Generative Dramatics *

Opening a Structure *

Formal Structures *

Case Studies *

Discovery Procedures *

Dramatic Action *

Moral and Cautionary Tales *

Author as an Element *

Collaboration *

Production and Audience: What wall? *

Political Drama *

Violation of Law: A Structural Basis for Tragedy *

Relationships Between Structures *

Freudian Structure and the Dividual *

Sex and Predation *

Post-Structuralism *

An Experimental Workshop

Structuralism is a modeling tool useful in writing and criticism.

Structuralism is a way to make new models that are well-defined and well-behaved.

Ideal structures give rise to proof-theoretic systems.

In drama, the man wants the woman. She does not want him.  He pursues.  She obstructs.  If each persists, striving and obstructing, time passes. If he is strong in his reach and she clever in her obfuscation, the play can be strong and clever.

DAN wants GWEN

ROBERT wants GWEN

JACK wants GWEN

GWEN wants (Dan and Robert)

GWEN rejects JACK

DAN rejects ROBERT

ROBERT rejects DAN

DAN rejects JACK

JACK rejects Dan

ROBERT rejects JACK

JACK rejects ROBERT

(Dan and Robert) want GWEN

(D+R+G) reject JACK

If DAN eliminates R, GWEN rejects DAN

If DAN eliminates R, DAN gets G. (DAN has to be shown this is false)

If ROBERT eliminates D, GWEN rejects ROBERT

if ROBERT eliminates D, ROBERT gets G. (GWEN has to be shown this is false)

if (Dan+Robert) eliminates J, (D+R) get G.

if JACK eliminates (D+R), JACK gets G.

if z is the object of desire and w is the object of loathing…

x gives z to y: x wants y

x protects y against w: x wants y

x gives w to y: x rejects y

x protects w against y: x rejects y

Identify the operations that evidence the relationships.

For each cell in the table with a strong relationship, write a unit of dialogue that shows that relationship using several of the operations.  

With each beat, it should become clearer to the audience what Dan wants.

Each dialogue should end with a clear win or clear failure with respect to the driving character’s objectives.  

Gwen might reject each demonstration until she gets to the one she wants.  Dan is persistent.  He will not give up easily.  

Robert gets his turn.

Gwen gets her turn.

This how they live.

The equilibrium is disturbed by news.

Gwen has invited John to dinner.

Each man wants to eliminate the other two and possess Gwen exclusively.

All must deal with the imbalance introduced by John.

Identify a unit of dialogue that escalates to physical violence, marriage, divorce, separation, prison, or another life-changing event.  

Reorder the dialogues so that the climax is near the end. 

Reexamine each of the dialogues and get the characters to raise their stakes with each beat until physical violence is the only operation remaining. 

Gwen must use her management skills to bring the situation back into equilibrium while getting what she wants: All three of them.

Or, if Dan and Robert succeed in the alliance and drive John away, the previous equilibrium is restored.

Add more obstacles to make the characters assert themselves, becoming more resourceful, increasing the risk, and accelerating toward climax. 

Adding new characters widens the play, expanding the matrix, creating new opportunities. 

Each beat should clearly identify the beater, beatee, objective, obstacle, and the result.  Avoid repeating beats unless they become increasingly effective.  Consolidate similar beats.  

Examine the matrix for duals.  Check to see that alternatives for each beat are represented as active elements.   If a character makes gifts of pleasantness to a character, check that the giver has also tries to protect the givee from unpleasantness. This strengthens the actor’s awareness of the character as well as the audience’s.

Discard characters without objectives.  

Discard characters who are not obstacles.

Eliminate from the script all expository dialogue that does not show one character trying to get another to do something for the first character.

Eliminate calls for altruism, wisdom, historicism, realism, romanticism, materialism, scientism, and other ideas that are not used as weapons.  

Eliminate dialogue that serves only to inform the characters or the audience.  A statement from a character must be a weapon in use.  

Ideal structures are closed.  

We have reason to say that humanity cannot be completely analyzed, predictable, and well-behaved.  People eagerly fail to be confined to the classes in which we put them.  

A structure may be opened, relatively, by adding more elements, such as a new character or operation.  This creates a problem of scale for the structuralist.  The more elements, the more unwieldy the matrix. More relationships must be examined.  Outwit the structuralist by increasing the workload.  

In the lean structural play, the dialogue is the only reality.  There is nothing of substance but the pursuit of objective. Interpretation is not included.  Let the audience perform the interpretive task.

Identify objects and actions.

Identify nouns and verbs in the narration.

Extract representative features from the facts.

Relations between the elements are often more interesting than the objects themselves.  

Form is more important than content.

The 5 Card Draw poker game consists of three elements: cards, players, and chips.  

Operations consist of the ante, deal, bet, raise, fold, call, and show.  

The set is closed over the set of possible hands.  The possible hands are ranked.  

A winning hand might be followed by a losing hand, hence it is reversible.  

If the ante is zero, it's possible for a hand to result in no change.  

Consider the set of all whole numbers, including negatives and zero.  

Add to the set the element of addition.  

