Plot

The Play Begins with a Myth

The play begins with a myth that stays in the mind and culture — perhaps 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 (if in the story Cinderella’s sisters cut off their toes and heels to fit their feet into the glass slipper, then they do that in the script). We believe the children of today are no less able to recognize 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.

Elongation

What we do with the material is to elongate it — both with language and with action. We particularly add anything needed to bring obscure information to a modern audience. 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.

Each line of text provides substance for both the director/Players to enact and for the imagination of the audience:

“I come to lake. I cannot see across it. We cannot get around it. How then will we get across?”

This is one image created with four simple sentences. It is part of a seven-page spoken-lines script that becomes a 40-minute play. The Players and any teacher, Facilitator, or director will fearlessly create character actions and interactions that surround the few spoken lines. The audience incorporates their innate knowledge of Story and Archetypes and imagines the described and enacted situation.

Choosing the Myth

A story is told and retold until it embodies the great truths of the people telling it. By choosing myths for the basis of the scripts, we worked solidly within the archetypal framework long before we fully understood what we were doing. 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: our unconscious/semi-conscious awareness.

When we decide to dramatize a myth, we choose it because the message it contains is important to the culture, to our customers, and to us.

Round-Robin Scriptwriting

1. When we begin to work the myth, we look up all the versions we can find, including translations and early texts. We take the versions that interest us most and create a storyboard containing the elements from the various versions we want to fit together.

2. One person will take that storyboard and create the first draft, using the texts as closely as possible. If there is a detail we don’t understand, we leave it in: sometime, in some performance, somewhere, someone will tell us what it means.

3. Next, another person will take the draft and write over it; they may use the source texts or not. As many as four people may participate in this writing round-robin.

The next step is for the artistic director (who has probably been one of the round-robin writers) to put the script into the Players’ hands. Often as early as the first rehearsal there are changes to suggest; later changes occur as audiences ask questions or make comments that point to a necessary evolution.

If we create a new production of the play, we don’t go back to re-writing unless new audiences suggest a change.

For the procedural how-to companion to this concept, see How to Create a Script.

Constraints Shape Roles

Originally, plays were given a form by the number of seats in the touring van. Given one large van, there could be up to six Players with minimal luggage and one very small costume/prop box. The van constraint shaped the theatre from the very beginning, teaching us that having a constraint forced creativity.

Since there was no room for sets, there weren’t any. The script had to describe where we were, and what an object was, clearly enough that the imagination could provide or construct it. The pictures the children drew afterwards told us where we were on or off the mark. Puzzling over something in multiple drawings inevitably led to a change in the script. If the children couldn’t imagine it, it was because we hadn’t communicated it.

Constraint of Balanced Roles

Keeping all Players working so the amount of energy expended is equal and there are no “stars” is another constraint that leads to a critical success factor for a tour or semester or treatment plan. Balance occurs in several ways.

A play may have more than six roles, and then some Players will play a combination of roles. When a character enters late in a story line, they are usually large archetypes; examples would be Death’s role in Savitri or the magician in Ivanna and the Rainbow Serpent. These multi-part Players are given time and space in the script to change their characterization to the next part; an example is the Brothers in Water of Life, which also double as the Kings of the journey’s various kingdoms.

All these things created a simple, minimalist plot form which is central to Developmental Theatre: Fearless Creativity.