Notes for Script Analysis

(theater + performance)
What am I trying to make?
• A Fictional Event?
• A Representation of Real Life?
Name the Event…
• Actually we are referring to concentric events where smaller events reflect larger
ones.

• Examples:
o The search for the killer (amongst many killers)
o The journey out of danger
o The death of a banana tree
o The massacre of innocents
o The quest for leverage
“The rebellion” is too simplistic….
• Once the event has been named you then want to add tone words (adjectives
and adverbs) in order to specify the dominant emotional charge.
Mimeses – Fictional Event
• Traditional Theater has a Fictional World and Fictional Time Frame.
• Performance Art has/shares the same time and space as the audience.
• Fictional Stories can be told in non-fictional time and space.
• Performance is not a singular phenomenon.
o Performer and Audience are in dialogue with one another (Cultural Script)
• “Performance” is used and understood commonly as “Fiction” whereas
“Performance is not necessarily “Fiction.
Inventory of personal associations to the piece are indicated as tone words.
Cultural Responses are also indicated with tone words.
One needs:
• Structures and Strategies for reaching audiences
• Tone words bring forth Personal and Cultural Tensions…
• Example – The Dutchman, by Amiri Baraka
o A critique on the strategy of movies and plays to kill off the blacks after
they have been enobled.
o There is a twisting of structures against themselves to make the text more
accessible
• Events (both smaller events and The Event) are viewed as Cause and Effect
and they are Character Driven.
o That is to say that onstage the common drive of Cause and Effect is
through characters.
o But on the page the Story brings the Characters forward.
o One encounters a double perspective:
 Characters
 Plot-events
o To understand how events happen as character-centered you need three
energies (from individuals and from groups):
 Central Motive
 Central Action
 Central Conflict
• Central Action: The action which all of the characters participate in. Phrased as
a transitive verb in the infinitive form (not passive). What it is everybody doing.
o This is a source of dramatic irony in that conflict arises from everyone
doing the same thing.
o For example, not everyone can control the crown. Each individual has
different attitudes, methods, and perspectives.
o Central Action leads to Central Conflict.
• Central Conflict: Conflict organized between two or more who are trying to
occupy the same territory.
o “Who are they?” and “What are they?”
o In other words Central Conflicts have multiple polarities:
  Characters in Conflict
 Thematic Conflict (2 or more…)
 Political-Social Conflict
o Human Beings substitute for both Thematic and Political Conflict due to
this being a human-based medium.
o Example: from Translations by Brian Friel
 3 Layers (in the Abstract) – only a possibility…
• 1. British Colonialists vs. Irish Nationalists
• 2. Imperialism vs. National-Autonomy
• 3. Suppression for Profit vs. Political Freedom
• Central Motive: An embedded structure in two parts:
o A Circumstance (past or future) creating a…
o Need in the Present.
 Example: From Waiting for Godot – A need for a purpose which will
allow us to stop playing games.
o Central Motive needs to be shared by everybody
 Individual beats (actions) lead towards Central Motive in classical
structures.
 Whereas there also exists a tradition of structures leading away
from a Central Motive.
• When you lead an audience into a broad social context understanding can
occur…

 Again, there are Three Central Structures:

o Central Action (what everybody is doing)
o Central Conflict (need to verb)
o Central Motive (need for noun)
 All Three Central Structures function simultaneously
 Sometimes one of the three offers MORE…
 Dramatic Irony: Unity of action leads to unity of conflict through a (dis)unity of
motive.
 Be careful of generalization.
 Collaboration needs a rationale by means of structure and content.
  Where does process send the imagination?
 Intuition = instant grasp of appropriate ideas and strategies
 Finally: Central Structures are Interrelated Energy Systems that make the event
actually HAPPEN.
 One more last thing. Plays seem to indicate a certain interpretation. However, it
is all subjective and certainly not all hard and fast.
 Advice from John G-T: “Find the fear.”
Three Processes by which one can root out the Three Central Structures:
 1. Metonomy => Association
o In literature: A fig. of speech in which an attribute or commonly associated
feature is used to name or designate “something” as in “the pen is mightier
than the sword.”
o Metonomy can become Synecdoche (see below)
 2. Analogy/Metaphor => Symbolic Representation
o A correspondence in some respects between things otherwise dissimilar
o Emphasis on similarity through comparison.
 3. Synecdoche => The Substitution of a part for the whole.
o In literature: A fig. of speech by which a more inclusive term is substituted
for a less inclusive term or vice versa. For example: “head” for “cattle” /
“the law” for “police man” / “fifty sail” for “fifty ships” / “society” for “high
society” / “boards” for “stage” / “chair” for “person in charge”
 We are talking here about teasing out the formal implications of the Three
Central Structures.
 One can chart these out…
o Metonomy (substitution of associated attributes
o Analogy
o Synecdoche (part for the whole, whole for the part, genus for species,
material for the thing made, etc.)
 In the Three Central Structures
o Central Action
o Central Conflict
o Central Motive