When any two elements are added, the result is an element already in the set, hence the set is closed over the operation.  

Any number can be added to zero to produce that number, hence the identity requirement is fulfilled.  

If, following an addition of two numbers, the operation can be undone, meaning that the process is reversible.  If 2 + 2 = 4, 4 - 2 = 2.  

Alice loves Leslie who loves Bette who loves no one. Thus Alice loves but is not loved. Leslie loves and is loved but not by the same person. Bette is loved but does not love.

The asymmetric relationship drives the action. Alice persists in her love for Leslie because she is losing him. With Alice waiting, Leslie is free to roam. Bette is unsatisfied with her asymmetry, tied to Leslie by the thread of being loved but not loving.  For amusement, she tantalizes her lover, keeping him in tow.  Leslie, with the most symmetry is most pleased.  

The relationships are generally reversible, in that any may forgive the trespasses of another and return to a seductive state. 

Time, however, is irreversible and utterly unforgiving.  The two women are especially aware of the asymmetry of time.   

The young woman is at the distant center of her social universe that wants to forget her. She is trapped at the center.  The structure is spherical. almost perfectly symmetrical in every direction.  

One or two relationships are relatively open, unbalancing the sphere, and permitting action.

When she closes the open relationships, which she does by leaving town, she is utterly isolated.  

The young man is in the distant center of his hostile social universe that wants to kill him. There is no where to turn.  All forces converge on him. 

One friend provides relief, breaking the symmetry.  

The characters exchanged role, initial to final.

The figure has high symmetry except, but the figure being small, the difference is significant.

Ruby’s matrix displays the relationships between the characters and their political support. It can be said that they derive their power from their groups. Thus the political power relationships can be talked about as the foundation for interpersonal dominance. Ethics connects to politics.

In the following chart, ‘1’ indicates a positive personal relationship to the political group.

John’s family and real estate can also be brought in as support for the Professor. Carol makes allies of them all. The symmetry is similar to the figure above.

The characters exchange relationships, initial to final. The female role, at first submissive, finally conquers the male.

The matrix does not illustrate the richness of the play but perhaps its resonance.

Using only the initial and final states, the matrix could illustrate the precipitous fall of the professor, who holds onto his dominance until he is utterly defeated.

If Carol is initially scored as in control of herself, the play has additional asymmetry. The actor playing her part would be in charge of her certainty.

John loses everything: his job, his freedom, the deposit on the house, possibly his wife and child. 

Carol achieves victory, although she suffers physically and emotionally from the battle. 

Carol wins more support from her Group. 

Two characters begin with formal cordiality and end in familiar hatred. 

Neither character wavers in their self-interest. The question is their effectivity. 

Carol helps John down the staircase of his destruction. 

Reversibility: Carol offers to retract her claim before the Tenure Committee. John sees the price that he must pay for the restoration as a profound loss.

He refuses and commits an irreversible crime. 

 Questions 

Can the play be measured in another way? 

The John claims to value his intellectual freedom

Honor? It seems like a duel, at times, ending in dishonor. 

Sexual dominance.

Fear?

The following chart illustrates occurrences of dialogue that illustrate attempts to seize control of the conversation in the play.

Matrix aken from the video with William H. Macy.

P defends S from her guilt/confession.

S offers to defend P from the committee.

Carol claims injury several times but was included in the Accuses evaluation. 

Coding was problematic: Every line seemed an attempt to seize control. 

Time division was arbitrary. Cut into scenes. 

Carol exhibited more opportunities to seize control of the conversation (47 to 33)

Carol displayed more variance in her operations from beginning to end

Carol displayed  less variance independent of time.   

Carol attempted to dominate the conversation 47 out of 80 times. 

The frequency of attempt was about once per minute. 

By identifying a dozen or so dominance-techniques that the characters used to try to seize control of the conversation, the reader can speak about the pacing, tension, morality, changes, and poetics of the play.

The very limited cast contributes to the simplicity.

The pacing of the play arises in part from the frequency (about once per minute) with which the dominance-techniques are applied. The play can be scored like a boxing match, counting the hits delivered.

There is tension: Who will win? Because the characters take their hits so well, the winner is not obvious until the end.

At the end, John has lost and he discontinues his effort.

Characters want to dominate the conversation and each other. Game-like. Barbarian.

Post-Modernity: There are no absolute rules.

The play can be talked about as if:

1. John determines the rules
2. Carol learns the rules from John
3. Carol beats him at his own game

While not appearing explicitly in the play, morality might be talked about as though it were lurking behind the play, that the play was a cautionary tale. The reader should approach this cautiously, as this is not in the play itself and is the reader’s idea.

Dialogue does not call attention to itself.

Clean and simple. Without ornamentation. Like a building whose every part holds up the building. No gingerbread. Neither Victorian nor Baroque.

Each line is driven by the desire to dominate.

John loses everything.

Desperate men do what they must to get the objects of their desire. 

The characters themselves become mere objects, steps in the maze of obstructions and opportunities for advantage. Everyone wants the good sales leads.  

It seems to be an analogue of hunting.

Interpretative drama can be a lab for postmodern experimentation.

