The play begins with a myth that stays in the mind — a story as old as human history, whose characters and plot carry an encoded message down the centuries to us, the scriptwriters. It is our task to present the story without losing the message.
We follow the storyline. We keep the same characters. We do not change details. We believe the children of today are no less able to recognise and understand the physical, psychological, and emotional difficulties of life. We believe children still need these ancestral messages on how to survive, cope, and thrive.
What we do with the material is to elongate it — both with language and with action. We reach inside the myth and find the archetypes of story, situation, and character, and we amplify them so they come alive as fully as possible.
Because we believe each line of text carries great weight, scripts may be only seven pages of actual text. These few lines will become a production lasting 40–50 minutes. The script contains the myth, the archetypes, and as much of the culture of origin as possible.
Myth
A myth is a story told and retold until it embodies the great truths of the people telling it.
By choosing myths for the basis of our scripts, we work solidly within the archetypal framework. Once we understood that we were tapping into a reservoir of human knowledge, we began to understand why we received the same attention and enthusiasm for each production regardless of where it was set, the plot or characters, or what actions went on during the play. The branches are as wide and variable as the world; the root is in one source.
When we decide to dramatise a myth, we choose it for one of three reasons: we’ve been commissioned to do it, the message it contains is important to the culture, or the message is important to one of us. We look up all the versions we can find, including translations and early texts, and create a storyboard from the elements we want to fit together.
The next step is to put the script into the Players’ hands. Sometimes as early as the first rehearsal there are changes needed; sometimes the changes occur on tour as audiences ask questions or make comments that point to a necessary evolution.
Archetype
The idea of archetypes re-entered Western thought through Carl Jung. Each of us holds in our unconscious a pool of images, a reservoir of archetypes. Myths and mythic images re-enter consciousness if given the right trigger.
Jung teaches us that the archetypes are carried inside us, like pieces of DNA. They are flat, or un-constituted, until activated. Once activated, they inflate and become part of a person’s active psychological makeup. Among the first is “mother” and “father”: all children, no matter how abused, innately understand what a good mother’s or father’s behaviours would be.
It is the scriptwriter’s job to provide the triggers that activate the archetypal imagination — that pull the archetype from the collective unconscious into life. In One-Inch-Fellow, for example, the children meet a mother and father, a one-inch boy, a samurai, a fool, a Keeper, and a dragon. Each of those characters is an archetype. Each archetype reacts to the others and becomes one of the company — this is both the story and the psychological lesson.
Because we are very conscious of this necessity for goodness in our work, we do not put knowingly any image or action in the plays that can trigger a negative archetype or model a negative behaviour. If the story has a witch or a magician, they are included but — as in the original tale — receive their just outcome.
Minimalist language
When the visual orientation of modern audiences is turned over to their imagination, the auditory orientation of the early oral culture replaces it. The language needed to be sparse, minimal. There are not many words, and each word is chosen for the information or image it conveys.
When there is dialogue, each line is precise and very clear in meaning: “I am going over the mountain.” “This is my son, Mitsu. He winds bobbins for me. His bobbins are wound better than any other bobbins in Japan.” This sparsity of words allows a tempo of delivery that suggests “something special” — it is not conversational.
With sparsity, precision, and clarity, there is no mistaking the plot, the characters, the action, and the language. Even Kindergarteners understand what they are experiencing. The more cluttered the language, the more cluttered the work.
The language is “poem-like” or “haiku-like”:
- It is not discursive or narrative in style.
- It is precise; each line is absolutely clear in meaning.
- There are no conversational, referring pronouns.
- Key plot shifts are repeated.
- Important ideas are repeated.
- Everyone can conceptualise what is happening — from Kindergarten to adult.
Repetition
Repetition is used in scripts to emphasise. When a new character is introduced, the script has the character’s name and qualities repeated by various Players. The main theme of the play or a scene may be repeated several times, often using different words emphasising the concept.
Repetition takes many forms:
- Scene repeats: there are three children, so three scenes where the first two times the characters fail but the third child succeeds.
- Theme repeats: various characters refer to the goal or other main point.
- Line repeats, including songs.
The ear catches the pattern; the mind knows what’s coming; the release when the pattern is finally broken is the play’s pivot. Repetition is not filler — it is the architecture that makes surprise possible.
The exotic and the unfamiliar
One goal of using exotic settings is to expand children’s awareness of different cultures of the world and to broaden their understanding. “Exotic” means different things to different people — for city children, a play set in rural times or places is exotic. For rural children, a city setting is exotic. The unfamiliar time and place are not frightening, because the children, in “supplying” the props through their imaginations, use familiar objects as a base.
Even as simple a story as The Golden Goose is exotic: there is a little magic man, it is set in the country, the characters cut wood to provide a living, it is set in a peasant world. Strange and exotic invites curiosity and awakens the mind.