The Architecture of Story

A Technical Guide for the Dramatic Writer

The University of Chicago Press

Contents

Technical Considerations

A dramatic script reflects certain technical decisions that the writer makes about how to present the story. Such decisions center on genre, style, and dramatic focus, as well as the rules governing how this particular story will be revealed to the audience. Other considerations include the play's framework — its division into acts and scenes — and the stage directions that run throughout the script to communicate the writer's vision of the play to those who will be involved in its production.

GENRE

Theatrical works can be organized into different genres, or categories, that reflect the writer's point of view about the story being presented. Knowing the genre can help the writer make more informed writing and marketing decisions. Genre can also help producers and audiences find the types of plays they prefer. There are two basic theatrical genres:

Comedy, a humorous story about a normal person in laughable circumstances or a laughable person in normal circumstances who experiences a significant rise in fortune. The story typically moves from unhappiness to happiness. Common characteristics: fast pace, funny situations, exaggeration, incongruity, and matters of rebirth and renewal. Examples: The Odd Couple by Neil Simon, Chinglish by David Henry Hwang, Becky Shaw by Gina Gionfriddo.

Tragedy, a serious story about a good person, usually an important and powerful one, who suffers a significant downfall due to his or her own flaws and missteps. The story typically moves from happiness to unhappiness. Common characteristics: extreme and sometimes dangerous situations, painful emotions, inevitability of failure, catharsis, and a moral lesson. Examples: Hamlet by William Shakespeare, Fences by August Wilson, Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller.

Through the ages, other theatrical genres and subgenres have evolved as blends or subsets of these two basic types of plays. For example, while the term "drama" is used broadly to describe works written for the stage, it is also used more narrowly to indicate a genre of play:

Drama in this sense is neither a comedy nor a tragedy. It is a serious story about one or more characters at a time of flux and crisis in their lives. Common characteristics: intense conflict, strong emotions, and personal themes. Examples: A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry, Buried Child by Sam Shepard, The Night Alive by Conor McPherson.

Other common genres include:

Tragicomedy, as the name suggests, is a mix of sad and funny story elements. It may be a series of tragic events with a happy ending or a series of comedic events with an unhappy ending. Examples: Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekhov, Angels in America by Tony Kushner, Between Riverside and Crazy by Stephen Adly Guirgis.

Farce, a form of comedy, is designed to evoke laughter but relies more on buffoonery, physical humor, and ludicrously improbable situations. Common characteristics: extreme exaggeration, repetition, and two-dimensional characters entangled in frequent and elaborate plot twists. Examples: The Miser by Molière, What the Butler Saw by Joe Orton, Noises Off by Michael Frayn.

Melodrama is a story about good triumphing over evil. The story typically moves from happiness to unhappiness to happiness again. Common characteristics: strong plot, archetypal characters, exaggerated conflict, sensational elements, and a protagonist who is a victim of circumstances. Examples: Desire under the Elms by Eugene O'Neill, The Mousetrap by Agatha Christie, The Bells by Theresa Rebeck.

Issue play is a story organized around a social or political issue and the author's ideas about how to address it. The purpose is to arouse the audience emotionally, teach them a lesson, and provoke them to take certain new actions in their lives. Examples: Keely and Du by Jane Martin, The Laramie Project by Moises Kaufman, Fires in the Mirror by Anna Deavere Smith.

These genres can be adapted in various ways to create countless other genres and subgenres, such as black comedy, romantic comedy, satire, docudrama, historical drama, courtroom drama, fable, science fiction, fantasy, mystery/thriller, experimental drama, and more.

* DOUBT: A PARABLE

Genre: Drama

Doubt depicts the efforts of a Catholic elementary school principal to expose and expel a suspected pedophile priest. Because of the serious subject matter, intense conflict, emotional themes, and mixed outcome, the play can be classified as drama.

* TOPDOG/UNDERDOG

Genre: Tragicomedy

Topdog/Underdog explores the competition between two brothers who have been forced by social isolation and poverty to share a single furnished room. Because it combines humor with a serious theme and unhappy ending, the play can be classified as tragicomedy. According to playwright Parks, "Comedy and tragedy can exist side by side, and can exist in the same moment, which is what this play is all about."

* THE CLEAN HOUSE

Genre: Comedy

The Clean House introduces us to a pair of married doctors who met in anatomy class over a dead body, a Brazilian cleaning woman who would rather be a comedian, a restless housewife who secretly cleans her sister's house, and an exotic older cancer patient who falls in love with her surgeon. Because of the play's light approach to serious issues, humorous characters, and uplifting ending, The Clean House can be classified as comedy.

