Structure Short-cuts

Last week (driven by curiosity and more than a little 'What if?') I sat in on a class on stand-up comedy. For a MASTER'S course.

Pretty cool, eh? You didn't know you could take university courses on stand-up, did you? (I didn't, anyway.)

The lecturer has a doctorate, and looks just like the guy you'd think would be doing stand-up; laid back, lanky, walking the line between 'geeky' and 'cool'. (He has the greatest Doctor Who t-shirt ever.) He's got seven in the MA program(me); during their seminars they try bits out on each other and give feedback, and then they run a comedy show on campus Thursday nights. It was a pretty riveting seminar, actually - some of the pieces were funnier than others, naturally... but the fascinating part was the feedback. It was all dramaturgical! Ollie (the lecturer) would suggest that a particular joke be moved earlier (or later) in the set to strengthen the overall story; he'd focus on a certain word or phrase and ask the student to mine that idea for more material; he'd get them all brainstorming additional jokes or ways to tell stories or other options for what was presented. It was like a shorthand seminar on how to act as dramaturg (and/or editor) for a theatre production!

The class demonstrated an exercise called 'Find the Link' - one person offers a topic, the next counters with a totally unrelated topic, and the third person comes up with a link between the two. (Fantastic for playwrights, improv actors, comedians, and theatre students in general. Try it.) Another exercise was to ask the comic to go back over their routine and cut out every unnecessary sentence or word - only that which is STRICTLY needed to be funny/tell the joke is kept. Things become concise, you get to the joke much quicker, and the pace really picks up. (Think monologues, scripts... right?) Along with that, though, you also need to consider 'atmosphere' - as differentiated from 'filler'. If it helps to paint a clearer picture and so makes the punchline more effective/interesting it can stay, even if it's not totally vital to the joke.

And so on... All I'm saying is, playwrights and dramaturgs should definitely look into classes on stand-up comedy. Structure, flow, storytelling, hitting punchlines and buttons, layering, character development - in a condensed form, everything you need to write a play is right there.

And you might just feel inspired to go for that open mic, as well...

Dimension

Tonight I attended a lecture on "Two-Dimensional Versus Three-Dimensional Pictorial Organization" (which sounded a lot more interesting when I first considered it, and I really thought it would have more to do with graphic design) and I came away with an interesting quote I thought would work well here.

Basically, 2D Pictorial Organization (PO for short) was how artists functioned up until the 16th century or so - the concern was mainly with strong geometric lines and with non-occlusion (making sure no figure was masking or blocking another figure). Art moved into 3D PO by blurring the overall compositional shape lines and stacking figures in front of each other (gracefully and elegantly, of course). The Sixties have a real aesthetic feel for the 2D, with the clean, strong lines and un-blocked perspectives. Essentially, the point of the lecture was that you can function in 3D design and be aware of 2D principles (particularly in regards to photography and film). I was trying to figure out how to ask the speaker to relate his topic to theatre presentation, when I happened to read the quote on the handout he'd given us:

Henrich Wolfflin: "It is characteristic of 'painterly disorder' that individual objects should not be fully and clearly represented, but partially hidden. The overlapping of one object by another is one of the most important devices for the achievement of painterliness, for it is recognized that the eye quickly tires of anything in a painting that can be fully grasped at first glance. But if some part of the composition remains hidden and one object overlaps another, the beholder is stimulated to imagine what he cannot see. The objects that are partly hidden seem as if they might at any moment emerge; the picture becomes alive, and the hidden parts then actually do seem to reveal themselves. Even the severe [linear] style could not always avoid overlapping objects, but all the essential features stood out clearly and any restlessness was softened." (1888/1964, p. 33)

Also: "Since the spectator cannot possibly absorb every single thing in the picture, he is left with the impression that it has unlimited potentialities, and his imagination is kept constantly in action, a reaction, of course, intended by the painter." (1888/1964, p. 34)

Cool, huh? Take note, dramaturgs, directors, designers, and playwrights - if an audience's imagination is stimulated, if the picture comes alive because of what cannot be completely seen, if a little restlessness is not only a good thing but a goal, then you've got an exciting, intriguing, (slightly dangerous in the good way) production on your hands. Think in lines and shapes and images and layering as you put together your show, and see if art philosophers can help you find a more interesting theatre!

It's flat, strong geometrics, and no figure is actually blocking any other. 2D PO!

In this picture, the figures have much more of a sense of inhabiting the space - there is some occlusion, or overlapping figures, and the lines and shapes are softer. There is still 2D at work, here, but it's a good transistional illustration to 3D PO.

Wow, those captions are super-nerdy. Next time I will definitely find something snarky to say, just to get the taste of pompous out of your mouth...

The Demon Dramaturg

It's very strange to me just how nervous the word 'dramaturg' seems to make people - specifically, directors. I haven't figured out yet why this is the case. Practitioners who write about dramaturgy have also mentioned this peculiarity; for some, the word is just plain ugly, for others it's fiercely intimidating. It's so odd - dramaturgs are really more like the Care Bears (or, for the younger generation, Barney) of the theatre world... we just want everyone and everything - actors, designers, audience, the ideas going into the performance - to get along! (Well, OK, there's also the fact that if we're doing our job correctly we're poking and prodding and challenging and potentially annoying the performance into 'getting along'... imagine Barney with devil horns.) ((Not much of a stretch, really - but I digress.))

I find it unfathomable, in this day and age, that any serious theatre practitioner could be unfamiliar with the concept of 'dramaturgy', i.e., the fact that any piece of performance has a particular structure made up of whatever types of performative elements (text, visuals, storytelling, movement, etc...). The relationship of those elements (the underlying structure) is the 'dramaturgy', the make-up, of the piece.' So, if you have dramaturgy, wouldn't it stand to reason that you might have someone who deals with it as a specialization? If you have clothes on your actors, you've got a costumer somewhere. A playwright writes the play. A composer develops your music. Actors act (hopefully). And, a dramaturg dramaturgs (deals with the essential structure of the performative experience)! ('Dramaturgs', as a action word, is a term under discussion.) The specifics of a dramaturg's job are, of course, up to the dramaturg, the director, and the producing body of the theatre or company, but it really shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone that dramaturgs exist and can be useful.

Tomorrow morning myself and a few other Drama MA students are meeting with a group of 4th-years who are interested in dramaturgy. Perhaps they were sucked in by the apparent danger and mystery of the word - as a collective whole, they don't have any idea what a dramaturg does.

I'm so impressed they're not letting that stop them.