WONKY RULES OF DRAMA

Wonky Rules, What We Talk About When . . .

Have you ever attended a talkback after viewing a new work (a staged reading or workshop production) and been shocked by the level of feedback? Maybe you wrote the play. Maybe you simply admired it. You thought it had a lot going for it. Then out they come. THE WONKY RULES OF DRAMA.

It’s as if the spirit of Agatha Trunchbull, the rule-mongering headmistress of MATILDA THE MUSICAL, is unleashed and what the play has going for it gets overwhelmed with a system of negativity that demands conformity.

Miss Trunchbull’s Wonky Rules

A play might be as remarkable as the young heroine Matilda . . . but never mind. There are the WONKY rules.  Obey, obey, obey.

The trouble with rules, especially theatre art rules, . . . they come and go according to the taste of the times. They may be well-meaning and can be helpful in some instances. More often than not, they inhibit creativity. They are blind to originality. They dismiss. They do more harm than good when they inspire connect-the-dots, rule-book dramas.

Wonky Rules Make For Dramatic Rigor Mortis

“The moment we succeed in consciously patterning our theater,” Walter Kerr has written, “in making it do precisely what we think it ought to be doing, we are apt to paralyze it.” Kerr, a revered New York theater critic and intellectual force in the theatre for many years, won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 1978.  As an instructor of playwriting, he mandated to his students that the purpose of the playwright is to entertain.

About rule-oriented theatre, he cites the neo-classical Italian theatre of the 16th century, the state-censored French theatre of the 17th century, and the moral British theater of the 18th century as eras of dramatic rigor mortis. “In each case, the deliberately shaped experience became an experience of boredom, and what had been outlawed as vulgar proved to be embarrassingly vital.”

Nemesis of Wonky Rules, Walter Kerr with Helen Hayes

If you think of plays as something constructed or wrought, that you are building a piece of furniture, then it is going to be different than it would be if you think writing a play is like composing or painting, an act of creation that involves the imagination.

One of theatre history’s most notorious theorist is Johann Gottsched (1700-1776).  Gottshed was a professor of poetry at Leipzig University and a leader of rationalism in German dramatic theory.  An admirer of French classicism, Gottsched went even further (than the French Academy) in his demand for a moral function of drama and for the stage reflecting an empirical realty.  He believed, for example, that the location of the play could not change because the spectator did not change his seat and would be confused by a play that jumped from place to place.

In this excerpt from his Versuch einer critische Dichtkunst (1730), Gottsched lays out his formula for playwriting.

One of History’s Wonky Rulers, Johann Christoph Gottsched (1700-1766)

First of all, select an instructive moral lesson which will form a basis for the entire plot in accordance with the goals which you wish to achieve.  Next, lay out the general circumstances of an action which very clearly illustrates this chosen instruction . . . . Next, you must determine what effect you wish to achieve in this creation; do you desire to make a fable, a comedy, a tragedy, or an epic of it?  Everything will influence the names given to the characters who will appear in it.  A fable will use animal names. . . . If thou want to make a comedy . . . the characters must be citizens, for heroes and princes belong in a tragedy.  The one who does wrong must by the end of the play be the object of scorn and laughter.

(For more on Professor Gottsched and his reforms on the German theatre, see Marvin Carlson’s THEORIES OF THE THEATRE: A Historical and Critical Survey, from the Greeks to the Present.)

Is Your Favorite Play a Wonky Rule Breaker, Past or Present?

Plays that we consider important today almost invariably defied the drama rules of their day.  Plays that were once reviled are now pillars of the theatre due to the courage and good fortune of the authors and ever-changing criteria for judging plays. . . . Be honest. Think of your own pet guideline for judging a play and maybe it has fossilized and become a WONKY rule.

Here are the top 10  WONKY RULES OF DRAMA that I’ve experienced over the years.  Are any of them favorites of yours? Can you think of a favorite play that defies one or more of the rules on the list? Do you disagree and feel that one or more of the rules are necessary restrictions?

1. Show, don’t tell.
2. Write what you know.
3. A play should make sense.
4. Whose play is it?  Focus on one character’s journey.
5. A play must have characters we care about.
6. A speech must advance the plot or reveal character motivation.
7. Drama is conflict, conflict, conflict.
8. Loose ends should be tied together or cut.
9. There should be one consistent tone.
10. A play must reflect the real world.

Please share your comments on the Wonky Rules of Drama.