Construct a chart with a character per row and column.

Eliminate characters whose relationships with the other characters do not change with respect to initial state.  

Choose a state to measure: Love/Hate, Respect/Disrespect, Reward/Steal, Give Pleasure/Give Pain

Code the initial and the final states

Calculate the amount of change per character

Total rows and columns

Make inferences based on the totals and changes

Initial: at first appearance of the character

Final: at last appearance of character

Loves: wishes the beloved to succeed in life

Self-Love: Will the character sacrifice himself for the benefit of another? Is the character suicidal?  

There is a severe loss by the end of the play.  From initial to final, there is a 33% loss of love.  

Hamlet is the least loving character.  

Polonius is the most loving.  

The Hamlets love the Polonians most of all. 

The Polonians love themselves more than they love the Hamlets.  

The Polonians love the Hamlets more than the Hamlets love themselves.  

The Hamlets love themselves least of all.  

At first, Hamlet can have no objection to his uncle marrying his mother.  Henry VII married his brother's widow, Kathryn.  It is the rule in some cultures.  

The murder gives Hamlet cause.  

Hamlet sees himself as being dealt out of his kingship. With Claudius and Gertrude cavorting amorously, there is the danger of another heir to the throne. 

By producing his own heir, Claudius might trump Hamlet.  

Hamlet's chastisement of Gertrude after the mousetrap scene is designed to drive her from her marriage bed and deny Claudius an heir.  

Claudius might see an advantage in preventing the marriage of Hamlet. 

This division in the Hamlet family contrasts with the much more monolithic Polonians.  

Polonius works for the king; that is his job. 

However, Polonius' grandson could become king if Hamlet and Ophelia married. Hence his interference of Hamlet's trifling with Ophelia. Polonius wants a marriage, as does Ophelia.  Polonius must manage the affair between Hamlet and Ophelia to promote marriage and legitimatization.  

Is Ophelia pregnant?  

Polonius brings the madness of Hamlet to the attention of Claudius and Gertrude.  Ophelia is the cause of Hamlet’s madness.  He hopes that the king and queen will recognize that the cure is also his Ophelia.  

Hamlet detests this self-serving aspect of Polonius. 

Hamlet detests Ophelia's complicity in the schemes of Polonius.  Perhaps she wants to be queen much more than Hamlet's husband.  

How does Polonius view the prospect of Claudius and Gertrude producing an heir? Could he do anything about it other than promote the marriage between Hamlet and Ophelia?  

What do the king and queen think about the machinations of Polonius?  

At her funeral, Gertrude says she wanted Ophelia as Hamlet's wife.  

Laertes has an avuncular interest in a nephew on the throne.  

Can Claudius afford to be indifferent to a marriage between Hamlet and Ophelia?  Hamlet's son would be a wild card.  

The battle between the families provides a solution to the question: Why does Hamlet detest Polonius?  Why does Hamlet feel no remorse in killing Polonius?  In some productions, Polonius is portrayed as a doddering fool.  If he is an agent for his family, he can be portrayed as a clever, self-serving, and manipulating councilor with a very definite plan, covering it with his foolishness, leading the royals to a conclusion.  Yet another excuse for Hamlet's disdain of him.  

The family battle provides a reason for Hamlet's disdain of Ophelia ("Get thee to a nunnery") and even his earlier mysterious appearance to her in her room.  Perhaps he loved her but saw their lives moving into a corrupt phase and that Ophelia was complicit in the change.  She worked in her own interest.  

For her part, Ophelia, with her father dead, loses her protector.  Laertes will not inherit his father's position as the king's councilor.  If Ophelia is pregnant, she may not be able to go to the nunnery as that service might cost more than she has.  She has lost everything.  And she has nothing more to lose, hence her mocking of the king.  

Hamlet, Ophelia, and Laertes are self-sacrificing. 

Hamlet is suicidal.  

Ophelia commits suicide.  

Claudius and Polonius are hedonists. They love themselves from beginning to end. 

The hedonists (40) are in more loving relationships than the stoics (28).  

Not counting their self-love, 36 and 24.  

Gertrude changes. 

Reversibility in structure provides symmetry and conservation.  

In comedy, people can fall in and out and back in love again and again.  

In the old days, marriage was irreversible and thus could become tragic.  

Death is irreversible.  

Birth is reversible by death.  

Is death reversible by birth?  

All six characters die.  

Each researcher may generate their own rules.  

Even using the same rules, different researchers can derive a different set of values for the relationships.  

Each researcher may measure a different metric:  Love, Respect, Fear. 

Each researcher may view a different production or read a different edition of the text.  

Hamlet's final hatred of Claudius is certain. Hamlet kills Claudius with the poisoned sword. 

Clearly, after Hamlet discovers the poisoned sword, he detests Laertes and tries to kill Laertes, although they forgive each other as they die. I still code them as non-Loving finally. 

Self-love: Claudius loves himself above all. He conspires twice to have his wife's son killed. He chooses not to save his wife from poisoning. 

Ophelia refers to Hamlet's love letters early and so I code Hamlet as loving her initially, although perhaps not at first appearance of Ophelia.