ANALYZING YOUR STORY

Define and explore the genre of a play that you are writing or have already written.

STORY CHARACTERISTICS

• How serious is the subject matter and theme of your story?

• How simple or complex are your characters? For example, do they consistently display the same dominant traits or do they undergo changes and embody contradictions?

• How simple or complex is the plot?

• What primary emotional response do you want from the audience?

• Does the story have a happy ending, unhappy ending, or mixed ending?

• How would you define the genre of your play?

GENRE

• How closely does your play match common characteristics of your genre? If you are writing tragedy, for example, are the characters fleshed out enough for the audience to empathize with their plight? If you are writing comedy, is it funny?

• Think about the type of producer and audience your genre will attract. What expectations might they have? Does your play work toward or against those expectations, and how?

• Think about the desired audience for your play. Do you need to target your characters or story more to this audience? If so, how?

• Are there any "rules" of your genre that you wish to break? If so, how and why?

• In promoting your play to theatre producers or audiences, what elements of your story will you stress to stir their interest? How do these elements fit your genre?

STYLE

Style is the manner in which characters and story events are depicted in both the writing and the staging of a play. Style encompasses all of the play's elements, including sets, props, costumes, light design, sound design, and acting. There are two basic types of style:

Realistic, or representational, style uses empathetic characters, everyday speech, "slice of life" situations, and emotional themes to create the illusion of real life without acknowledging the audience, as in most plays by Henrik Ibsen, Lynne Nottage, and David Mamet. Writers who favor this approach need to decide how lifelike their plays will be. For example, 'Night, Mother by Marsha Norman closely mirrors the real world by setting the story in one place, a country home, and by letting the dramatic action unfold in real time. As a result, there are no set changes or scene breaks to undercut the illusion of real life in progress. Edmond by David Mamet also strives to imitate real life but does so more selectively. Because the play spans a period of months and unfolds in more than twenty different settings, the storytelling has been compressed and composed to fit a playing time of less than ninety minutes on a single stage.

Nonrealistic, or presentational, style may use archetypal characters, exaggeration, distortion, fragmentation, repetition, symbolism, or other imaginative devices to create an artificial reality that — in its contrast to the real world — illuminates the human condition. Such techniques are often designed to keep the audience emotionally detached enough to remember they are watching a play. Settings may be strange or otherworldly, with lighting and sound designs that enhance the unreal atmosphere. The events of the story also may be unusual and the speech of the characters stylized. Characters may speak directly to the audience. For example, plays by Bertolt Brecht, Eugène Ionesco, and José Rivera tend to be presentational.

Nonrealism can take many forms, such as magic realism, expressionism, surrealism, impressionism, romanticism, postmodernism, verse drama, musical theatre, and more. Writers who favor a presentational approach need to decide how nonrealistic their plays will be. In some cases, an ordinary world gives rise to supernatural, dreamlike, or other fantastic beings or events, as in Caryl Churchill's Cloud 9, where time shifting and gender bending are routine matters, or Rajiv Joseph's Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, where Baghdad during the Iraq war is transformed into an unpredictable realm of ghosts. In other cases, objective reality is replaced by a new world, often an absurd one, as in Samuel Beckett's Endgame, where the last survivors of an apocalypse live out their last days in a bleak shelter at the end of time.

While a play may be fully realistic or nonrealistic, many writers combine elements of the two styles. Arthur Miller, for example, in After the Fall combines the representational — emotional depictions of real-life events — and the presentational — a character who addresses the audience directly and a setting composed of three platforms without walls or conventional furniture except for a chair. Whether a play is realistic, nonrealistic, or a mix of both, it has its own specific style created for it by the writer and reinforced by the theatrical artists who bring their talents to a production.

* DOUBT: A PARABLE

Style: Realism

The style of Doubt is realistic in that it depicts settings, characters, language, and story events that mirror everyday life. There are no presentational elements.

* TOPDOG/UNDERDOG

Style: Hyperrealism

The style of Topdog/Underdog is hyperrealism in that it depicts real-life settings, characters, language, and story events, but does so in a heightened manner. While everything that happens could conceivably occur in the natural world, the story features extremely unusual elements, for example, an African-American man named Lincoln whose job is to dress up as Abraham Lincoln and be shot at in an arcade by would-be assassins with phony pistols. References to this job include strange details, such as a "Best Customer" who shows up regularly and whispers profundities into Honest Abe's right ear before shooting him on the left. The play also includes presentational elements, such as inner-life monologues that let us hear a character's thoughts.

