Etiqueta: 7 theatre’s principles

Last time it was all about how characters reacting and talking the way they’re supposed to on stage creates the mood but this entry is about TIME.

Synchronization:

In a play, time runs parallel; two to three hours happening in real time. A sort of dramatized reality show. What you see happening is happening in the time things take in the real world.  Thus the convention is somehow shared with movies and TV… And yet there’s bullet time and fast forward video, hence time is a lot more constricting in a play.
Novels… Novels have Windows time. We describe or stop describing to set pace. To decode takes longer, we need to know the code. No wonder anime is more popular than manga. Manga/the comics require(s) reading (decoding); the totality of the action is limited to a certain numbr of frames (key frames) and, of course, paper arrangement to suit the available space.

Anime is pure action in terms of movement and it doesn’t have a tradition of onomatopoeia and graphic symbols but can make use of the spotlight of the movies.

I believe this is why most people would choose the movie instead of the book. In the real time I describe a garbage container filled to the brim under a flickering street light making out the shape of a fish like teenager being talon greeted by the local gang, a video sequence has already done the number in less time. Just to read and understand the whole paragraph takes 20 seconds approx. Talon greeted? What’s that? How can a teenager be like a fish? So it takes more time than video to decipher, not to just read. Plus, we need to burn calories by imagining.

Enunciation identity

The actor assumes an identity and speaks in first person. There’s focalization but it is not dependant on the narrator. It is dependent on the order of revelation and is pretty similar but not quite the same to us playing to be the main character.
Partial focus. Do we feel cheated by an omniscient narrator who goes telling the story to their convenience? Maybe this is why first person’s narrative is becoming more and more common since each enunciating entity is not in possession of the whole truth. And theatre allows this individual voice without anyone clarifying who is saying what or who knows more than everybody else in a way you can’t miss statement- character. This is why we can see a hero chasing after the villain axe to hand or pistol handed whilst the villain is ready to fall from the ceiling.
Opacity. Not theatre, TV series or movie have this skull can opener quality which allows us to listen to thoughts and feelings as novel, comics and tales can in the same way Facebook or X do. Theatre has a dialogue half way between what’s possible to be said and the mess of a human’s mind that can be perceived through tone, body language and actions but can’t fully let us in.
For the video’s author, the first three conventions make a play up in the strict sense. If you were to break the three at the same time, there wouldn’t be any play at all. The other three are not as important and can even be the reason you become original when playwright writing but the first three are the core of theatre narrative.
This is why we go by trying to learn from the other media. Because theatre has its own strengths and weaknesses and we can use this knowledge to up our own game.
Whilst a narrator could be more effective at stating the conflict and painting it red than a dialogue, we can’t afford to waste time in a play. This is unique to theatre plays the way I understand narrative.

Summarizing, a playwright depends on dialogue to state the conflict, show the characters’ feelings (limited by time) and show us a climax. Together with the limited range of movements, there are no camera angles or zooming neither fades to black; so everything has to fit the real time on stage without edition.
It is in dialogue that we can trust to dramatize certain situations in our media, just like what happens in theatre.

Nonetheless, remember I’m just a nobody trying to explain herself the rules and ways of narrative out there thus this entry might be pure nonsense. No more drama and like this nonsense now !
Pasto kalo.

Last time I only mentioned them, this one I’ll try explaining a few…Which means nonsense is about to happen and you better free yourself of pure logic.

PLACEMENT RECONVENTION:

The spectator/audience know(s) he/they is/are in a theatre house, their rear on a seat. But if you tell them they’re in Siberia, they will believe themselves in Siberia. In comics if there’s a place’s name inside a white box; voilà, we’re in Gotham city. Same on screen; we’re told we are in a train in the Rumanian border and we won’t protest we are not, just because those trees don’t grow there. In occasion we will see some takes of landmarks but that’s not crucial.

Novels… The same. Though they’re more fastidious in the way there’s descriptions to be made of streets and stores for the reader to really know where the action is happening.