Text/Playscript Central Action Central Conflict Central Motive

Metonomy
Analogy
Synecdoche

o Epiphanies and climactic scenes occur where metonomy, analogy, and

synecdoche choices seem to overlap.
o Metonomy, Analogy, and Synecdoche can be
o Beats
o Scenes
o Images
o Parts of beats
o And so on…
o Metonomy, Analogy, and Synecdoche provide you with a sensibility of scenes
and the relationship between them.
o Metonomy, Analogy, and Synecdoche function as guideposts containing the
blueprint for meaningful comprehension.
o Deal selectively with the structures in order to consider what will be most
valuable (i.e. generate the appropriate energies).
o The purpose of Metonomy, Analogy, and Synecdoche is to generate images that
are useful in production.
o Useful in the context of …

And again the event looks like this right now….

 A Present Need to…Verb 3 Layers A Present Need For…Noun
Characters
Thematic
Political

Central Action Central Conflict Central Motive

Metonomy Analogy Synecdoche

Beats Scenes Parts of Beats Images Etc.

Some Thoughts on the Role of an Artist taken from John G-T:

 Cultural mythology has been addicted to Romanticism and Individuality for a
long, long time and has established these standards for American Culture.
 Please consider:
o Manifest Destiny
o Ralph Waldo Emerson
o Henry David Thoreau
o The Oregon Trail
o Progress
o Etc.
 This culture has embraced the idea of the lone artist who functions as a
lightning rod with quasi-mysterious powers to create with no influences and
no research. This is a distortion of an artist.
 There are ethical and moral obligations to consider. Precise informed intent
guides us as we take responsibility for the audience’s health. The chef is
responsible for the eater’s heath regardless of whether or not anyone eats the
dish.
“Be able to explain everything in your design.”
- John Swindell (KU)
“I’m only responsible for the predictable consequences of my actions. I am not
responsible for the predictable consequences of anybody else’s actions.”
- Noam Chomsky
Genre: A productive category with implied rule systems (i.e. guidelines, norms,
characteristics, etc.
 Here are some classic genres:
o Lyric
o Dramatic
o Narrative
 And here are some drama genres:
o Comedy
o Tragedy
 And here are some film genres:
o Western
o Sci-fi
o War
o Action
o Romantic Comedy
 Genre norms help us to understand how audiences respond to the event.
 Violating Genre (not wrong) changes the expectations of the audience which is
in fact set up to have certain expectations.

 Genre at its worst is a formula.

 Genre at its best is a formula.
 Genre helps us to understand what to do and how to do it.
Multiple Genres or Grafting other Genres into Play!!!
 What tends to occur is a collision of sensibilities.
 There is a mixture of authority vying for the audience’s sensibility and attention.
 A word of caution: Sometimes there is no tension between genres that have
collided…
 Take a look at the following diagram:
Politics of Representation
 Consider Thompson Highway’s Dry Lips Oughta Move…”
o The agenda of his text refuses to reduce the identities of the men living on
the reservation to universalism.
o …even though they are indigenous North Americans…
o The play contemplates difference, not how they are similar (as with an
emphasis on common humanity).
o There is a dialectical relationship between:
 Universalism and Particularization
 Particularization: There are subgroups within larger groups
 Universalism: Spheres of generalization bracket off groups
o Why have a Politics of Representation? Or, why generate movement from
“abstractness” to “actualization”?
o Gaining a Perspective on Identity
 Research (Contact with close groups)
 Talk with People in order to have a common sensibility in the
piece.
o The representation of group is not to represent identity as audiences carry
a history of representation already.
o Then you have two questions…
 What am I going to do to represent identity?
 What do I use to represent identity for an audience not of the
identity group?
o Two Possible Answers:
 Research (Contact with close groups)
 Talk with People in order to have a common sensibility in the
 piece.
o Politics of Representation is a Crucial Issue
 Staging images is authoritative.
 This authority comes from the technique of artistry.
 Images are charged images.
 Because images are powerful they become fact (by virtue of their
impact)
 Compelling images impact a range of emotions
 Images are surrogates for truth and they substitute for gaps in our
understanding.
o Problem:
 The compelling image becomes more interesting than what it is
representing.
o Answer:
 Take responsibility for representation and do not offer formulaic
responses. Informed choices (i.e. research, talking with people,
etc.) reflect a politics of representation.
 And informed choices can offer an antidote for prejudice and
stereotyping.

o Finally, surgery is not only done for the patient, it is also done to the
patient. Great art performs a spiritual surgery on an audience willing to
engage. – John G.T.

And now back to the event…Narrative and Plot.

o Technically speaking Plot is a series of fictional events.
o Plot is not a story or the narrative.
o A clue as to the number of plot events in traditional forms of drama:
 Act I, Act II, Act III, Act IV, Act V has approximately 5 events.
 o Plot events constitute the next level of event down from the entire
play/event.
o Furthermore, scene events make up act events, and beat events
make up scene events.
o There is no absolute number of events.

o Narrative (or story) is made up by filling out the distance between the plot
events with scene and beat events.
o Major events either are, or are not connected.
o How are they connected?
o Why are they connected?
o Flow of fictional events can be linear and causal, episodic, and who
knows but possibly something else….
o Flow can be constituted in all sorts of ways with all sorts of movement.

