[Music] [Music] hello uh I am Tony Manesses uh I'm a playwright and I am also the interim head of playwriting at Forom University where I have been teaching uh theater and playwriting since 2010 so I'm now in my 14th year uh and I've been doing a lecture on structure and plot and sort of classical ways of looking at storytelling for the last 14 years and because most of the time when I do this it's to introductory students not even theater majors so I always like to kind of boil it down to what are the most essential things that feel like one should know when starting to write a play whether it's a 10-minute play or if it's a fuller length play there is sort of the fundamental ways of things that we can think about uh when we're deciding to be a playright uh so for me in my own kind of history and education you know Aristotle was the figure that was taught to me very early on uh and I use Aristotle but the one thing I will clarify is that Aristotle is not law uh it is not dictum it is not strict code to follow it is literally extrapolate what you need and want apply it to your own work and you know figure out what feels useful in terms of advice if you will that uncle Aristotle has to offer so uh first and foremost the way I like to start is the biggest broadest way to even understand plays in general comes from Aristotle uh and that is with the six elements of drama uh some of you may have heard of this before but again it's sort of worth recapping because though Aristotle speaks of these six elements of drama these six ingredients that every play should have particularly within tragedies I again I extrapolate and say uh it applies to every play every ever written uh this is just uh things to think about no matter if you're writing comedy or tragedy or any other genre uh it is important to remember that every play has these exact same ingredients so I'll start with these six elements and then we'll get a little more specific about structure and plot and storytelling which uh spoiler alert is what Aristotle really says is the most important thing for a piece of theater to have and we'll get into why in a second uh but firstly I think the one that most of us probably attach ourselves to most easily is character you know we all go to theater because we love meeting new people we love uh uh uh empathizing with them relating to them finding some sort of attachment or relationship to a character on stage is I think how we get the quickest buy in for a play do I like this person this person seems flawed but I'm interested do I invest or not or you know worst case scenario if it's a play that doesn't have good characters you're like I don't care about any of these characters why am I here that's not what we want to aim for but character is the thing that we I think oftentimes uh attach ourselves to in terms of having a good experience in a play when we get to the naturalism tradition that's when we get real sense of uh character development and psychology and even Darwinism starts to influence uh the kinds of theater being made at that time late 19th century uh but we'll save that for another lecture at another time in another context but character is important and I think it's the reason that most of us love going to the theater uh we love falling in love with people on stage i think that's a sort of inevitable uh so that's one of the elements that aerosol do does posit is an important thing to think about when writing a play there has to be characters people embodying things on stage the one that is most important to him though is plot uh and by plot is exactly what I'm sure we all have the connotation of what that means it's story right uh uh beginning middle and end uh cause and effect uh that's often how Aristotle likes to think about uh how plot should be included in plays very classic structure way a way of transcribing events in a story where they're building and building and building and leading to a climax and then there's fallout so I'm sure most of us have studied that little triangle uh in our English classes that has you know the beginning the inciting event and then rising action the peak of the triangle is the climax the falling action the duma and the resolution uh that actually sidebar was created by a German dramatur that then has been adapted in terms of how now we're taught this structure of way of ways of looking at plot and stories aristotle though didn't give us that little triangle kind of set us up for that uh and probably would agree with it uh that we do need things to happen in a play uh Aristotle also famously said you can have a play without character but you can't have a play without plot and now what does he mean by that how do can you have a play without character by which means that you don't even need fully developed characters for us to get engaged we have to care about the actions happening so on the inverse I think you can fall in love with an ensemble of characters but if they're not doing anything and if nothing is happening to them our buyin starts to get a little bit tested you know we get restless we get impatient we get bored and I'm sure some of us have seen some stuff like that where we're just not engaged even though we like or start to like those people if we start to get a little itchy in our seats it's because nothing is happening uh so this is why Aristotle really triumphs plot as the most important element of these six elements of drama and we're going to get a little bit more specific about like well how do you do a plot in a second but plot is essential it has to be story everything has to have story uh I always joke that it's kind of like why airport novels sell so well because they're so action-packed there's always events and even if the characterization is on the slight side uh what's happening in those stories is often engaging enough for us to go on that ride uh so plot number one Aristotle Aristotilian favorite element of the six then we have sort of other complimentary ones that are important but I think plot and character are probably the two things that most of us as audience members really latch on to we love good characters and we love good stories uh I once uh learned in my own uh education good storytelling is just good gossip so imagine just hearing good pieces of gossip as audience you're going to lean in you're going to care about and gossip is often things that happened someone said something someone did something and that's how you engage an audience on a very rudimentary level but these other