A POLEMICAL GLOSSARY

Transcription

1 A POLEMICAL GLOSSARY It s a continuing difficulty in dramaturgy that we have no commonly agreed upon technical vocabulary. Words taken from ordinary life sometimes lead us into confusion or unnecessary disagreement. This glossary is a proposal. As such, the definitions it contains do not aspire to anything beyond usefulness as technical terms, aids to inquiry and conversation. In the definitions, words that are themselves described appear in boldface. This has the virtue of demonstrating how tautological a technical vocabulary becomes. ACT [1] To make a character in rehearsal or performance. [2] The largest time part of a play, delineated by a curtain or significant light change. -A- ACTING That set of skills and procedures by which actors make character. The sum of these can be described: behaving as if the given circumstances are real. The main ways of doing this originate in focus and release. ACTION [A] The thing in nature imitated by dramatic art. There are four main kinds of dramatic action. 1. Doing: physical behavior (tasks, movement, speech). Bernard Beckerman distinguishes between these activities and dramatic action. 2. Suffering: hearing the news, responding to stimulation, emoting (speaking, laughing, crying, etc.). 3. Deliberating: reasoning, dreaming, thinking of all kinds; distinguishing among choices; requires language, either text or subtext. 4. Choosing: deciding on a course of action, expedient or moral. Expedient action concerns success or failure of the mission; moral action engages opinions about right and wrong. [B] The about of a play. All scenes of a well plotted play relate to the play s action, usually expressible in an infinitive phrase. This action, and most of the smaller actions that make it up, is usually a use of language to suffer, deliberate, and choose. The most interesting dramatic action is moral choice. The problem of making a philosophical rather than technical definition of action has engaged philosophers and aestheticians for a long time; no end in sight. ACTIVITIES Page 1 of 16

2 Human behavior used by play makers to represent or stage dramatic action. The most important of these is speaking. ACTOR The theatre artist who, in rehearsals and plays, is the maker and principal material of character. AFFECT Generic term for a certain kind of spectator experience. We need to discriminate the range of affects available to spectators. I propose this continuum. 1. Sensation. Response to sensual stimulation. Spectators are frightened, thrilled, pleased, displeased, shocked, surprised by more or less violent activity on stage. These range from the light show at a rock concert, through the sub-verbal pieces envisaged by Artaud and the image scores produced by Robert Wilson, to the jolting appearance of Aeschylus Furies or Olivier s plunging death as Coriolanus. Spectacle and music are the main sources for sensations. 2. Feeling. The activities of sympathy and empathy, the operation of our histrionic sensibility. A stage direction, The song, Father, Dear Father, may be introduced here to effect. ; An actor speaking a line of dialogue: I made the last payment on the house today, Willie. Actors and their acting are the main source of feelings. 3. Emotion. Experience we undergo as we contemplate and have an opinion about serious action. O God, I am on the brink of frightful speech. / And I of frightful hearing. But I must hear. Or, By God, you ought to die of self disgust. / I see you hug a man almost to death, / Exclaim for joy until you re out of breath; / Then when I ask you who he is I find / That you can scarcely bring his name to mind. Plotting is the main source of emotions. AFFECTIVE SIGNIFICANCE The quality of an incident expressed as a potential for affect. A product of the relation between action and spectator, and of the relationships among incidents (Plot). Artists can know little about the first; the second doesn t support predictions of spectator response. AGENT A word handy for labeling a character when you don t want to think about its human characteristics. ANALYSIS Reduction of a thing or process to its constituent parts. Best used in thinking about scripts. Since plays are complex processes of interdependent qualities and relationships, the mechanical or chemical analogy is simplistic. ANTECEDENT Page 2 of 16