 Categorizing Narrative Structures

• Episodic Distribution
• Causal Distribution
o Perhaps we should deal first with causal distribution due to its’ long
association with the drama.
 Causal Distribution is associated with Naturalism and the well-
made-play where incidents are arranged in a linear fashion and the
relationships between incidents are causal (#1 causes #2; #2
 causes #3, #3 causes #4, etc.)
 Causation becomes a way in which to understand incidents and the
relations between them.
 Causal organization has a long history of rendering the human
condition. The history predates even the empirical point of view
from the 17th and 18th century going back even to Greek theater.
o Episodic Distribution relates incidents (scenes and/or beats) in a way
that cannot be accounted for with causal explanations. Instead incidents
are organized:
 by theme
 by character
 by mood
o By looking closer at each these last three ideas beginning with Thematic
Sequencing
 A sequence of incidents revolving around theme.
 Example: In Andy Warhol’s film “Empire State Building” theme and
subject are both the same thing.
 What you see is often what you get.
 Consider Robert Wilson’s and Phillip Glass’ “Einstein on the Beach”
o Character Sequencing
 A character or group of characters is tracked for coherence, but
psychology is not.
 The sense of it is coherent because of actions and reactions.
There is just no causality.
 Time appears foregrounded.
 Audiences and characters do not appear to mesh.
o Mood Sequencing
 Sequencing around a dominant feeling.
 Mood spelled backwards is doom.
 Mood is a feeling, while theme is an idea.
 And the audience experiences what exactly?
o Narrative in relation to Human Desire…
o Humans are frequently, if not perennially in a state of desire.
o This near constant state of desire is the cornerstone of the human
condition.
o Narratives address the desire for broad patterns such as:
 Completion
 Wholeness
 Meaning
o All of which are associated with a sense of ending.
o Narratives set up a desire for endings.
o Try and see narrative as a kind of structure that creates in the audience an
 appetite for the same kinds of psycho-physical states associated with
positive association relationships from youth.
o Narrative’s “Standard” Story
o Western narratives typically have most of the following elements in its’
story (even including those that are experimental):
 Point of attack (impinging incident)
 Complication(s)
• Revelation / Recognition
• Reversal
 Crisis
 Climax
 De noument (Falling Action
o This basic structure has different names for the constituent parts and for
the set of incidents. Oftentimes, this narrative structure is known as the
well-made play.
o Point of Attack: Unit, scene, or beat in which the Central Conflict is
introduced. The Point of Attack establishes the fictional state of normalcy
within the play (what is wrong and how that differs from what normally
goes on).
o Complication: Unit which follows the Point of Attack and which alters the
Central Conflict in some way.
 Conflict changes are normal as in the heightening or lessening of
intensity when certain characters arrive and leave the stage (see
human beings as bearers of conflict).
 Recognition: Revelation (either complex or simple) of something
that heightens conflict.
 Reversal: A way to structure conflict whereby some element(s) of
the fictive world is/are redirected (the proverbial rug pulled out
from under the feet of our characters).
o Crisis: Unit in which the characters choose whether or not to continue
their struggle against the opposition.
 Often this crisis occurs during a brief hiatus that provides an
opportunity not to continue.
 There is normally only one crisis in any given well-made play.
 Sometimes, the crisis is staged as a debate (either internal or
external).
 Crisis is the lull before the storm and is rife with tension.
o Climax: The storm. The moment at which the characters can go no
farther with the central conflict. The central conflict is drastically altered by
the climax.
o Denoument: A downturn in intensity following the crisis. This sometimes
signals a return to normalcy, and sometimes signals the establishment of
 a new order.
o These narrative components exist either as scenes, units or beats.
o The notion of crisis in theater has implications for intensity…
 In the modern tradition emotional intensity is structured.
 In the post-modern tradition the structures of crisis and climax
may exist without the emotional intensity. That is, the emotional
intensity seems randomly segregated from the structure.
o The well-made play originates in the 19th Century. It was discovered
(read “invented”) as a model for narrative structure with assigned
emotional intensities for each component. Its’ formula was derived from
the tradition of the western canon…
o The emotions rise in direct relation to the well-made play structure and
can be graphed.

