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Part Two: Methods - Coggle Diagram
Part Two: Methods
- Missing Persons (Character)
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The bones – the carefully selected character traits included in the script – are revealed via action.
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Once the obvious is noted, study what the character does.
A character's self-description, or how others in a play describe a character, is not reliable for the simple real-life reason that what people say is not reliable.
Self-description cannot be trusted because characters have reason to mislead others. Nor can a character's description of another character be trusted because the describer could be mistaken or lying.
Description must be validated by examination of action. Action either verifies description, rendering description redundant, or it reveals that the description is wrong. Redundant or wrong: that is all description can be.
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Subjectivity, Character Change
Characterization is partly in the eye of the beholder, because we always judge others in terms of our individual selves.
to find out character, examine motivation obstacle, and what the person does or will do to get around the obstacle. Obstacle may change, but overall motivation rarely does. We want what we want, and change only how we try to get it
A character laid out clearly, rationally, and fully explained is not only impossible, but dull and implausible.
FOCUS: Character is revealed primarily by what a character does. Yet even the best of plays presents only a skeleton, because much of what the audience perceives as character has to do with the actor. Moreover, character is drama s most subjective element, because we each perceive a particular character differently, depending on our own natures. The best reading approach is to discover the skeleton of character as revealed by action.
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A play doesn't mean anything. It is. Artistic expression is meaning in and of itself. It doesn't translate or decode or puzzle or compute into anything but itself.
If a writer has great vision and depth, the play's themes will loom important. If not, theme will not be provender for thought, reflection, and emotional involvement; theme will be merely topic.
Theme is a result. Look for it last. First analyze with care the action, characterization, images, and other components. By then theme will be manifestly apparent almost by itself.
As you do your analytic reading, keep a small list of themes.
The list will be your guide to abstract concepts the play treats on – but don't get tangled up in them. Don't short-circuit the work of art by ignoring it to get to theme, by busting through the work as if it were a shell, a barrier to be eliminated between audience and play.
If you "find" a theme not expressed through action or other major theatrical components, it probably isn't genuinely there.
Theme can be expressed only by the play's theatrical specifics: action, character, image, and so forth. Theme should emerge from the play. And it will, if you give it the chance. Things won't work the other way round.
FOCUS: A theme is an abstract concept made concrete by a plays action. Theme is not meaning; it is a topic in the play. Theme is a result; it emerges from a script's workings, so examine a play for theme after you are thoroughly familiar with the play's foundation elements.
The second kind – the kind employing the image – is concerned with our reaction to the thing described
The second kind of communication does not deal with a single element at a time, but rather expresses a collection, a combination of multiple, simultaneous elements that together express fullness and totality. This is a less precise but more evocative communication than the first kind. It belongs to the domain of art.
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An image is something we already know or can easily be told that is used to describe, illuminate, or expand upon something we don't know or cannot easily be told.
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Images in Titles
The words that compose a title are usually the most carefully chosen in the script. If the title contains an image, know its implications and how they evoke the shape and/or nature of the play.
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Repeating Images
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Then examine how such references build into a series of rich,
evocative elements to which we each, in our individual ways, react.
Images convey that to which we can react emotionally as well as intellectually; images evoke associations well beyond the factual or conceptual; images provide for personal, individual communication because we each react, in most ways, uniquely. Images are not frills; they are hefty building blocks.
FOCUS: An image is the use of something we know to tell us about something we don't know. what we don't know is described by what we do know. Images evoke and expand, rather than define and limit. They call up associations that are not precisely the same from audience member to audience member, so provide a particularly personal kind of communication.
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FOCUS: Exposition is the revelation of information needed by audience to understand the play's action. There are two kinds. The first is of information the characters all know (It's Denmark.) The second is of information not shared by all the characters. At its best, such exposition involves the use of information by one character to propel another into action.
- Forwards: Hungry for the Next
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Forwarding Couplets
Forwarding Couplets
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The use of the forwarding rhymed couplet to end a scene is a practice peculiar to Elizabethan playwrights and a few imitators, so in itself it isn't that important. But the forwarding principle is, so examine many couplets to become expert in understanding and making use of forwards.
Other Forwards
Plays contain tiny forwards to keep us in anticipation from moment to moment, and major forwards that deal with the play's overall action. Sooner or later, the play implicitly promises, the major opposing forces will meet head on
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For any play, promise of the ultimate confrontation must be used to arouse audience eagerness.
Sometimes the promise of a forward is not fulfilled. What we've been made eager for never comes to pass. But that is okay. The playwright is not cheating.
FOCUS: Dramatic tension requires that the audience desire to find out what is coming up. The greater the desire, the greater – and more active – the audience's involvement. Playwrights employ many techniques – forwards – to increase the thirst for what's coming up. Such techniques are also a key to spotting elements the playwright considers important.