3 Material that comes before in a plot. For instance, an incident is made of or is similar to a previous incident. When antecedents are properly related to their consequences the pair appears as cause and effect. ART The processes and products of work by artists, which is the making of imitations. The term is not professionally useful as an intensifier or measure of quality, as: It s interesting, but is it art? AUDIENCE The group of people who come to see and hear a play. I like to use spectator instead of audience member. Sometimes it s important to insist that an audience experiences a play: seeing and hearing don t say enough about what happens. It may be time to invent a verb: to spectate. -B- BEAT A segment of a play dominated by a single affect or motive. A beat may be different for different actors in the same scene; different still for, say, the light board operator. Beats can be noted in a script, but are apt to change in rehearsal. BEGINNING Those incidents which have no antecedents in the plot. They are necessary in relation to audience experience and expectations and are the materials of likelihood for the Middle. The Beginning is made in part out of materials drawn from audience experience, to which it gives form; it is the material for the Middle, which gives it form. BEHAVING Moving, speaking, thinking, feeling reflexively, without pausing to consider the artistic consequences. -C- CAST [1] The group of actors used to make the play. [2] To assign characters in the play to actors. One of the most important parts of play making. CATHARSIS The incident or process by which the affective significance of a sequence of incidents is changed or resolved. For instance: an incident in the plot has an affective significance of fear (The men on the battlement talk about a ghost.). Later incidents connect, through similarities and repetitions, with this one but the relationship between the action of the first and later incidents remains distant; these later incidents have an affective significance of pity with respect to the earlier one (Hamlet had nothing to do Page 3 of 16

4 with his father s death.). Then, still later, a further incident creates or reveals a connection between the potential misfortune and the misfortune (Hamlet murders Polonius, then Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, then kills Laertes and Claudius.). The affective significance of the relationship changes, in a tragedy we say the misfortune is deserved; the entire sequence takes on a new, deeper significance. The use of the term deserved is a good example of the difficulty caused by lack of a technical vocabulary. The relationship named deserved is an aesthetic, not a moral or social one. Much is made of the etemology of catharsis, a medical term meaning purgation. This may be useful in a discussion of drama as a social phenomenon; but it only confuses analysis. CHARACTER [1] The aesthetic product made by actors; a virtual or non-ordinary human being. Appears only in rehearsal and performance as it is being made. [2] The quality cited by Aristotle as differentiation among the agents. Used as a technical term in script analysis, the word refers only to this differentiation as it exhibits in the other qualities of the script: spectacle, music, diction, thought. The most important such differentiation is moral choice resulting from deliberation. Character is material to plot, form to thought. Other, less technically useful definitions include: 1. The imaginary human being apparently referred to by a script. 2. The imaginary human being you see doing things on stage. These characters may usefully be conceived as creatures, very like human beings, who get what they want by using language. 3. Individual traits or patterns of behavior you conceive from the doings of the enacted role, or from reading the script: as in, That s an important part of Hamlet s character. Dramaturgs, directors, and actors should bear in mind that there is no thing called a character referred to by the script. Character doesn t exist independent of rehearsal or performance. The aesthetic product made by readers of a script is so attenuated, so lacking in detail, as to be significantly different from a performed character. Reading produces a virtual memory, not a flesh and blood creature. It s not useful on the basis of reading to make detailed predictions of what a character will be like when properly made in performance by an actor. CLIMAX The ultimate crisis in a plot, resolution of which ends the action. COMEDY A formal category of scripts and plays which imitate actions that are ludicrous and ridiculous, not serious. The usual plot for comedy is episodic: incidents are arranged chronologically, but all illustrate aspects of a single happy idea or proposal. Critics have been quite unsuccessful in their efforts to describe the essence of comedy. The idea of funny has eluded everyone. COMIC Pertaining to comedy. Used popularly as a synonym for funny. This use leads to confusion when we consider comic plots. Page 4 of 16