 Looking at Narrative II
o Franco-American Anthropology Inserted into Theater Training…
o Victor Turner (Anthropologist) + Richard Schechner (Performance
Studies)
o Turner tries to understand Tribal-Social Processes
 How do isolated groups deal with violations of the social structure,
and how do they take care of social breaches.
 Because they were isolated they went on. Murder was not seen as
an option for social control.
o Schechner took this work and he tried to view dramatic structure as a
mimesis of social process (i.e. the addressing of social breaches).
o And here are the Social Breach concepts
 Breach: A rupture or fissure occurs in the world of social relations of
any given play (this differs from the impinging incident. In Oedipus
Rex, the breach is the harboring of the killer).
 Repositioning of Characters: As a result of the breach’s impact the
social organization has somehow been destroyed. The characters
have a sense of their old position that they carry with them. (In
Oedipus Rex, the Shepard is out of his element when brought before
the king. He is fear).
 The repositioning of characters occurs onstage and is seen by
an audience.
 Directional Movement (Flow): After a breach, there is a sequence of
events that move in two possible directions:
 Movement towards Redress of Breach (towards a solution to
the breach)
 Movement towards a Widening of Breach (towards a
dissolution of breach)
 When both movements occur simultaneously there is tension
and hence conflict.
 Impasse: Occurrence at those points when dissolution and redress are
pitted against one another and have balanced or stalled any
movement.
 Catastrophe: A force that breaks up an impasse.
 Following a catastrophe comes either of these outcomes:
 A. Restoration of Original Social Order
 B. Reorganization of Social Order (not necessarily good or bad but
ambiguous.
 C. Integration (partial) of Social Order
 Somehow the forces of dissolution and redress have co-mingled
 and with this comes a forecast of future dissolution and redress.
 D. Perpetuation of Breach within Social Order (i.e. dissolution wins)
 Sometimes the force of a catastrophe is not enough to break up
an impasse.
 Individuals experience change, but this does not mean that the
situation has necessarily changed. Also, the role the individual
is slotted into doesn’t change.
o Please consider Stanley from “A Streetcar Named Desire” by Tennessee
Williams.
 It is 1947 and a community of soldiers have returned home from
Europe.
 This is a post-war community with Stanley playing the sergeant and
Mitchell as second-in-command.
 What could not be spoken after World War II (but could be spoken
after Vietnam) was that these guys were nuts!!!
 Stanley and the boys carry the onus of victory with no room for other
labels like, “nuts”, “violent”, or “damaged”.
 While their sons who fought in Vietnam could be confronted with the
damage done to them in a way that still dismissed the painful history
with the label of “nuts”.
o The Appeal of the Social Redress Model is that it comes unencumbered by
an emotional structure with assigned emotional intensity embedded in that
structure. One can still assign emotional intensity though you are not forced
into it.
 Turner addresses an aspect of cultures that remain at impasse
regardless of a failed catastrophe.
 Some art attempts to address social breaches in non-catastrophic
ways.
o And of course these narrative components exist either as units, scenes or
beats.
A Few Words About Organizing Drama:
 It helps to understand what one is making and how the various elements function
in a story.
 Therefore, one should determine the various functions of story elements.
 In other words, if you don’t know what you have, you won’t know how to make it
happen on stage.
 Normally what goes on is an attempt to get a piece to move in time. And
without understanding the elements you cannot control them.
 Audiences perceive fields of difference. You need to register one moment for
another in order to shape the arc of experience in time.
  Typical Structures
o Inductive Structures induce the audience to have certain responses.
The relationship between the stage and the audience is one that
structures experience both for the audience and for the stage but in
different ways.
 Directors are the 20th Century’s answer to the induction function of
this impulse.
o Open Structures release the audience to make its own interpretation (i.e.
John Cage).
 Established boundaries allow people to try other experimental modes.
 Invoking tradition is not good or bad but only customary.
 Storytelling methods (read “structure”) may be used as ground from which to act
upon the audience.
 Traditional structures have longevity because they are powerful (induction).
 More from John Gronbeck-Tedesco
o Models are culturally framed
o Paradigms are straight-jackets in disguise
o You are in trouble when craft is idolized as good.
And now for the star of our show…Character!!!
 Characters are parts of the story.
 Characters allow the story to be told.
 In performance, characters seem to bring about the story.
 On the page, characters are brought about by narrative (literature)
 Character Functions:
o There are lots of functions whereby characters bring about the unfolding of
the story.
o The following is a list of common (though not exhaustive) functions:
 Protagonist: functions typically as the character most closely
associated with what the story is about. That is to speak about his
or her objective around which the story is organized.
 Antagonist: Any one character that interferes with the objective of
the protagonist. (Note: these are not synonyms for “good” and
“evil”, “hero” and “villan”).
 Witness: One who learns. Or, “potential learner”. In Greek Drama
the chorus is witness. Sometimes there are multiple witnesses
with multiple functions.
  Helper: To help (typically to help the protagonist). Again, as with
witnesses there is the possibility for multiples with multiple functions
within the story.
 Sought After Character: Sought after by the Protagonist. May be