Hamlet treats Polonius with increasing disdain and eventually kills him. 

Barnardo, Horatio, Marcellus, the Ghost, Fortinbras, Balderic, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern do not change in their relationships with any of the other characters during the course of the play and so are left out. 

Universal conditions such as 'Everyone loves everyone' or 'There is no such thing as Love' disallow variation and are therefore useless in this analysis. 

For totals, I add Loved and Is Beloved, which gives a better picture of the character's relationships. If the Is Beloved were not added, a character who does not love at all but is loved by all would have a total of zero. 

Why does Hamlet kill Polonius?  The action results in his deportation and the entire accidental machinery of the pirate chase.  Hamlet loses control after killing Polonius and does not regain control until his return from England.  The murder gets him out of town so that he can return for Ophelia's funeral.  

Claudius has already sent for Rosencrantz and Gildenstern. 

Hamlet has been swindled out of his kingdom.  

Hamlet does not care at all who Gertrude sleeps with, except that Claudius may produce his own heir and Hamlet further displaced.  

Claudius does not want Hamlet to marry Ophelia; they might produce a child and displace Claudius.  And since Claudius assumed the throne by murder, the way down for him is steep and deep. The chasm is without mercy.  

Gertrude wants Hamlet to marry Ophelia and produce a child.  Gertrude wants to be queen of the house. She is pleased to be rid of Hamlet Senior. Despite all the praise lavished on the conveniently dead, he was not the party animal she has discovered in Claudius. She is satisfied with the results.

Polonius wants to be the father or grandfather of a king. In the Brevity scene, Polonius leads the Royals toward a conclusion.  Hamlet is mad with love and Ophelia is the cure.  Therefore Hamlet should marry Ophelia. Gertrude plays up to Polonius, approaching him while reproaching him, more teasing Claudius than Polonius, while Claudius glares at the possibility.  

Hamlet toys with Ophelia.  She could be useful.  Her loyalties are with her father and brother. Hamlet is her chance to be queen. Hamlet is aware that he has a child coming and he can play the card whenever he wishes.  

The bedroom scene is perfect just way the way everyone does it.  Hamlet's objective is to poison the relationship between Gertrude and Claudius.  He has given them some more time by not killing Claudius.  

In Ophelia's last scene, she has lost her father and protector. Hamlet holds her distant: she will not be queen. She has nothing. She has much pelvic blood on her white dress and is vengefully glad to be rid of it.  She had not given it a name. Gertrude is hurt by the loss while Claudius can afford to act stoic.  

Hedda’s environment is claustrophobic: her social world is closing.

Her best marriage prospect is Tesman; while not at all interesting, he is at least safe and she will have social opportunity. She abandons the open possibility of adventure for relatively closed safety.

However, Tesman’s position at the university is not assured and he must cut back on expenses. No coach with a driver? Not even a saddle horse? She is trapped in the rural manor house.

No, she cannot be queen of the house: Tesman’s Aunt Julianna is first in Tesman’s limited affections and now that her sister has died, Julianna is sure to move in with Hedda and Tesman.

Her safety in the house is threatened by Commissioner Brock, who wants her as his toy. She is able to keep him at arm’s length.

No, she may not go to the party. It is for men only and their riotous behavior. She must stay at home with her even more socially deprived friend.

She sees her friend Luvborg as the soul of adventure and appreciates the heavy fee he must pay for his freedom. He is shunned and condemned, at war with disgrace.

Perhaps, she thinks, all freedom is doomed to self-destruction. She provides him the cause and the means of his destruction, incidentally providing Brock with the ammunition for sexual blackmail and her world utterly closes.

She cannot even talk about it. What she is thinking is concealed from the others. Occasionally she lets go of an aside that suggests her inner life.

Death is an irreversible process.

How do you begin structural analysis?

Use more than one approach, trying several to see if any yield valuable information.

In a work of drama, assume that the characters are the elements and assume one or more relationships between the characters. The relationship can be loves/hates, dominates/submits to, etc.

For each relationship, list the characters twice in a column, once labeled for initial state and once labeled for a final state.

List each character in a row.

Code each relationship, character-to-character, once for the beginning (or first appearance) and once for the end or last appearance. Include the characters’ relationship with themselves.

Identify characters that do not change and eliminate them from the matrix.

For each character, total the number of Loves and Is Loved, initial and final.

Calculate the amount of change per character and in total for the play. Expect that tragedy will have a net loss.

Assume that the characters each have an objective that only one character can achieve. For example, there can be only one king or a man can have only one wife.

Assume that there are a small number of techniques that the characters can use to further these objectives. The techniques can be vulgar, such as flattery, bribery, or threats of force.

For each character, list the techniques in a column and mark a ‘1’ for each occurrence of that technique in all the lines or beats in the play.

List nouns as elements and verbs as operations.  

You won't know where it will take you.  

Knowing what will happen means less reason to do it.  

Art is not necessarily the manifestation of a plan nor imagination's slave, remembered and then jotted down.  