5 CONCEIVING Making in the mind. A dramaturg conceives the form of a play as it develops in rehearsal. CONSEQUENCE An incident that appears to result from a previous incident. Usually constructed by the poet through repetition. CONVENTION An agreement between an artwork and its audience about the rules of presentation. These agreements change and develop, leading to very different plays made from the same script over time. CRISIS A moment of determinate action in the script or play. CRITICISM Informed analysis and description of scripts and (less often) plays. Criticism includes: judgments of quality based on comparison with other works in the critic s experience; and the use of scripts as documents supporting cultural or historical study. Criticism usually addresses scripts; is usually written and published. Reading is its main access to drama, content and literary form its main subjects. Critics rarely address plays, as the production cannot be presented in writing. Criticism differs from reviewing, which see. Critics are part of the audience for dramatic art, as are their readers. Criticism, especially script analysis, can produce information of help to artists. Now and then a critical insight can lead a playmaker to an interesting new play (Jan Kott s post-modern description of King Lear, for instance, influenced Peter Brook s famous King Lear.) But, because it concerns things already made, most criticism has little to do with production, which concerns things in the making. -D- DELIBERATION The dramatic action leading to choice. A character uses language to consider and decide among alternative actions. DENOUEMENT The section of a script or play DESIGNER The dramatic artist who conceives and supervises the building of the settings for a play. In some theatres there s been a division of labor so that separate individuals take responsibility for setting, light, sound, and costume. DICTION The term used by Aristotle to label the words spoken in a play. These words appear in the script, but their most important feature is that an actor speaks them in Page 5 of 16

6 rehearsal or performance. Diction is made to be seen and heard, not read. Diction is an organization of noise, not letters. Material to thought, form to music and spectacle. DIRECTOR The theatre artist who takes final responsibility for making the play; the director s materials include the work of other artists. DRAMA A form of story telling in which the writer doesn t make the final work. Instead, the actions imitated are performed for an audience. Dramatic art exists only in rehearsal and performance, while it s being made. DRAMATIC Used in or characteristic of drama. Not professionally useful as an intensifier, as: It was, like, a totally dramatic moment. DRAMATIC LITERATURE A branch of literary study using scripts as the basic documents, reading them as if they were conventionally referential. Sometimes used to designate scripts which over the years have appealed to critics and teachers as having greater aesthetic value than the scripts of popular or commercial theatre. DRAMATURGY The craft of preparing scripts for rehearsal and inventing given circumstances in support of design and rehearsal. The art of conceiving the developing forms as a script moves through production. The term is sometimes limited to critical and scholarly apparatus applied to the script in support of production, and dramaturgs may be seen as primarily concerned with scripts as literature or as defenders of the playwright s interest in production. Properly conceived, dramaturgy is not literary; rather, it s part of the director function in playmaking, an art, not scholarship or pedagoy. Presently (2001) the functions of dramaturgy are coalescing into a job: many theatres now have a position called dramaturg. Dramaturgy is not criticism, though dramaturgs make use of criticism in their work; dramaturgy is part of production, criticism is part of the audience. -E- EMOTION Experience created in spectators when they histrionically contemplate serious action and have an opinion about it. The most serious emotions result from contemplation of moral choice and its results, tragic or comic. EMPATHY Your natural tendency to replicate sensations, feelings, or emotions another person suffers in your presence. With sympathy, empathy forms the histrionic sensibility which in turn forms the basis of the actor/spectator relationship. Sympathy and empathy are the spectator s connection to spectacle and music. END The part of a plot which has the rest of the play for antecedents and which has no consequences. It s usually possible to imagine further incidents in the story of a play, Page 6 of 16

7 but correct plotting creates closure and makes those further incidents unnecessary. Made of material drawn from the beginning and middle; nothing is made from it. ENSEMBLE EPISODIC A plot in which the incidents relate to one another by reference to a character, pattern, or idea more obviously than by repetition patterned by the dramatic sequences. EXPOSITION Content in a script or play that a spectator needs in order to appreciate the story. -F- FARCE A formal category of scripts and plays in which the action, plotted causally like a tragedy, concerns the satisfaction of appetite rather than choice among alternative actions. In a farce, the choice to indulge appetite is not tragic, because the plot presents no alternative. FARCICAL ELEMENT A term used (mostly by critics) to label incidents in a script or play which use a preponderance of physical activity rather than ordinary dramatic action (suffering, deliberation, and choice. all presented in diction). FEAR The term used by Aristotle to label the affective significance of an incident looking forward in a tragic plot. FEELINGS Mental experiences suffered through histrionic sensibility. See affect. FOCUS The actor s work of directing attention. The source of an actor s capacity to believe in the reality of given circumstances. FORM [1] Patterns of repetition within a plot. [2] A collective name given to scripts and plays with certain similarities of plotting. The main dramatic forms are: tragedy, comedy, melodrama, farce. FOURTH WALL An imaginary wall in the plane of the procscenium arch. Conventionally assumed to have been removed so as to reveal to an audience the inside of a room. Characters in the room are conventionally assumed to be unaware they re being watched. FRENCH SCENE A part of a script or play delineated by a change in cast on stage. -G- Page 7 of 16