multiple and unstable too.
 Victim: victimized character.
o All character functions may have a negative value (i.e. the false helper,
the false witness, etc.).
o Normally, narratives are complex when character functions are complex.
o Normally, it is important to keep clear about what function is what and
when.
o What impact does character have on narrative structure?
 In many stories, some functions loom larger than other functions
(i.e. Archetype of the Teacher-Antagonist)
 Try to understand narrative structure and how do characters
function to move narrative.
Trying to understand the Trauma in Drama:
 Trauma in one sphere? Multiple spheres?
o Kinship
o Economic
o Political
o Communal
 Often, the trauma is not literally in the story but instead is only hinted at.
 Be careful not to be too specific.
 List particular traumas (this-ness) and list generalized traumas (what-ness) so
there may be a conversation between particulars and generalizations. They
will play off one another while complicating and expanding the other.
 Use particular evidence for interpretation.
 And Don’t Panic!!! You must allow for a piece to be inconsistent, incoherent,
disparate, contradictory, or ambiguous.
 Just try and hold onto it.
Some more thoughts on “Inductive” and “Open” dramatic structures:
 Remember…
o It is a modernist assumption that narrative is a rhetorical, inductive system
shaped by the artist.
o Within the “inductive” tradition there is a counter-movement which tries to
upset induction. Here there is an emphasis on pluralizing the response.
Note the irony of enforced autonomy.
o Consider the difference between the following:
 Actors playing characters
 Actors playing actors playing characters.
o There is a dialectic that arises between role and reality in this second
 option.
Beat Work
 Beat work of the 20th Century reflects a diversity of influences and styles. Beat
work is a strategy for coping with the moment-to-moment framing of situations.
 A story: Modernism arises at the end of the 19th Century in response to Realism
(which absorbs elements of Realism and survives but is not Realism)
 Situationism – a version of Materialism not plagued by the influence of Marx.
Situationism tries to point out how human beings are framed in moment-to-
moment situations.
 So, instead of relying solely on conventional gestures and mannerisms (codes for
understanding, or comprehension) What else can you do for yourself and
what can you use?
 Well, conventions don’t necessarily go away. In addition to conventions you
incorporate a process of engagement with the situation, and influenced by the
environment.
 Immersion into environment and situation result in “character” and “force”.
 The situation is made up of a set of given circumstances which exert upon and
shape human circumstance. The given circumstances pressure the character(s).
 Two Types of Given Circumstances
o Real Circumstances such as the performance space and the lines
spoken by the actor.
o Fictional Circumstances (given) circumstances of the fictive world.
 How do these two get put together? Or Rather Firstly, What Exactly are the
Given Circumstances?
o Agents: “Others”, or a fictional outline filled by a real human being. Actors
respond to other Actors on the stage. This is to be distinguished from
responding to “Hamlet” or “George.” We’re talking about the
embodiment, not about a body of ideas. Agents meet Agents on the
stage and through them Character meets Character (pressuring in on the
body). If the audience can’t see something then it does not exist. The
physical is agency. And this agency allows energy from other actors to
get inside of them with the audience contacted indirectly.
o Ecology of Space: The Environment. The interaction between space and
the actor. Space exerts pressure on agents.
o Personal Incident: What is happening to a character / agent in any given
beat. Human Beings live from one situation to another. The incident in a
beat triggers a response (point-of-response).
o Time: Historical Time. Time is something shared by all characters.
(Restoration characters are typically sharing the same period). The
sense of time impacts everything from “duration” to the sense of
moving “fast” or “slow”.
 The Human Being is situated in the middle of these influences. You need to
 know what is pressuring and shaping the actor both within, and through a
situation.
 Consider martial arts where by human beings absorb, transform, and redirect
energy.
 Issues of Fantasy and Reality…
o Fantasy can sometimes be more useful for dealing with reality than reality
all by itself.
o Theatre is a liminal space, a threshold. Theater and Film are doorways
(situated between spaces).
o In these kinds of spaces you have certain freedoms that normally don’t
exist.
o Even though it is a privileged space censorship can enter into liminal
spaces. Nonetheless, a remark framed by theater, or art for that matter, is
often beyond the call of treason or slander.
o The space as designed has to signal what is possible to an audience.
o What is left for the actors to do?
o They (the actors) cannot play absence.
o Actors create positive presences that denotate identity.
o The politics of identity are linked to the politics of stereotypes.
o Stereotypes and codes of western drama are institutionalized and require
invention of new conventions to break with the old.
o You reclaim the art form.
o You address exclusion.
o You ask “What is at stake if that is not me being represented?”
o You ask how you include or exclude others.
 Back to Beat Work…
 Actors when portraying characters must behave situationally. The situation
pressures and shapes the character(s) into a psycho-physical point-of-view.
 Point-of-View is rendered in binary terms (relationships of pairs) such as mother
to daughter. If the point-of-view chosen by you has no shape (is not in the body)
then it is of no use. If it is not in the body then it can be neither seen, nor heard.
Understandably, point-of-view is rendered broadly. Typically, characters in a
beat do not harbor reciprocal points-of-view thus resulting in difference.