Art is not necessarily a delivery service for philosophy, politics, or art.  Let the pack mule throw off his burden and dance for us! 

Art might not so much as map these topics as make them unnecessary, to include, exceed, evolve, and obliterate them. 

Comedy is a food-fight.

Tragedy is a fight to the death.

In either case, the author’s job is to provide ammunition.  

The characters must be resourceful with respect to intelligence and persistence. The characters must stay in the running to be eligible for the increasingly high stakes. No one is going to help you. No one has time.  

Plot is not a member of the structure, nor is premise, theme, opposition, or the author or his ideas. 

The well-adjusted character is useless. They stay out of trouble. Drama is the collision of obsessed characters, the intersection of their hungers. Characters take risks.  They are willing to go to extremes.   Characters kill.

By their operations, characters attempt to influence each other to advance their individual causes. 

It is the exposure, by means of the operations, that we in the audience see character and establish our participation in the production, our relationship with the characters, and our investment in the outcome.  

Characters move toward their objectives. They drive relentlessly around, over, and through the opposition.  

A player reaches for an object, trying to possess it exclusively, but the object is illusive.  The player experiences tension. 

Characters raise the stakes of the game they are playing.   Character drives tension.   

If a state of tension is an anti-objective, one that is to be avoided, then tension is part of the structure.  

If tension is an overlay then tension is not a part of the structure. If  the writer is brought into the structure, the play inherits all the objectives of the author as well as those of the characters.  

As tension is can be an overlay, so can irony, climax, and other techniques of exposition. The human preference for the dualistic in art can be implemented structurally by coupling an action with its opposite, thus making the process reversible. 

The audience is convinced by irony.  

The dramatist creates something out of nothing with irony. With contrast, order apparently arises from chaos.

Exposition is the provision of interpretation for the benefit of the audience. Exposition is the relationship between the production and the audience.

The audience can be viewed as an element in a larger structure that includes the production, the house, the promotion, and critics.  

As each character raises the stakes, at some point they risk breaking the rules. The rules can include the law and subsequent punishment, which can defeat their quest for their objectives.  

Climax is an expected event in the relationship between audience and character.  

The restricted set of operations the players can perform convincingly on the audience closes the production, closure being fundamental to structure.  

Physical violence is difficult to stage realistically. Fight scenes on stage are seldom convincing. The climax can be achieved when a character approaches physical violence. Will he strike? He gets louder and more physical, approaching closely, menacing. You don’t know what he’s going to do.

The play should end swiftly after the climax. Count the bodies and briefly expose the new equilibrium.

The structure does not have a purpose. It has only its elements and operations.  It is as blind as an amoeba.  

In drama, each character has an objective, which is generally self-indulgent.

The author may choose to design the story as an example of that kind of behavior.  The author might also make an aesthetic or philosophic judgment and set his characters to the task of illustrating his views.   The author takes risks before a sophisticated audience that has had much experience with plays, movies, and TV drama.

In both cases, the drama threatens to open up into an expression of the author's opinions, ceasing to be dramatic.  The characters lose their autonomy.  They are directed in their behavior by off-stage forces.  

Theme is the thinnest shadow of drama.

When I say anything, I’m advised to consider all my critics, dead and alive, and everything they might say.  This includes grammarians, philosophers, sarcastic politicians, stubborn barroom disputants, the man on the street, scientists, science fiction buffs, the man about town, parents, school teachers, as well as my very own personal choir of superegos in their incessant cacophony of praise and chastisement.  

Additionally, I must be wary of nihilists, anarchists, democrats, monarchists, republicans, protestants, catholics, animists, in short, members of every possible tribe, committee, posse, discussion group or lynch mob with an opinion and, much more importantly, the force to impose it.  

Madmen and the very young, the disenfranchised, the ancients and those stuffed away far into the future, all the unheard, must be brought in, heard, and their pronouncements registered.  

Lastly, I must watch ever-vigilant with respect to the lone wolf and his singular genius lightning-striking out of a clear, blue sky with his concise incision.  

All these considerations must be packed efficiently into every word-choice, inserted carefully into every paragraph, appended clause-like onto every sentence, prepended to every noun, adverb on adjective, on and on, until the monolith is bullet-proofed into majestic immortality.  

Only then may I publish my modest thought.  

Each time a new character is added, the total number of relationships that require illustration in the script increases: 2(n+1)**2 - 2(n)**2, 2((n+1)**2 – n**2) being loving and loved, and the matrix square.  

More generally, the additional number of relationships to be illustrated: m((n+1)**p – n**p)

where

n is the number of characters,

m the number of states per dimension (the number of values of the relationship, minimum 2),

p the number of dimensions,

If the matrix is cubic, such as when wealth or power is added independently to love, the complexity becomes harder to manage.  At some number of dimensions, data entry becomes daunting and analysis forbidding.  

Possible dimensions

A loves B, A is loved by B.  Two states: True, False.  

A has power over B, A is powered over by B

Adding the author adds more than a single character.  Your entire choir of superegos tags along.  Not only does every critic hover over your shoulder as you dab judiciously at the words, but also several versions of yourself, some providing the continuous accolade you crave, others scourging your self-esteem with comments so personal only you can understand.  And don’t forget the legions of distractions and their camp-followers.   In a few cases, weather is an issue.  