8 GESTURE The basic unit of a play. The smallest thing an actor does that exhibits rhythm. Difficult to exemplify because it exists only in rehearsal and performance. An actor makes a gesture so as to be perceived. Ordinary activity is made to achieve an effect; gestures for affect. GIVEN CIRCUMSTANCES The sum of conditions in which a character lives and acts. Includes the facts of production, such as the size and configuration of the venue, the presence of spectators, etc. -H- HAPPY IDEA The notion or situation demonstrated or carried out by a comic plot. HISTRIONIC SENSIBILITY A way to think about the relationship between an actor and a spectator. Conceive a faculty for perceiving action much like hearing is a faculty for perceiving sound. That is, suppose we have an ability to organize visual and aural information through sympathy and empathy into the category, action. This is not an intellectual process, though it involves thought; it s an active experience, involving the spectator s entire bodymind. The histrionic sensibility operates when you replicate in your bodymind the physical and psychic behavior of another. I yawn, so do you; I feel sad, you know it from a feeling in yourself. These feelings form the basis of the opinions and emotions a spectator suffers in response to the play. Francis Fergusson coined the term; I ve expanded on his usage. (Francis Fergusson, The Idea of a Theatre, Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1949, p. 236). -I- IMITATE To make a non-ordinary version of a natural thing. For instance, to make a cow out of paints. An imitation need not exhibit verisimilitude. IMITATION [1] The relationship between an ordinary real object and a non-ordinary art object, equally real. [2] A thing made using materials that, without the agency of an artist, would not take that form. A play, for instance, is an imitation of action made with actors, a venue, and an audience. Artists make imitations to be perceived or experienced; as imitations they have no other purpose. Of course, they can be put to other use, such as selling detergent. INCIDENT A part of a script or play that begins and ends. In tightly plotted work, the incidents exhibit rhythm: the end of one is or implies the beginning of the next. A complicated plot may arrange several sequences of incidents, variously woven together, often serving in more than one sequence. Shakespeare is the home office here. Page 8 of 16

9 ISM A suffix which creates a label referring to a class of art works with something in common (realism, naturalism, etc). -J- -K- -L- LIKELIHOOD The relationship of an incident to future incidents in a plot. When the future incident comes to pass, the first is seen to be necessary. An artist creates the relationship by using the same or similar materials to construct both incidents. Placing a pistol on the mantle contributes to the likelihood of a gunshot sometime in the future. Discussion of a ghost on the ramparts makes the appearance of a ghost likely. Note that this is an aesthetic, not a statistical, judgment. LUDICROUS The name Aristotle gives to those actions of comedy which represent human folly as opposed to vice. The affective significance of such action is laughter. -M- MAKING Arranging materials to a coherent end. MATERIAL The stuff (not always corporeal) used to make things. Diction is the material of thought in the sense that the playwright (then the actor) organizes words into coherent sequences and groups. These groups have discursive content, but more important, they are in turn the material organized into thought, the action of drama. The actions (suffering, deliberation, choice) in their turn differentiate among the characters; they may thus be said to be the material out of which character is made. MELODRAMA A formal category of scripts and plays whose actions appear to be serious but turn out not to be. The happy ending of classic melodrama can usually be seen as supporting the contemporary social status quo. MIDDLE Those incidents in the plot which have the beginning as antecedents and the end as consequences. The middle is made out of the beginning, which it forms, and is the material for the end, which forms it. MORAL CHOICE Page 9 of 16

