning goal or objective) is the result of disillusionment with the rationalism, which attempted to justify the exploitation of the working class and poor, the affluence of the rich, the wanton yet condoned destructiveness of two world wars, and the unquestioned belief in evolution and progress. No longer can we accept a unanimous consensus of moral and social order.

Dada

Wikipedia describes Dada or Dadaism was an anti-establishment art movement that developed in 1915 in the context of the Great War and the earlier anti-art movement.

It is hard to overstate the calamitous enduring effects of the two world Wars had on many aspects of society. As well as undermining the certainties of the past, it had lasting repercussions on future psyches. The conventions of piety, pretence and posturing were laid bare and attempts to restore respect and order were increasingly hollow, papering over a prevailing sense of guilt, dread, despair and absurdity.

The premise basing most traditional or conventional literature is that life has meaning, a goal and order or structure.

Dissonances of life and art

Tom Stoppard’s Rosenkratz and Guildenstern are Dead:

According to Martin Esslin, the major difference between Absurdist and conventional drama is that in conventional drama the audience is anticipating the action, wondering what will happen next; while in an absurdist play the audience is mainly caught up in wondering what is happening now.

https://nebo-lit.com/drama/hamlet/Rosenkrantz-and-Guildenstern-are-Dead.html

Joseph Heller’s Catch-22:

A totally circular, non-sequitor, yet realist novel attempting to make sense of war.

https://nebo-lit.com/novel/heller/heller-catch-22.html

Samuel Beckett was not a man of excess. He distrusted language, distrusted meaning, and distrusted the urge to explain too much. And yet, through the careful dismantling of language, he gave the 20th century some of its most enduring and unsettling works. Few writers have managed to say so much by saying so little.

In a Samuel Beckett play, characters use indirect dialogue, they speak to the audience, and not to each other.

Though shy, Beckett was sharp and observant—traits that would later shape the sparse interiority of his characters.

After WWII, something shifted in Beckett. Perhaps it was the silence he had witnessed. Perhaps it was the absurdity of Europe in ruins. He began writing exclusively in French, a language he said forced him to write “without style.” It was in French that he wrote his masterpiece, Waiting for Godot (En attendant Godot), completed in 1949.

When it was first staged in 1953, Godot confused audiences. Two men, Vladimir and Estragon, wait under a barren tree. They talk. They fight. They repeat themselves. They consider suicide. But nothing happens, and Godot never comes. The play violated every rule of traditional drama. And yet, it resonated. Audiences in post-war Europe saw in that waiting the truth of the human condition—restless, uncertain, caught between hope and despair.

At the heart of Beckett’s work is a deep concern with time, memory, and identity. His characters are often suspended in uncertainty, unable to act, yet unable to stop thinking. They cannot escape their own thoughts, but those thoughts bring no clarity. This is not nihilism for its own sake. Beckett was not simply saying that life is meaningless. Rather, he was asking how we go on living even when meaning slips away.

J. M. Coetzee in The Making of Samuel Beckett writes:

“[In a letter, Beckett] describes language as a veil that the modern writer needs to tear apart if he wants to reach what lies beyond, even if what lies beyond may only be silence and nothingness. In this respect writers have lagged behind painters and musicians (he points to Beethoven and the silences in his scores). Gertrude Stein, with her minimalist verbal style, has the right idea, whereas Joyce is moving in quite the wrong direction, toward ‘an apotheosis of the word.’”

In 1969, Beckett received the Nobel Prize in Literature. He did not attend the ceremony. Instead, he remained in Paris, where he had lived for decades, mostly quietly, often walking the same routes, observing people, listening to silence. He continued to write late into his life. His final works, such as Worstward Ho, reduced language to its barest essence:

“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”

Samuel Beckett was a writer who stared directly into the void, but he did not flinch. He offered no easy hope, no promises of resolution. What he offered instead was honesty. He taught us that even in silence, something speaks. That even in waiting, there is life. That even in failure, we continue.

Vladimir’s question in Godot,

“Where are all these corpses from?,” and its answer,

“A charnel-house! A charnel-house!,” hang over much of his writing.

When Vladimir tries to recall even the beginning of the evening, Estragon interjects:

“I’m not a historian.”

Torture, enslavement, hunger, displacement, incarceration, and subjection to arbitrary power are the common fates of Beckett’s characters.

Deirdre Bair, in her pioneering 1978 biography of Beckett, called him “consistent in his apolitical behavior,” claimed that politics was “anathema” to him, and described him as having “walked away from any conversation that veered into politics.”

For the English left-wing playwrights of the 1960s, he was a disengaged pessimist with nothing to contribute to political discourse except a disempowering despair.

In 1977 Richard Stern asked Beckett whether he had ever been political. The reply—“No, but I joined the Resistance”—is one of his typical self-canceling sentences, in which the second part utterly negates the first.

But he had grown up as a writer directly in the shadow of his friend and idol James Joyce, who had done pretty much everything that could be done with the novel of social and psychological omniscience.

Famously, in his dialogues with Georges Duthuit, published in 1949, Beckett spoke of the need for a new kind of art characterized by

the expression that there is nothing to express, nothing with which to express, nothing from which to express, no power to express, no desire to express, together with the obligation to express.

Literature gives shape to experience, but Beckett understands that, seen from the abyss, there is no shape to history. The powers that be are feral, their authority terrifying in its arbitrariness.

In Godot, there is a nameless, unseen “they” who might be policemen or militia or vigilantes on the lookout for vagrants exactly like Estragon and Vladimir. Between the two acts of the play, in that blank dramatic space whose very emptiness resonates with Beckett’s aesthetic, Estragon has been attacked by a gang of ten men and Vladimir’s questioning of him takes us into the psychology of those who are subject to arbitrary power, their desperate hope that there is some formula of behavior that will deflect its cruel caprice:

Estragon: I wasn’t doing anything. Vladimir: Then why did they beat you? Estragon: I don’t know. Vladimir: Ah no, Gogo, the truth is there are things escape you that don’t escape me…. Estragon: I tell you I wasn’t doing anything. Vladimir: Perhaps you weren’t. But it’s the way of doing it that counts, the way of doing it, if you want to go on living.

The phrase “dance first” is taken from the scene in Waiting for Godot (1953) in which Pozzo offers to have his slave, Lucky, perform for Vladimir and Estragon—to “have him dance, or sing, or recite, or think.”

A brief debate follows over whether Lucky should “think something” for them or dance instead. Estragon suggests that “he could dance first and think afterwards.”

Pozzo replies that this is eminently possible, that it is in fact “the natural order.” Lucky’s dance is pathetic and desultory, and completely fails even to pass the time.