Art must be there, in the play.  Everyone says so.  Some will claim they saw him anyway, even when he had no lines nor even appeared onstage.  Perhaps he lurked in the dressing room or wandered the lobby or posed as homeless with his hand out on the street.  Others will say they didn’t see him at all, in spite of the glorious lines.  Art could cartwheel around the stage and they'd miss it.  Just be cute.  Sit on the couch neither watching TV nor reading, neither speaking nor listening, defending yourself against all charges with a haughty patience.  

Political parties add huge new squares, unless you think the party speaks with one voice, which it does not.  

Audience.  Generally assumed to speak with one voice, although thought to be different from city to city and certainly from size to size.  Remember that crowds can get mean.  

Characters who pursue their own objectives using their own resources are empowered individuals.  

This is consistent with method-acting and with views of the individual as an independent entity.  

Actors play to the audience.  That's why actors play. 

The relationship between audience and production might be more interesting than either.  

The relationship between the audience and the cast is closed.  There are certain things that theatre-goers will not pay to witness. 

Theatre-goers are well rehearsed in entry and exit, laughing and crying, being startled and being bored.  There also known to make cunning comments over wine and cheese in the lobby.  

Structurally, politics is a system of groups of humans who operate on other groups. Each group is a system of individuals who operate on each other. The individual consciously acts as an agent of a larger group, representing his interests.

Practical politics can be thought an extension of pre-historic troop-behavior of council, debate, and consensus. In the oldest of times, there were no kings but only speakers.

Modern politics includes the king as concept, as a virtual person, someone you never meet, whose public relations effort precedes him.

The concept of sacrifice is the nucleus of order and disorder in politics. The group requires the sacrifice the individual is loath to make. Sacrifice is tied to our ability to conceptualize. Sacrifice is fundamental to the Bible, Bhagavad Gita, Koran, and the Tao.  Sacrifice is the test of the claim of altruism.  

A political drama can take as its structure the neophyte political agent, still wet behind the ears, dripping with self-indulgent ideals. And now he must sacrifice something to demonstrate his loyalty to the group.

Many tragic dramas can be modeled as confrontations between an individual and representatives of Law.  The barbarian encounters the wall.  

Law and History: These three periods can have similar distance from Law.  

Ancient: PreLaw

Sacrifice of self for community, language, culture

Modern: Law

Classification as solution

If the operations of a structure can be influenced from outside the structure, for example from another structure, the operations can be turned on, turned off, increased or decreased in frequency or amplitude.  

Operationally, a structure might be dormant. Like a gene, it can be turned on.

Structures can be cross-coupled. They can turn each other on, in which case there needs to be a governor to keep them under control. Saturation might be the governor.  

Operations within a structure might influence other operations. The possession-operation might excite the sexual-operation and vice versa. The distinct structures composing the individual persons might influence each other, mutually exciting.  

In addition to choirs of advice, the superego keeps all memory, including recent flashes that have proved useful lately in placating or deflating the persistent hunger of the libido. Supplied with the memories of hot stoves and unrequited love, the superego keeps a handy set of ploys and bribes that have blunted the insatiable and self-destructive demands of the id. The superego is a repository of experience abstracted into ideals, cautionary tales, and other templates of behavior.  

Adapted to present circumstance, the ego is the current version of the history of bruises that masks, protects, isolates, and connects creature with environment. The ego personified appears in court, judged and judge.  Both institutions crave a peek under the mask.

Of the three, any may fire anytime. Or not. Each is highly autonomous but none is overwhelmingly influential. Each has its own set of fantasies. They communicate with the pleasures and pains of the body and derive an ad hoc algebra of experience that is intermittently undermined, supported, or amended by any. Generally the ego and superego conspire to suppress the id's outrageous and ill-timed demands. Theatre can be talked about as one of the algebras of experience, whose elements are the characters and the objects of their desire. Each character under magnification reveals his underlying triad resembling a pair of parents holding their child, his hand outstretched for the object of desire.

Obviously, one of the three can get impetuous and seize the body, ordering it about; even the body may seize the body. Even events in the environment, outside of the triumvirate dividual, might compel the body to go there and do that. But each entity in the structure, in leadership, is subject to attack or reinforcement from the others and to head-on collisions with reality, which tend to log significant experience in the superego's memory, associating theory and what actually happens.

A single seat of consciousness might reside in any of the three or in the changing relationship with each other, a logical argument whose resultant fires the body into action, commanding the limbs to move and the brain to think. Most simply: A vote carried by at least two, with the possibility of usurpation.

Perhaps a judgment of individual consciousness is merely a convenience, a legal fiction, existentially unnecessary. Presumably the structure would change and so the idea of the change would have to track the actual change to be reliable.

The other, as a single object, is an over-simplification but might be useful earliest in the career of the human infant, before learning of many others, very much like you, that you are one of their others. A consciousness functioning in this kind environment can navigate adaptively on a variety of levels. A large part of the other is the culture and all its inherited committees, constitutions, histories, and sciences, which are more or less imprinted on the superego's encyclopedia, all set to music. It is unrestricted compared to the closed individual.