four elements just for the sake of argument uh and exposition here uh they include language uh literally how I teach it is just word choice you know uh what is on that page and every writer I think this is how uh we playwrights find ways to distinguish ourselves because plots you know you're not reinventing a wheel there's sort of very similar structures of stories and plots uh tragedies you know end terribly uh so that's not new uh comedies end happily that's not new but the word choes that we put uh on our pages and uh in our characters mouths that's how we distinguish ourselves so I always often like to sort of distinguish uh styles of writers like Annie Baker is known for sort of her economic language her pauses her silences uh someone like Jose Rivera a magical realist writer or has been described as one some poetical language heightened language so that's where that writer's voice is really translating is in their word choice so as you start to write you will start to find what kinds of uh uh uh of words your characters are saying and the then the style of them the point of view of it with language I also like to latch on melody or rhythm uh and for me the way I teach it is just you know this style these word choices start to create a little bit of a song a little bit of a pattern here again using Joseé Rivera as an example you know his poetical word choices create a poetical verse and rhyme scheme so it starts to feel a little musical uh starts to feel a little heightened uh and just kind of creates its own kind of natural composition or flow uh likewise again Annie Baker because of the silences and pauses in her work that has made her distinctive the rhythm of that language just feels different uh so uh those two often kind of attached together they're handinhand buddies so rhythmlo and language word choice uh another one to think about is spectacle this kind of my personal favorite this is what makes theater theater theater at the end of the day is uh the use of spectacle and that's exactly as we understand it to be in our modern connotation right uh the way I like to teach it and frame it is it is a sensory experience and in theater often visual but also uh it's an audible experience uh as well it's what designers bring so beautifully to the work uh is just how do we experience these worlds in sort of very visceral visual aal kinds of landscapes uh to just help lift the story uh and create a sense of wonder especially with theater that doesn't have I think the benefit of like film and TV or CGI where even the stuff that happens with those kinds of tools we're still made to believe that it's real even though obviously it's not so I often joke uh when I do my hands like this what am I doing i am suddenly driving a car right just moving my hands back and forth in theater we can do that someone sitting down and doing that gesture our imaginations immediately transport us and say "Oh that person's driving a car." That's something that only theater can do you can never get away with that in any other medium artistic medium so that's why I find theater to be the most spectacular kind of art form because it is the most nimble and creative and you can do a lot with very little and the audience's sense of suspension of disbelief you know believing what's on stage is a real thing uh it's often so activated you can't do a play if people aren't suspending their disbelief even if you are doing the most realistically rendered set we're still pretending this little blackbox theater with that living room in there is actually a real living room in the world even though we know it's not right so I love practical that's what really makes theater I think the most exciting and dynamic art form uh and lastly uh we have theme or thought uh and that is you know kind of what it sounds like too what is this play about what is the message the moral of the story uh what is this in terms of more kind of contemporary language what is this play asking the dramatic question uh you know good plays should be asking questions not answering them i do believe in that uh but ultimately you know what is this writer interrogating wrestling with and choosing to go on this journey on to show us sometimes writers know that theme oh I'm interested in exploring XYZ issue or topic sometimes it just reveals itself onto what you're writing so uh it's not right or wrong to know what your theme is as you begin writing that isn't something that you should automatically have to diagnose uh but I think everything has a theme because it is your voice as a writer that's saying something about the world uh and how you're choosing to express it reveals a certain kind of politic or a point of view about the world that we're living in and the questions that come up uh as we all start to struggle with our own humanity and our humanity in relationship to other people's humanities and the world around us etc so uh those are the six elements to recap we have character plot uh language melody slithm uh spectacle and theme slashthought every play has those six elements doesn't matter the genre it doesn't matter what style of theater it could be the most experimental avanguard play i guarantee those six elements are in there in some fashion whether you know they're adhering to the primacy of one over the other depends on the play but they include those six elements back to the original thesis about well which one is the most kind of classical in terms of knowing how to even think about writing a play it is plot now plot is very challenging because uh there's not a really easy way to learn it you kind of learn it by doing to be honest but there are certain specifics about how to engage with plot that are kind of important to know that uh again it's like terminology that we may not know though it may intuit it because we've all grown up on stories but uh you know when actually exercising it is kind of nice to label for ourselves as writer like I'm engaging with this kind of thing now in order to heighten the kind of story that I'm interested in telling so as I said before plot is just cause and effect so as an exercise uh I outline every play and I know not everyone does but for me I find it helpful because it actually helps with my structure and my plotting to know how at least on paper uh my events are building on to each other and leading to something uh I like to kind of know the map and things change and evolve maybe I'll add an extra scene that I didn't know need to be there or take out a scene or refigure and