10 The most important of the dramatic actions. Moral choice results from deliberation in a serious action. MUSIC The term used by Aristotle to label everything you hear in a play, including the audience coughing and the sirens outside. With spectacle, the most basic difference between drama and other kinds of poetry. -N- NARRATIVE [1] A story. [2] A method of telling a story; in language, either spoken or written down. [3] In plays, a way to stage events that are inappropriate for acting out, or which the playwright wishes to use as the means for acting out something else. Messenger speeches in Greek tragedies, for instance, tell of an event, but are used primarily to stage another character s suffering (reaction to the news) or the telling itself. The Shepherd to Oedipus is an example of the first; Prometheus to Ocean of the second. NATURALISM An ism which takes art to be scientific observation and rigorously faithful presentation of actions exclusively caused by heredity and environment. Ibsen is the genius exemplar, Ghosts his most obvious example. This term is often imprecisely (and unhelpfully) used to mean extreme realism. NECESSARY The relationship of an incident to its antecedent incidents; the resolution of likelihood. Judge Brack sinks into a chair saying, People don t do such things. This connects Hedda s suicide with her treatment of Auntie Juju s hat. People, Hedda complains about Auntie Juju leaving her hat on the sofa, don t do such things. The same line occurs in relation to Hedda shooting out the back door of the house. Or, an incident toward the end of a plot (Oedipus blinds himself as punishment for his crimes) is made out of material (blindness) that Sophocles used to construct and stage those crimes. -O- ORDINARY / NON-ORDINARY A way to distinguish between real actions and objects in the natural world, and real actions and objects which are imitations. An actor bursts into tears. The tears are real, but they are non-ordinary, having been made as part of a character, not as an expression of grief. A stage setting is ordinary, the Helmer s apartment is non-ordinary. -P- PART A unit within the script or play. Parts described in time include: gesture, beat, French scene, scene, act. Structural parts include exposition, point of attack, rising action, crisis, climax, denouement. Aristotle s famous six parts of tragedy are actually qualities, which see, inherent in all parts of the play. Page 10 of 16

11 PERFORMANCE The occasion (along with rehearsal) in which plays are made. The conditions of performance become part of given circumstances for the characters. PITY The affective significance of a misfortunate incident looking at antecedents in a tragic plot. The significance is created by the way in which the two incidents are similar: A lack of similarity between the action of the early incident and the suffering of the later one is common to tragic plotting. This significance is changed by the third figure in the sequence, catharsis, which see. POET A maker for whom written words are the main material. The artist, playwright, who makes scripts. PLAY The art thing made during rehearsal and performance. Different to a script, which is a document. Plays have qualities, spectacle and music, not found in scripts; they address different faculties of human response; and they exist only while being made. It s handy to use the word play when the reference could be to either a script or a play; it s also very handy to make a distinction between them. I reckon we re stuck with playwright, but we could move to writing scripts, producing plays. PLAYWRIGHT The dramatic artist who writes the script. PLOT The arrangement of all the parts and qualities of a play. A potential play s plot can be studied (though not completely predicted) by reading the script. POINT OF ATTACK The moment in the script when the action of the play begins. This moment may not be the beginning of the story. The complex tragic plot features a point of attack that comes very late in the story, often on the final day of a story that covers years. PRESENTATIONAL Used to name one end of a continuum between fourth-wall realistic (representational) drama and various theatrical styles which overtly acknowledge the artificiality of the performance occasion. Shakespeare is the usual example; we cite his use of direct address and rhetorical delivery as presentational. Brecht is the major source of the currently dominant presentational style, though many of his innovations have become transparent conventions of realism. Other influences include the use of found spaces for serious theatre and the gradual disappearance of large proscenium theatres. As these influences and others (notably TV and movies) develop, the presentational / representational continuum is less and less useful. Of course, all appropriate spectator response depends on some awareness of art s artificiality. PRODUCTION Page 11 of 16