The other, as a single object, is useful in modeling the closed person who has everyone classified, preferring a policy of instant defense. It is difficult for him to share in the traveling harmonies resonating in social relationships. The closed person may seek complexity, solution, and spontaneity within himself. Or even to open up all at once, at an odd time, bringing in the sun, and then wrapping himself up again in his long cloak to mutter on home and keep his dream. The paranoid schizophrenic, the megalomaniac, the narcissist, even the single-minded, have reduced the entire universe in all its detail to a single object that must be controlled, possessed, eliminated, or retained. In that case the struggle, the operations of the character-elements, are internal. He might attempt to quiet the inner advice, deny the ravenous hunger, or drop his mask.

The other can not be possessed for long. It is the other. It is the domain of facts and the immense field of what actually happens with all its innumerable detail and its nearer personalities. The world will always exceed its description, attempts to reduce the world to a single point, a sum, a joke, a system of equations, a possession notwithstanding.

The other might imprison the individual, who is closed in from the outside. Naturally uninhibited, wishes to escape. But the body might be limited in what it may do. The character may attempt to open or close, awaken or quiet, eliminate or retain the other. The domain at play includes structural elements outside the individual. The struggle is external, the world.

And of course no one is purely open or closed. We know these terms from personal experience, which is supposed to inform our choir of advice as to its song list.

Existential angst notwithstanding, does the creature have a real need for self-consciousness, however named? The autonomous firing of passion, memory, and mask accounts for the adaptability and variability of the structure. Its physical existence is justified by its physical success. When coupled to the body and to other personalities in the real environment, a set of harmonic exchanges occur between and within individuals. Effort is made to achieve mutually desired objectives and results are tested in conversation.

There are ways to talk about something without name or depiction. One might think there might be someone home. What is done obscures who has done it.

The audience, as voyeur, might think someone is behind the door, rattling his chains. In addition to what the character is going to do next, the voyeur might make inferences about what lies beneath the mask, especially ideas of the form "...how the character really is...".

With all creatures that flee harm, individual fear is amplified by the species fear invested in us long ago. In spite of the insistent cravings of the id, it's about much more than you.

Hedonism is the science of the Self.

The Self is a collection of masks and a mask-maker.

The mask-maker is playful.

The mask-maker is coy. The mask-maker can be seen briefly as she discards one mask for another. An attempt to see the mask-maker reveals another mask.

Masks are made of material delivered by the culture to the mask-maker, even in infancy.

Gender is a mask.

The mask-maker is greedy for participation and reputation, power and pleasure.

Political discourse is a chorus of masks, even within one person. Any person can have a political discussion with himself. The masks just start talking.

To the impartial observer, political discourse between many Selves is not much different from a discussion within one Self. When involving two or more persons, the personalities appear to dissolve into each other. That is to say, one mask of one person might appear to be between two masks of another. It becomes difficult to say who is who.

The solution (many collections of masks juxtaposed with each other) is not necessarily harmonious. The solution can be chaotic.

Law is the science of the Other.

The Law is, of course, the resultant of many Selves, each a resultant of many masks.

All resultants are fictions.

Law, as an abstraction, is cast and conservative. Immutable.

Law, as expressed, is a collection of the utterings of masks and as such is gratuitous, random, chaotic, Self-serving, and paradoxical. After all, people express Law. People are collections of masks. The expression of Law is political discourse.

Law tries to limit the playfulness of the Self.

Law includes what we normally call science, which is a collection of expressed topics including physics and mathematics. These Laws are thought to be absolute. One cannot violate the law of gravity. But of course these Laws are resultants of collections of masks.

Law includes what we normally call law, that is civil and criminal law, as well as morality, which is extra-legal law. They are thought by some to be absolute. One can (but may not) violate these laws.

The relationship is more interesting than the elements.

The Self craves discourse. The Self plays in political discourse. The Self is driven into discourse by instincts for reputation and fraternity, a hunger for recognition, and curiosity regarding most any activity. Seeing and being seen. The young mask-maker learns new masks in discourse.

The attempt to draw a boundary between Self and Other is a rich field of discussion, endlessly folding back on itself, trying to close down and solve the problem, or open up and admit new solutions, becoming an agile traverse between opposition to conjunction and back again, playfully. The masks jockey for position, reputation, and influence.

The mask-maker attempts to manage her reputation, trying to do good while playing, trying to integrate personal goals with communal goals, mixing business with pleasure.

The intersection between private and public is the most exciting and dangerous of situations. The stakes are high. The greatest glory jostles intimately with ignominy. The mask-maker must call up all his art. Other masks elect some to high office. Others are crucified. Most are ignored.

The paradox of barbarism versus civilization can be expressed in the theorem:

Law attempts to contain Self and Selfishness.

Law can be transformed into barbarity as the container (a collection of Selves) asserts its selfishness, acting in its own interests.

The theorem is fundamental to the Freud/Lacan model of the human psyche.