* THE CLEAN HOUSE

Style: Magic realism

Though much of the plot centers on the mundane tasks of housekeeping, The Clean House presents a world where the boundaries of time and space are occasionally blurred so that an apple tossed off a balcony overlooking the sea, for example, can drop down into a white living room far away. It is also a realm in which characters can speak directly to the audience and share visual images from their imaginations, where it may snow in a living room, and where a perfect joke can cause someone literally to die laughing.

Because it weaves fantastic elements into an otherwise ordinary environment, the style of the play is magic realism, which has roots in Latin American fiction. This style choice may explain why two of the play's characters are from South America and why they sometimes speak in untranslated Portuguese. In keeping with common characteristics of magic realism, the play explores the mysteries of everyday life, but tends to do so in a matter-of-fact way, implying that the magical is normal and does not, therefore, require special attention or explanation.

ANALYZING YOUR STORY

Identify the style of your play. Is it realistic, nonrealistic, or a mix of both?

IF THE STYLE IS REALISTIC ...

• Ideally, your characters appear to be real-life people with whom an audience can empathize. For each principal character, what are his or her most empathetic traits?

• The most lifelike set is three-dimensional and fully rendered. If your story takes place in multiple locations, it may not be feasible to build a full set for each one. Do you need to eliminate or combine any locations so that the sets can be more realistic?

• Would the addition of any particular props or costumes enhance the realism of the story?

• Are there lighting or sound directions that can be added to, or removed from, the script to make it feel more realistic?

• Uninterrupted action most closely resembles how everyday life happens. Can any scenes be combined or eliminated to reduce the number of scene breaks?

• Realistic dialogue has the form and feel of everyday speech. How realistic is your dialogue now?

• Are there any events in the script that work against realism because of how or when they occur?

• Do you need to do further research to flesh out an unusual or complicated event that the audience may find hard to believe or understand?

IF THE STYLE IS NONREALISTIC ...

• Are your characters ordinary people in an extraordinary world, extraordinary people in an ordinary world, or extraordinary people in an extraordinary world?

• If the characters are extraordinary: review their nonrealistic traits. How and when are these traits established in the script? Why are they important to the story?

• If the world is extraordinary: review the nonrealistic properties of the setting. Does anything need to be changed, added, or removed to make this world more unique?

• For any nonrealistic events in your story, have you established clear rules for how and why how such events occur? Do you need to impose any limitations on what is possible?

• Have you found the right props and costumes for the world you are creating? Do you see opportunities to enhance the nonrealism of this world by adding any unusual objects or attire?

• Do any lighting or sound directions need to be added to the script to enhance its nonrealism?

• Distortion, symbolism, and repetition are among many techniques you can use to create artificial reality. Have you missed any opportunities to use such tools?

• In a nonrealistic play, scenes need not occur in chronological order or have rational connections. Look at how your story divides into scenes. Would it work better if the scenes were organized differently? If scenes were added, removed, or combined?

• The dialogue in a nonrealistic play may be stylized — structured around language rhythms, rhyming schemes, music, ersatz vocabulary, or other artificial modes of expression. How does your dialogue fit the level of nonrealism you are after?

IF THE STYLE IS A MIX ...

• Review the preceding two sets of questions. What elements of your story are realistic? What elements are nonrealistic?

• Which style dominates, and is this the best balance for the story you want to tell?

• How would the story be different if it were more realistic? Less realistic?

DRAMATIC FOCUS

The dramatic focus of a play determines two basic but critical elements: whose story it is and how this story will be revealed to the audience.

Character focus. In most plays throughout the ages, the protagonist, or main character, has been one individual, such as Hamlet, who drives the story and makes it happen. Everything revolves around this character's dramatic journey. However, the role of protagonist may also be played by more than one character, as in Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard, where the protagonist is not an individual but a group, the Ranevskaya family, representing the Russian upper class.

Point of view. Whether the role of protagonist is filled by one character or many, the story reflects a point of view that dictates what we in the audience may see and not see as the dramatic action unfolds. Our vantage point is usually objective: it allows us to observe the characters in the external world they inhabit. The view of this world may be broad or narrow. Its limitations determine whom we may meet onstage, which characters must be present for a scene to occur, where we can observe them, and when we are able to do so.