12 The play in its aspect as the effort of people who work in the theatre. The making of a play, most often using a script as material. -Q- QUALITIES Aristotle named six qualities, arranged as material and form with each other. They are: Spectacle Music Diction Thought Character Plot. In this arrangement, each quality is material to the quality below it, form to the one above. Each moment in the play or segment of the script exhibits all six of these qualities (except that scripts only indicate spectacle and music). -R- REAL Actual, corporeal, in the everyday sense. Gestures in a play can be conceived as real (crossing down left) and non-ordinary, but real (ending the discussion). Philosophical discussions of real have engaged philosophers for centuries; there s little value in these for the practical work of theatre. REALISM An ism based on the philosophical notion that what you see is what you get. REALISTIC Writing, design, acting, and staging based in realism; usually emphasizing similarities between elements of the work and the ordinary experience of the spectator. All acting, finally, is realistic. That is, the actor does something which really happens on stage, in the same time and place as the spectator. That something may bear little resemblance to the ordinary behavior of an ordinary human being, but it is done by a human being in the presence of other human beings. It s reality cannot be denied. This feature of acting drives the movement of dramatic art toward realistic production in all ages. See Joseph Roach, The Player s Passion. This term, and its cognates, like some others is very difficult to use effectively as a term of art. Everyone knows what it means; everyone know something different. REALITY The what that is there. A blanket term for the life imitated by plays. The distinction between ordinary and non-ordinary reality is very useful for thinking about dramatic art, especially acting. Ordinary reality refers to life as we know it daily. Non-ordinary reality refers to behavior created artistically to be experienced by Page 12 of 16

13 spectators. In an ordinary fight, for instance, the participants strive to hurt each other; in a non-ordinary fight on stage, the moves are as real as we can make them, but a beautiful fight results, not injuries. REHEARSAL The actor-centered part of playmaking; the heart of acting and directing work. REPETITION The beginning of form. Aeschylus gracefully acknowledged this when he made Prometheus say, I gave to them hard working memory, mother of the arts. REPRESENT For theatre, to place on stage in some form or other. Any action can be variously represented: through narration, activity, enactment. REPRESENTATIONAL Used to name one end of a continuum between fourth-wall realistic drama and various (presentational) styles. Supposes that the production does not acknowledge its theatricality, that the spectator experiences the aesthetic illusion as a delusion, and makes use of the notion of a willing suspension of disbelief. Not a terribly useful term. REVIEWING Responding to plays and scripts for publication in a magazine or newspaper, or other broadcast medium. Usually includes judgments of quality, based on the reviewer s taste; used by readers as a guide to plays as entertainment. Some reviewers are quite knowledgeable as consumers; they are only rarely accomplished critics or makers. Reviewing is often confused with criticism (mostly by reviewers) and shouldn t be. Reviewers and reviews are part of advertising, and as such are essential to the commercial theatre (profit and not-for-profit) and are a valuable part of the development, marketing, and ticket sales functions. Many arts make use of reviews; their value is sometimes compromised by the fact that the advertiser cannot control the copy of the ad. Although in the past certain reviewers have had important relationships with playwrights (George Jean Nathan and Eugene O Neill, for instance) they mostly have no connection with the artistic functions of a theatre. RHYTHM A relationship among units created by the internal structure of each separate unit: the completion of the antecedent unit is, or prepares for, the beginning of the consequent unit. The quality a unit of time exhibits when its end is or implies the beginning of the next unit. Suzanne Langer is very good on this subject. RIDICULOUS The name Aristotle gives to the actions of comedy which represent human vice as opposed to folly. The affective significance of such actions is fear and hatred, leading to ridicule. Spectators may experience this significance by laughing. RISING ACTION Incidents in the script or play in which conflict between opposing forces increases in tension and significance. Page 13 of 16