reconfigure uh some of the events of the story which comes first or later but it is kind of nice to know a little bit of a map uh so outlining I find helpful but regardless if you choose not to outline and you just write a draft uh whether you outline or not I do find it helpful to retroactively then look at your play and if you are struggling with like is this plot moving the action forward in an effective way is this little exercise that it's kind of a cause and effect one where you kind of distill all of the major dramatic events that happen in your play i'll be arbitrary and just make up an example long-lost sibling shows up on doorstep or of an aranged sibling uh that's the first inciting event sibling invites sibling into house uh they get into a fight about a past circumstance other sibling kicks out that sibling that sibling ends up at the doorstep of their mom uh so it's just sort of the ways that these events because these things happen they lead to the next one so this is the cause and this is the effect the exercise uh to be clear though is to lay out all the dramatic events and then just add the word because in between each one so you have because brother shows up on doorstep of longlost sibling a fight in uh ensues that rehashes old secrets and old betrayals and because these secrets are revealed student uh student sibling kicks out uh uh other sibling to then leave and then they because this happens they go to their mom's house and because they go to the mom's house this happens because that happens this happens so if you really want to boil down plot into the most essential way of understanding it just even as mechanically as that that's how you do it is just literally add the word because and if something doesn't fit if you're like wait a minute this event doesn't with the word because in between doesn't lead to that event then odds are you've gone perhaps a little bit off the rails in terms of your plotting you've gone somewhere else and this can happen I think sometimes exactly to Aristotle's concern about plot versus character we fall in love with character ourselves as writers as well so sometimes we'll write a scene where we're just honestly hanging out with characters or seeing another side of them or seeing them in a different environment in a different setting but if there's not an event happening in that scene it's not moving the events of the play as a whole forward advice I often got as a younger writer if there is a scene an event or even a character that if you were to take them out of the play and the play is still the same and still ends the same way uh then that scene event character doesn't need to be there uh and again we fall in love with characters or events or scenes that we write but then sometimes it's kind of the hard work to go back and realize this is actually not needed for a clean effective story that has a sense of action and movement and plot so again sometimes those scenes are good as exercises to just get to know characters better or get to know the world better but really be judicious about like what specifically happens in this scene what is the dramatic event that happens that directly leads to the next thing uh I al also learn some language around this sometimes too that scenes should not have the word then in between them so like this happens then this happens then this happens that is not pluck uh you should actually have uh words like therefore or because of so things that again propel events and actions forward in a cause and effect way uh so that's plot kind of in a nutshell uh and it's it's hard to know until you're doing it and odds are when you get stuck it probably means you're snagging something uh with something along the way in terms of telling an effective story uh specific arisatilian language that I find very useful that I've extrapolated for myself in terms of every play that I think about uh uh are are two particular uh word choices or words uh that Aristotle uses that I find uh useful the first one is this concept called paripidity uh or parapeta in Greek uh a parity a property is a shift uh and that in terms of classical definition it is a shift in fortune so in a tragedy it's a shift from good to bad fortune you know something's life is going and then something really terrible happens and then you know the hits the fan and then we're dealing with that fallout in a comedy it's often bad to good fortune some character finds a million bucks in a trash can and their lives are forever changed and we sort of are dealing with these absurd fanciful antics that can uh ensue from there but it is a shift and why I find that important whether I don't think any of us really actively write tragedies these days by the letter but I do think we need events to happen that change characters lives forever uh you know this is often what actors get taught too like how is today different than any other day in this character's life as writers it is very useful for us to engage with a question like that too how is this day this play unlike any other day or play or moment in these characters' lives that's going to forever change their lives and this is basically what I'm boiling down to plays have to have change and this is why periphity is so useful to think about whether it's such uh as direct as like good to bad fortune or a toggling of good to bad to good to bad bad you know the way the journey and the evolution of your plotting may be things have to change uh because we can't uh we won't sit in a play uh where like nothing happens where nothing is changing uh and obviously things need to change in kind of irrevocable ways so characters circumstances change the events outside of their lives have changed uh etc etc so uh change has to happen uh and that's ultimately you know it's it's it's human nature if you're sort of wondering well change you know why it sounds arbitrary it's not our lives are known for change so our circumstances are constantly evolving we lose jobs we have breakups we move to different cities those are powerful dramatic events that happen in our lives sometimes and that's what makes it dramatically interesting is because our lives have been forever changed by an event or a circumstance or another person so that's what I find most useful about rapidity as a concept it just activates us to think about how things have to change uh and that could happen internally within one scene uh I would argue uh how a scene begins uh and ends should not be the same something by the end of the scene has shifted