Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

Formative Events

Formative Events

A person has formative events that take place in their lives. Say one every five years. A drama focuses on one of those formative events…ideally the most formative of all in a person' lifetime. Since these don’t happen all that often people are naturally interested when they see them beginning to form in their own lives or in the lives of others.

To satisfy this interest they read novels, go to the movies or go and see a theatrical production. These artistic devices use the imagination to trick awareness into believing, that reality is taking place….and allow a reader or audience to vicariously have an out of body moment... to where they experience the life shaping experience of someone else. If the experience is good the drama is called a comedy. If it's bad the drama is a tragedy.

A Drama is a literary construct designed to draw each and every member of the audience out of themselves and allow them for a brief period, to live the event through the eyes and emotions another. It is like the Tsunami of a person’s life. You go to the theater to see the big wave coming, to watch it wash over a central characters existence and see how they emerge from the experience.

The trick is periodically show the wave coming to hold the interest of the watcher as they see it coming and prepare to deal with it…first comes a glimpse and then another,….These glimpses are conflicts and they should build the same way the wave does, surging and looming ever larger and closer...like those old Godzilla movies where you see him intermittently over the skyscrapers.

The climax is the wave crashing down…In a one act, that should come the end of the second scene or start of the third. If the climax comes to soon…or if it so obvious the it can be anticipated the audience or reader imaginatively clomps down on it and becomes prematurely satiated…and quits paying attention. That is bad. If the climax comes too late or never arrives at all, the audience is left frustrated and unfulfilled. That is not good. It has to come at the appropriate time. It has to be a snapshot of that hugely significant event in the Central Characters’ life and what led up immediately before and what followed immediately after. That's why people go to the Theater and what they expect to see is such an event.

In writing a play you have to ask the question... Will the audience catch a glimpse of that wave….will they see Godzilla towering over the tops of the buildings coming ever closer and closer? The answer one usually gives themselves is “Yah-Ine or Ja-ein” it’s a German way of saying “Yes and No.“ (Ja?…Nein...get it?) It means a writer is scratching their head and slowly responding... "I hear what you're saying but perhaps it isn't as well evidenced as it could be...duh!