 Reciprocal points-of-view harbor stereotypes.
 Highly articulated points-of-view are not rendered to confirm prejudicial notions of
stereotypical images (such as Chaplain’s Little Tramp).
 There is a distance between ‘types’ and ‘stereotypes’.
 Point-of-view is used elaborately in both Chaplain and Mel Brooks where there
is a presentational representation of types.
 Point-of-view is big in beat work.
 See how far point-of-view will lead you… An Example from Hamlet
o “Get thee to a nunnery!!!” Hamlet to Ophelia
  For the actor as character
• HAMLET P.O.V. = Judge to Convict
• OPHELIA P.O.V. = Nurse to Patient
 Analogy, Synechdoche, Metonomy all become important
 The Body of the Actor is shaped/mapped here by these possible
choices.
o Point-of-view is the first response to the given circumstances.
o Character is the creation of the actor.
o The actor’s shape acts upon the character which in turn acts back upon
the actor.
o The actor both cooperates and resists this shaping.
Action: Tends to be associated with theater and drama throughout history.
 From an Aristotelian perspective: Drama is an imitation of action.
 Point-of-view is the trigger for Action.
 There are Two Traditional Descriptions of Action (neither is right or wrong just
traditional):
o Action is a combination of intention and a means toward achieving
that intention.
 What it is the character tries to do and how.
 Objectives and Tactics
 The correct wording of objectives (or intention) is phrased as a verb
in the transitive infinitive: “To drive Ophelia away.”
 The how of tactics is always physically expressed in the theater
(one is organizing behavior in a beat).
o Action is the desire (intention) of one character to get another character
to do something for the original character. Action is the desire for a
specific behavior from one character for another.
 Both given circumstances and point-of-view influence the direction and energy of
action.
 Both descriptions of action operate on the level of the physical.
Approaches to Action
 Normally all physical work is tactical. That is, no physical act is detached from
desire or intention.
 Instances of Agency:
o What do you want?
o How do you get it? (The “how” is the most apparent to an audience)
 Beat work reflects the Central Action
o Central Action is the through line for the piece.
o Central Action is the “super-objective”.
o Central Action is the spine of character building.
o Central Action is expressed as a transitive-infinitive verb (desire) that
compels the entire play.
o Avoid playing the super-objective as this amounts to only playing on one
level.
o Instead, what are the moment-to-moment objectives that help get to the
super-objective.
o Note: Sometimes beats are disconnected from the super-objective.
o Note: Sometimes there is no super-objective as in soap operas where
fragments of action are the structure.
o The super-objective aims to unify and it assumes that characters have
overarching goals.
o What connects action to the super-objective?
 Style of Physical Work (the shape of the “how” and the “how” of the
“how”)
 Cultural Grammar
 Context of Cultural Repertory (a grammar that pre-exists the
performance such as Commedia’s repertory of tactics
 Teleology: n. 1.) The philosophical study of design or purpose in natural
phenomena. 2) The use of ultimate purpose or design as a means of explaining
natural phenomena.
 Often, plays exist within a cultural context (full of tactical shapes) with its own
unique traditions. You should seek to understand these traditions in order to find
out what to do.
 Style resides in history and also in the perception of history.
 History becomes cosmetic.
 Or, “Why did something work historically and can it work right now?”
o Note: Class Systems: i.e. Power: Who has it? What kind of power? How
do you make it readable on stage?
 Costumes cue physical activity through framing and style
 Broadly stated both framing and style (cultural and historical sources) have to
be constantly evaluated as they connect tactics with super-objectives.
 As a theater artist you shape your tactics to create analogous cultural tactics that
address the theatricality of the piece. And, you also shape the tactics so your
audience has the opportunity of placing the piece both onstage and in the world.
 Tactics have major relevance to historical circumstance.
o In Beckett’s work for example he tries to separate intention from the
means towards intention. The tactics ‘simply’ don’t work. Often, he would
use actors who were extremely talented who then became stuck in time.
When the tactics have no efficacy you were stuck in time with no
resources. The actors were living in a space without history as a
clarifying device.
 Style, grammar, and point-of-view inform and shape action.
 Mimetic story material triggers a larger amount of diagetic (inferred) story
material.
 Consider Susan Glaspell’s Triffles
o This play examines prairie culture and the relationships between men and
women in the early 20th Century. Some issues to keep in mind regarding
this time period are:
 New American Immigrants who are sent back to Europe within a
generation during the World Wars.
 Ideas of masculinity and the positioning of men in society (cultural,
political, kinship, economic) are in question, or rather are in flux.
While the women stay at home, the men are becoming canon
fodder. Or, they are coming home crazy.
 Women are on the receiving end of it all.
 Men have an institutional power base that provides authority and
responsibility.
o The men in Triffles are obviously investigating the murder. However, they
are going about it as if running on autopilot. Their attitudes are not
 focused on the crime. Their objective is out of sort with the moment-to-
moment reality of the situation.
o The women in Triffles are looking much more closely at the situation.
o For both groups the environment is never the same from beat to beat.
o The environment here functions at times as a minefield and at other
moments as a treasure trove.
o The function of environment changes but usually this is not visually