TIME RECONVENTION:

What’s happening on stage is what’s happening in fable time and in history time… And this is what’s a bit different[1]. The whole plot is fable time. There’s not story time that can be brought up as if happening at the moment because we time traveled. No. There can be mention to past but past won’t be re-enacted. It will be mentioned or talked about but never shown as a scene. And by past, I mean the past of the fable time.
Perhaps this is why Robert McKee insists in the dramatization of the flashback. It has to be something happening at the same time we’re watching or reading it for it to be immersive.

CHARACTERIZATION:

I don’t know the name of this character in English. To me, he will always be Benito B. Bodoque and not many people would know him. Top cat wasn’t popular in the States. Tough in Mexico… Better voice actors. And the point dear Merriam is, that you’re talking about Benito talking, feeling and thinking likeTop cat if such is his role. Thus the convention, applicable to every media, is about how the character reacts to stuff. Does they have an accent? Are they cheeky or demure? Will they commit suicide under pressure? Characterization might not be tangible but it is definitely there. It is part of the famous subtext and makes a character something vivid.

TO BE CONTINUED

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[1] In the original entry in Spanish I state something different but that was a different me.

So the audience doesn’t care so long they like it… But how to play the believe game?

ENVY AND CONVENTIONS

There is an unspoken agreement between the audience and the writer of a pause in credibility. To enter the game, we need to be able to stop being so critical in order to play everything happening on stage as real[1].

Even if we are aware we’re not and have no money to pay the fly, we agree to be in Venice in the Renaissance (time machine?) or that the painted background is really made of heavy rocks. We don’t need screens projecting anything. We only need to be told we’re playing and we play. But for that to happen, do we need something special?

Worse, even before we start discussing it… Do we have to care about what comes up in theatre when we don’t even write playwrights? Maybe not. Except for the part in which the different media covet what the other media CAN do. Movies covet the introspection of novellas and the novella covets the action of the movie. Can we covet something from theatre? You tell me.

THE THEATRE PRINCIPLES ARE 7:

1. Placement reconvention.
2. Time reconvention.
3. Characterization.
4. Synchronization.
5. Enunciation identity.
6. Partial focus.
7. Opacity.

TO BE CONTINUED

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[1] Do you see how we play the reality game when talking fiction?

Before attempting to attribute myself merits I don’t own; I must confess of theatrical plays I have but read Oscar Wilde and a bit of Shakespeare [not in English]. And I have never been into any play but something by Molière I can’t recall (some high school literature teachers send kids to theatres to watch low budget plays in Mexico so they don’t have to read —I went cause my friends had to and it sounded like fun not because my teacher did send me) and «Confesiones de mujeres de 30».

Once confessed, the second thing is to speak of the source. The source is a YouTube channel called ‘El rinconcito’ and … It is in Spanish but the link is here just in case. That video and whatever it is I know about writing fiction, together make this entry up. Capice?

THE AUDIENCE… DOESN’T CARE

Thus, let’s start by semi? quoting. And I say semi since I’m going to summarize it the way I got it and not copy paste the entire text as is.

The audience gives a bull about the kind of a theatre play they’re watching. They won’t analyze if it is dialogued or narrated or whatever. The audience cares about liking it or not liking it.

If I refer this to any single media (movie, manga, comic, play, videogame, TV); the sentence might pretty much sound like this:

The audience (target) doesn’t care if they’re watching videogame referenced aesthetics, over repeated Korean clichés or cheap cringey scenes with tears on their eyes whilst saying their fare-thee-wells. Their only care is if they like it or not.

That itself is interesting. It should be another entry (and here, I open the parenthesis to talk aloud to myself: Do you see Merriam?, you should use it for more useless material). The target wants it to be effective. Likeable to them[1].

TO BE CONTINUED

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[1] Note to myself. Stop writing the weird things you write about and be like everybody else out there…