has activated that is moving again the story and the character forward in time and they're not just sort of in the same space mind space or uh given circumstance that they were when the scene began uh so privity very very helpful uh it allows us to again go on a journey an actual ride uh and of course to zoom out even more how a play begins uh or how a play ends should be very different than how a play begins it should not be in the same universe the same world something has forever changed in those characters' lives this one uh is my favorite of the concepts that Aristotle argues so pretty I love because it makes me remember that things have to happen in a play and that things are forever moving the characters along in significant meaningful ways but my favorite is this concept called anignoris in Greek uh also just known as discovery or recognition anagnoris is also a shift uh it is a shift in awareness so uh or a shift in knowledge so uh a character learns something so being in the dark to being in the light uh that shift in they are ignorant and now they are knowledgeable now they are aware how that translate it can translate in all kinds of fun ways especially in contemporary kind of playwriting where sometimes it's the content of the story uh an event happens in that in that play that uh is a big aha moment uh I think I often describe this moment as sort of that the the the that moment where the hits the fan where something happens and you never you didn't expect it so it's a big surprise it's the twist ending uh if you will now that doesn't have to happen at the ending but it is sort of uh to boil it down it's a secret every play I argue should have a secret uh whether it's the characters secrets that they're withholding that we learn something often in the climax often in the end which is why when they have impact we sort of have that oh moment but and ignores happen all over uh secrets are constantly being discovered along the way in the journey of a play but I would argue that probably the biggest secret should be saved for the end otherwise there's no journey to go on from there so Anodor is I just love because there's nothing I I think what theater can do now still that other art forms still can't is this ability to surprise an audience so it might be content you know maybe there's this big big thing that this character is not revealed maybe we sniffed out something maybe the playwright gave us some Easter eggs and clues that maybe allowed us to understand like there's something going on here what's going what is what what's happening and then we learn it and we have a big shift in awareness ourselves as audience that we didn't know something and now we do just like probably the characters in that play learn something about that character that has forever changed their lives because again these events should be dramatic and they should change things but I also think that even plays in the as containers can contain uh an ignores themselves i think often of just like set design surprises or just structural surprises you know we think we're in this naturalistic world for the most part and then we're kind of in a different world than the last gesture of the play uh so sometimes we're even sub our expectations are subverted also in just like the structure and the frame and the uh the form and structure of a play as well in addition to like the literal plotting or the characterization going on as well and it's why I think theater works is because uh unlike movies which do have to behave a little bit more formulaically in television too uh you can't really rattle the cage too much there in plays you can go to some really surprising and astounding places and what you're allowed to even do with structure and form uh so those are the two kind of ways that I like to think about how Andy Morrises can be engaged is it's either the structure and form of a play the container or also just the ser the narrative the story the the characterization that's happening so literally someone is withholding something or a US playwright is withholding something about the play that we learn and you sort of flip the script later on again it is very thrilling when it happens i guess I can give good concrete examples of both uh this is going to be spoiler alerts we're clearly going to uh get into some secrets that get revealed here from plays that I think should be hopefully uh more or less familiar at this point in terms of recent uh theater uh in terms of structuring containers uh you know an by Brandon Jacob Jenkins you know operates as kind of this satire uh of this old 19th century American melodrama uh and the structural surprise as anyone who is there uh is this big scene design moment where there's a wall that is there the entire time and we just know this world exists with the back upstage wall that wall during a key moment in the play where a ship blows up instead of literally you can't show a ship blowing up on stage right so the way that set designer Mimi Lean decided to render it is that wall fell down uh and there was little cotton balls all over the set uh the reason why I won't get into now but all those cotton balls just went flying into the audience with a rush of wind and everyone was covered in cotton balls and it felt like a ship was exploding that for me is a container of a structure of a play that and an anignorris was there because we sort of believed this wall is a wall and it's just going to be a wall for the whole play and suddenly it is not a wall it is a ship exploding that is a delightful thrilling surprise that I had never experienced in a play until that one in terms of content and story so many example I feel I would wager any play in modern history a character is revealing something that we didn't know before that is going to forever change their fate uh let me think of an example recently that I think is really really effective okay this is a big one so I apologize but John by Annie Baker uh the last line of the play I won't give too much detail but the last line of the play changes the entire play because we think there's a dynamic going on there's a relationship going on people are telling lies or keeping secrets and we never really know who's telling the truth uh particularly with one character uh and by the end of the play we have this last line which is my favorite last line in all of theater history uh and I've literally had students say when they read this line they literally throw the play across the room is how shocking it is it's that