perceptible.
o However, lighting does play a large role in the rendering of function…. In
other words lighting works at being not just about the physical identity of
the environment.
 Beats change whenever the action (either desire or tactics) of any character
changes, and sometimes beat changes are staggered.
o The given circumstances and point-of-view shifts from beat to beat.
The can be identified and mapped out in the body and in space.
o This is often necessary, but also dialogic between the page and the stage.
o Narrative structure is dependent upon the organization of beats because
beats implement narrative structure.
o Of course, narrative models may be fragmented.
 Agents: Agents have functions and roles within beats, for instance:
o Questioner
o Organizer
o Witness
o Silent Witness
o An agent is a repository of material to which actors/characters and
audiences respond.
 Emotional structures are revealed through beats.
o Consider the works of Chekov in relation to those of Shakepseare.
o In Chekov there is an understatement of emotion as it is redistributed
across many stage elements. The subtext and the text are more distant.
o In Shakespeare, you have to be more explicit with the emotional rendering
through the character-actor.
 Action (desires and tactics) comes from the behaviorism model where intent
and the means towards that intent are intimately connected.
 In beat work, action has been canonized as the centerpiece of drama.
 Other Elements of Beats
o Obstacle (creating struggles)
o Stakes: (what you stand to win and what you stand to loose)
 Arising out of 1960’s-1980’s game theory.
 You can play as someone who is in the process of winning or you
can play as someone who is in the process of loosing.
 Willie Lowman always plays as if he is winning even though
 everyone knows that he is loosing. Biff Lowman plays like he is
loosing.
o Personal Incident: (The personal perspective of any given character
within the given circumstances). This translates into “What is happening
to the character?” from the point-of-view of the characters once again.
 This changes with the beat.
 Anything in the given circumstances can happen to a character…
 In Triffles, one of the Sheriff’s personal incidents is the County
Attorney relieving him of responsibility.
 One of the County Attorney’s personal incidents is that he is
becoming bored by the given circumstances.
 For Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters, they have been disregarded and
ignored by these two men.
o Time: the sense of time as experience by each character (potential for
conflict due to opposing view points as throughout).
 From Triffles – Time is a liability for the women because the longer
that they are in the house the greater the chance of the men
discovering something. Time for the men is scheduled for official
purposes.
 “How much is time limited?” is a way of exploring time.
o Point-of-View: (for each character / use as an exploration of relationships
and of course shapes!!!)
 Point-of-view is a psycho-physical expression of the given
circumstances.
 From Triffles
• Sheriff to County Attorney / Subordinate (who feels out of
favor) to Superior (who feels out of favor)
• Sheriff to women / Husband to Wife / Minister to Flock
• County Attorney to Sherrif / Superior to Subordinate (note
the relative lack of conflict here with the inverse of this
relationship held by the Sheriff)
• County Attorney to Women / Father to Child
• Women to Men / Undercover Operatives to Target (They are
playing imposed roles throughout in order to operate).
 To Recap Beats
o The Given Circumstances are:
 Agents
 Ecology of Time
 Ecology of Space
 Personal Incident
o Leading to an actor’s first response Point-of-View
o Which is the trigger for Action
o Action is the matrix of Desires (or Intentions) and Tactics
o Which brings us to Stakes and Obstacles…
 Tactics are what an actor uses to take on obstacles which arise
out of the given circumstances.
 Successful tactics achieve desires by going either through or
around an obstacle (usually).
 Tactics offer a strategic positions and guidance.
 Tactics come from a rulebook (remember the discussion about
cultural context in style and grammar.)
 If you (the theater artist) don’t know the rulebook for your piece
you are a schmuck. You loose! (Consider a football player on a
basketball court…)
 Tactics and obstacles exert pressure on one another (usually).
 Tactics are shaped by several elements…
• Desire / Intention (see motive)
• Cultural Context
o Performance Grammar
o Performance Style
• Rulebook for Piece
 And Now…”What’s my motivation?” or What is Motive?
 Motive: This is a promiscuous term with a very specific meaning in
beatwork…
 Always, motive is a need or a perceived need in the present based
upon a circumstance in the past or a circumstance in the future.
 Motive is phrased as a need for (preposition) a noun.
• Biff has a need for Willie’s help. Why?
o In the past he flunked algebra.
o In the future he wants a football scholarship.
• Both the past and future circumstances construct Biff’s need
for his father’s help.
 How are Motive and Stakes related to each other?
• Remember what Stakes are…
o What you (the character) stand to win and/or what
you stand to loose.
o This (these) question(s) imply circumstances past and
future which create a present need for something.
o Human beings are in a near constant state of desire.
o Understanding the stakes help get you to an
understanding of the present need.
o In summation…
o Motive is a Present Need based upon Past Stakes
 and Future Stakes leading to Action in the form of
Tactics in a world of Obstacles.
o New Concept: Private Audience
 From Robert Cohen’s Neo-Freudian Object Relation Theory:
• Individuals inevitably have important early relationships in
life. Typically these relationships have power over you (just
consider parents, parent surrogates, siblings, etc.)
• These early relationships form scripts which tend to be
repeated throughout life.
• Nobody has more than four or five which tend to repeat with