The observer is really just another collection of masks.

It is impossible to merely observe. The observer juxtaposes her masks with those of the observed.

The impartial observer is a fiction.

The observer positions himself, with respect to the observed, as an outsider, voyeur, assuming a distant and lonely post unnatural to the Self, who hungers for participation.

After some delay, in triumph, the observer returns to the larger discourse with her tales.

After the initiation and all its mask and pretence and its excuses and its laughter, steps forth the Dividual, as it is, unaccommodated, strength and weakness apparent in their brutality and failure, ordinary, classified, and utterly rejectable.

In detail, the Dividual is a chaotic network of associations, nodes being the reverberating memories of collisions between its ravenous instincts and particular physical events.  

Sometimes reverberating nodes resonate.  

Instinct drives the associations, transforming energy, transmitting across the network, and causing physical movement.  It must lunge toward the object of its desire. The Self is merely one of the nodes in the network of memory, only a few being necessary to survival.

The Dividual exists within a larger social network of other Dividuals.  The Dividual's nodes can be points of contacts, past or present, with other Dividuals.  In fact, most of the collisions that produce memory are social collisions.  Thus there is no real difference between memory and experience.  

In this model, we share memory and experience, which are propagated throughout the supernetwork of Dividuals.  

The Dividual might return again and again to an idea of the Self, or the idea of Self, as a node, might fire again and again.  

Structuralism succeeds in positing plausible analogues to human systems.  It accounts for some variation and autonomy.  

In the sense of a predictor of human behavior, structuralism fails because humans tend to open structures they discover.  

When we understand ourselves, we change who we are.  Our behavior is no longer predictable.   

The very success of the understanding eventually leads to a new structure. In as much as we succeed in understanding ourselves, we escape that understanding. The structure is no longer closed and not being closed, it is not a structure. 

Thus our self-understanding creates a limit without creating a border. We are limited by our ignorance and obey our discoveries about ourselves until we become aware of the discoveries. We become free by knowledge.

For example, in abandoning authority and tradition, we’ve raised the individual to new heights, creating a simultaneous culture of isolation and cooperation. People are more isolated than ever and groups have become awesomely powerful, not because of a pyramidal domination but because of a new mode of yielding up the power of the individual, a new mode of social existence that uses individuality to the groups’ advantage. 

At the same time there is a great cooperation welling up within humanity. The stability of the planet’s biosphere, including the human’s who are taking responsibility for it, depends on the cooperation. Does it require the sacrifice of the individual?

The isolated individual can barely see this opening up of cultural possibility. In future times, after the next great, traumatic, transformational wave of change, our generation will be looked at, if regarded at all, as selfish, self-self-interested, and closed.

Most artistic and technological accomplishments are passed along rather anonymously.

Any endeavor is about managing complexity. Writing a play often means inventing relationships between characters. The characters themselves can be very complex.

Structural analysis abstracts to identify certain kinds of features that indicate the underlying structure of the data being observed.

Other methods of dramatization consist of an agenda of do’s and don’ts. But where do they come from? Or intuition? How do you get it?

Objective: Write a 10-minute character-driven play ensemble

Time commitment: 4 hours

Materials: ream of paper, white board, markers, copy machine, tables, chairs, pens/pencils

List Monosyllabic first names

Dan

Doris

Gwen

Rob

Pete

Paul

Jim

Jill

Moderator chooses first 3 characters with a unique first initial

Dan

Gwen

Rob

List possible social roles

Yuppies

Hippies

Homeless

Addicts

Gay

Farmers

Members elect 1 social role

Yuppies

List possible mutually exclusive objectives

Money

Reputation

Dominance

Sex

Members elect a single objective (through-line)

Money

List possible techniques that each character could use to satisfy the objective

Flattery

Bribery

Force

Murder

Alliance

Deceive

Each member anonymously writes a single unit of dialogue on 1 page: (1 hour)

Clearly Label: A tries to ___(technique)____ B, satisfying the objective (money)

Dialogue

Stage directions

Clearly Label: Succeeds/Fails

Repeat with new technique

Repeat with new technique

Moderator collects all sheets

Photo copy all collected sheets

Distribute copies to all members

Independent edition (1 hour)

Eliminate or resolve beats that are not clearly Successes or Failures.

Eliminate or combine beats that are similar with respect to characters and techniques.

Eliminate or strengthen beats that do not satisfy the objective.

Identify 1 beat where the action approaches physical violence.

Move violent beat to the end of the script.

Members volunteer their results

Moderator chooses 3 results

Cast and read 3 results (1 hour)

The scripts can be developed further using the following procedures.

Character-Relationship Matrix

Construct a character-by-character matrix that lists the change in relationship between each pair of characters from start to finish.

Check that evidence of each change is actually in the story.

Time-Matrix

Construct a time line for the story for each character.

Enter the start and finish relationships from the Character relationship Matrix.

Itemize each point in the timeline between start and finish where the relationship is under pressure to change.

Check that each instance of change is evidenced in the script.

____________________________________________________________________

Jim Strope

jims@sfsalvo.com