14 -S- SCENE The largest part of an act; usually marked by a curtain or significant change in lighting. A french scene is marked by the entrance or exit of characters. SCRIPT A document that is the material and usual starting point for a play. Considered as a document, scripts are very problematical: their words are not referential in the usual way. Play makers often think of the script as a blueprint, a set of instructions, or a rune to be interpreted. SEQUENCE A group of incidents artistically connected; the pattern controlling repetition within a designated group of incidents. The three main sequences in drama are: Beginning Middle End, Likelihood Necessity, Fear Pity Catharsis. SERIOUS As a term of art in theatre, action that involves moral choice. That is, more depends on the outcome than success or failure of the mission. Sometimes the choice to act doesn t appear serious at first; later action changes that in the process called catharsis. SIGNIFICANCE An element s relationship to other elements in the script or play. Not to be confused with discursive meaning. SIMILAR Two elements are called similar when they are made of the same materials or appear in a sequence of repetition. Hamlet, for instance, speaks to various characters using unweeded garden images; the repeated material creates similarity in the events. SPECTACLE The most fundamental quality of plays. Spectacle includes everything you see while at the play, including other spectators and the theatre itself. The most important aspect of spectacle is the actor moving in the same space as the spectator. This is the sine qua non of theatre. An event that doesn t include this isn t a play. Spectacle can be conceived as the material of music, insofar as movement is required to produce noise. SPECTATOR The person experiencing a play. We have no special term for that person other than the clumsy audience member. Writers have tried a number of alternatives, none of which has caught on. I like spectator because of the feeling of seeing and participation it invokes. STAGE [n] The locale where actors make the play. Any kind of space, as long as spectators can look on. Page 14 of 16

15 [v] To put the play on its feet, conceiving the movements and arrangements of the actors and everything else. [v] For a playwright, to put an event before the spectator, using a variety of means including narration, activities, enactment. STORY A sequence of incidents a playwright plots into a script. More generally, stories are a way human beings have of thinking deeply and holistically about the mysteries of life. Story form can, in its proper resolution of its elements, create a persuasive species of truth. STYLE Referring to a group of art works or way of making similar in method, purpose, or philosophy. Usually denoted by the suffixes ism and ic as in realism and realistic. The categories we call styles are made and used after the fact of creation; they are not helpful as aids to making. SUBTEXT The diction and thought created by an actor to support action. The audience come to hear the subtext; they can read the text at home. Stansilavski. Subtext rarely becomes available to anyone outside a rehearsal, and often not even then. The playwright has little control over this part of the play. Some have chafed at this, and have attempted, through stage directions or other means, to insist on their version. O Neill s Strange Interlude is the most thorough attempt of this kind. SUFFER One of the major dramatic actions. To experience and respond to the assault of stimuli, either physical or verbal. To listen; to experience sensations, feelings, or emotions. Hamlet s O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I, is a good example of suffering in language. SYMPATHY Your natural tendency to replicate physical exertion another person does in your presence. With empathy, sympathy constitutes the histrionic sensibility, which in turn is the basis for spectacle and the actor/audience relationship. -T- TEXT Diction in its written form. The words of a text are made of letters, the diction of a play is made of noises. THOUGHT Aristotle s term for the organization of diction into the major dramatic actions, suffering, deliberation, and choice. Thought is material to character and form to diction. TRAGEDY A category of scripts and plays which imitate serious action. Aristotle s description of this form in his Poetics is a good place to begin formal consideration of any script or play. Page 15 of 16

16 TRAGIC Of a quality similar to a tragedy. In everyday life, any sad occasion, especially those exhibiting some ironic content. -U- -V- VERISIMILITUDE The quality of being recognizably similar to ordinary reality, nature. Not to be confused with realistic, which may or may not exhibit verisimilitude. VIRTUAL Suzanne Langer s useful term for the quality of an art work that distinguishes it from reality. VIRTUAL MEMORY The illusion created by the reader of a novel (or a script treated as a novel). See Suzanne Langer, Feeling and Form, or Theodore Shank, the art of dramatic art. -W- -X- -Y- -Z- Page 16 of 16