different people playing (or resisting) their part.
• This suggests that the feelings that you have at forty are the
same feelings you had at six….
• This is not problematic unless the relationship was
problematic. ONLY when no one is happy is there a
resulting NEUROSIS.
• So, Private Audience is an audience of strategic others who
are so important to you, it is as if these people were present,
unbeknownst to you, and they are pulling your emotional
heartstrings.
• Private Audience is some private other who has an
emotional impact on you (character-actor).
• Private Audience may be tied to Point-of-View and
Tactics.
• Actors choose the private audience based upon the script;
and the private audience may change from beat to beat, of
course.
o Iago’s private audience could be everyone who has
ever been stepped on and passed up for promotion.
o In other words private audience is the invention of
the actor.
 Where Does Theater Come From?
o Consider Caeser Chavez and Louis Valdez
o Chavez modeled his strategies after he engages with Gandhi’s writings on
non-violence. “Don’t go to work – Strike!!!”
o NOW, you have tons of people with time on their hands not doing what
they normally do. You have to create instructions for a culture of non-
violence.
o AND, you’ve got to know who to sue (Gandhi after all was a lawyer).
o THEATER is good at placing people in hypothetical situations. The
thought “We could become lawyers!” could become action. Political
though gives maps to people (i.e. send the kids to college).
 o The San Francisco Mime Troupe was performing in parks and Valdez was
a member of the troupe. With both vaudeville and commedia traditions
they carried out a political education with the disenfranchised lower
classes. They engaged their audiences on how to become agents.
o Often the S.F.M.T. were not members of the community that they were
addressing.
o Valdez began using people who had been in the fields for work in Il Teatro
Compaseno.
o Typically, Chavez and Valdez targeted audiences who had no theatre or
activism on their minds.
o Both the urban group with its political agenda and the rural nomadic group
with its political agenda shared similar means and similar targets. They
were addressing the same power structure of California under Ronald
Reagan.
o Hollywood and its actors began to support the cause economically.
o They fill out the model of contemporary activism (Agents):
 Affected Minority
 Powerful Others acting as an intermediary with the power structure.
 Those within the power structure whom you are trying to change.
o The plays exist in relation to and answer to that whom they are
addressing.
 Historical Framework of Plays
o One should study the historical framework of the play in order to
understand the potential elements of connection or disconnection with a
contemporary audience.
o To understand the relationship between the elements of a beat is not only
to understand the fictive world. It is also to understand how the beat (and
by extension the play) engages or disengages the contemporary world.
o So, go back to the source…
o How do audiences, both original and contemporary, relate to the tactics
employed in a play like “As You Like It”?
o The comedy has to be grounded in something after all…
o There needs to be a grammar for connecting beats to one another
and done in a way so that the resultant work is readable to an
audience.
o How do the politics and social consciousness of the piece engage with the
given circumstances for original audiences and contemporary audiences?
o How do you make the larger issues become grammar for what you do in
the beats?
o How do you physicalise point-of-view (costume, tactics, body shape, etc.)
o How do you think a contemporary audience will interpret your choices?
o Local grammar shapes tactics. Otherwise the tactics are influenced only
 by the fictive world.
o What is it that the fictive world is addressing?
o Grammar is lodged offstage in history and the real world.
o How do you make the choice?
o What do you do once you have done the actual beat work?
 Beat work is kind of like mining.
 Beat work is kid of like composing a score.
 So here we go…
• Beats are a score charting the ongoing flow of a piece.
Some composers use more notes, while some use less.
• All elements interact with acting. Actors are different from
beats and beat work. Acting is the aesthetic component (it is
the game itself not just the pieces and their rules). Beat
work provides a body of information for the production team.
• Beats and Beat work contribute to interpretation. Any beat
interpretation is based upon prior beat interpretations and is
the basis for future interpretations.
 The component that must be rehearsed first is the component that will take the
longest to make automatic. In short: Language
 Text and vocal utterance are always complicated by cultural context…
o British students actually know more about Shakespeare than American
students.
 Strategies for utterance are closer to classical training than one might expect.
o For Lee J. Cobb in “Death of a Salesman” he is (plays) the little guy in the
big guy’s body. He is a big guy too.
o For Dustin Hoffman in “Death of a Salesman” he plays it nasal and with
broken speech. Hoffman is a short man and has to make himself appear
even smaller.
 Sound is based upon decisions. In other words, utterance is related to style
and beat work. Language is tactical (although other elements definitely shape
language).
 What element seems to carry the theatrical weight? Language creates the
size of a performance as in Shakespeare. Actors are limited in that they can’t be
bigger. It is language which gives them size, not volume.
 Texture creates a dimensionality for text and without this there is a terrible
shrinkage…
 We don’t say, “What nice vocal variation and breath support.”
 We do say, “What a character and situation! Larger than life I tell you!!!”
 Vocal techniques shape character.
 Employ strategies of delay, deferral, and attack as in:
o Pointing a line
o Climax
 o Peak
o Pause
o Longer Pause
o Dropping a line

The End.