kind of a moment where we learn something so big uh based on the characterization story of what was structured in Annie Baker's play that it forever changed how we understood what came before so those moments again they're thrilling they're surprising it's just uh I just think that's the greatest gift that we can give an audience because kind of maybe zoom back to the beginning of our lecture here stories have been told since the history of time literally like fire campfire stories have been told right that's lore that's mythology that's religion just that's what storytelling is we have not reinvented storytelling maybe since the beginning but we what we have done is just innovate it and subvert it and surprise what we can do with it uh again again an artist's voice their point of view is going to make that story feel fresh but how they treat events especially classical traditional ways of thinking about storytelling and dramatic events is what allows stories to continue to feel fresh and innovative and exciting so you know we all know coming of age stories we we've read them in English classes we've seen them in plays but usually you know what happens in those what makes them stand out from the rest of the crop is that that writer has chosen to give us characters we've never seen before with language that perhaps we haven't heard before in a certain way and with a plot that may feel familiar you know coming of age as this character is growing up they're learning their hearts are getting broken they're dealing with just their own suffering and by the end of course they're more grown up they're more mature they're more aware of the world uh they go from child to adult by the end of a coming of age story right that can't change there's no coming of age story short where that doesn't happen however the how of what we get there thinking about stuff like periphity the kinds of changes that are happening what are those specific events to allow that you know coming of age to happen does a parent abandon them does the best friend betray them uh those are all distinctive and choices you get to make in terms of what dramatic events feel truthful to that character and to that journey and then for me and ignores is the surprises that happen along the way uh you know who's the character that they never thought they were going to connect to from the beginning and suddenly it becomes the most emotionally relevant scene and meaningful connection that they make with someone that we never thought we never expected them to have this sort of uh connection that allows them to grow up in a way that we just didn't see or could have anticipated so I do find peripy and anoris are twoilian terms that are very useful to think about in making sure that these stories which again are not new but they they feel new uh so what are these events that change things and how are we being surprised by them uh and then again I just to not make Aristotle mad here the most important one is during the climax so if you think about those you know that classic triangle that I alluded to earlier if you have and save that big secret of the play until that moment that's when it has the most impact you know Edipus is the most classic i mean Aristotle literally writes about Edipus in the poetics uh where he lays out all of these rules and structures uh that we know when we learn in the big secret of Inetus it is at the climax and it forever changes both the parip fortune uh the the shift in fortune from these characters and also the shift in awareness Edipus without spoiling that learns a lot of big things in that climax so I won't spoil that one for us and to end no matter what kind of play you're writing and what you're interested exploring and if you want to be more traditional uh in your writing something that Aristotle also gives us is that every play uh should have a sense of magnitude this I find the more plays that I see the more that I really start to honor uh what Aristotle meant by it because I think we can sense when a writer is really saying something urgent and necessary and uh uh whether it's their own like personal truth or a truth about the world when there is magnitude to it when there's scale when there's scope when there's ambition to it I think that's when it really matters so you know it's okay to write plays where you're just sort of uh figuring out characters and you're figuring out your own voice and your own rules but I think when you'll key into something that I have to really say this right now about the world I've never it's literally spilling out of me i have to put this down and put it in a play odds are your play has some magnitude to it because it is absolutely essential that you tell this story and I think that's sort of the the gasoline that keeps us going even as we sometimes may get frustrated with plot or structure like oh it's not going how I want this event isn't connecting the way I want or this character I don't really know them yet let me figure them out some more as long as you can return to the magnitude of what you're writing the the importance of what you're saying and why you're saying it you know there's only one of you in the world and your voice is going to be the only voice to tell this story in this way so just remember that is the heart and soul of who you are as a writer uh is that no one's doing what you're doing and that hopefully what you're writing has again that sort of sense of urgency of why you're doing it uh and that the world kind of needs that voice needs that story in there i think just to give it some specificity here you know I think the amount of uh progress we've made in terms of authentic storytelling we realize how urgent it was for specific kinds of writers to tell their own stories because it wasn't being done that way and we're receiving it now it's just sort of kind of uh uh uh in a big scale and the magnitude of of receiving these kinds of works because it does mean something to hear work that has a sense of voice and a sense of urgency to it so uh I think Aristotle would be very pleased with the amount of work that's been happening lately uh because I think we're all still honoring what he gave us thousands of years ago which is shocking in itself remarkable that this is how important and essential and intuitive uh ultimately too uh of what good storytelling should contain uh except now we're all just doing it in our own way and picking and choosing what really helps set us up for telling the best kinds of stories we can as playrates