Neupane 1 Chapter I Locating Setting and Its Role in Drama a Setting Is

Neupane 1 Chapter I Locating Setting and its Role in Drama A setting is just a beautiful thing, a collection of beautiful things. It is a presence, a mood, a warm wind fanning the drama to flame. It echoes, it enhances, it animates. It is an expectancy, a foreboding, a tension. It says nothing, but it gives everything. (Jones 26) An American scenic, lighting and costume designer, Robert Edmond Jones in his book The Dramatic Imagination (1941) exposes the basic sense of setting in drama. In another context, Jones states, "A stage setting has no independent life of its own. Its emphasis is directed toward the performance. In the absence of the actor it does not exist. Strange as it may seem, the simple and fundamental principle of stage design still seems to be widely misunderstood. " (Qtd. in Cohen, 122). The visions of setting and its significance are not defined clearly. On the one hand, Jones explains setting as an element that describes every emotion of the performance. On the other hand, he describes setting has no independent existence in absence of the performance and actor. Therefore, there is no clear perception on the importance of setting in drama. Since the setting is the crucial part of any text, it cannot be omitted or analyzed separately from the meaning. Kari K Pitkanen in The Spatio-Temporal Setting in Written Narrative Fiction brings the references of various researchers to introduce setting. He presents setting as such: For several researchers including e.g. Labov & Waletsky (1967), Rumelhart (1975: 213) and Van Dijk (1980), a setting is a text-initial, structural macro- unit that describes the starting point and surroundings for a story by providing the main character, the spatio-temporal location and other necessary information. (1) Neupane 2 The dramatists construct setting to introduce situation and surroundings which inform characters where and when they exist in the drama. Pitkanen's explanation behind the use of setting is "the compositional frame which defines a situation and surroundings in a world depicted by the text in relation to encyclopedic knowledge and specifies the preliminary key properties of this world" (39). Despite having multiple perspective about setting and their role in drama, nobody can avoid them to understand situation and surroundings of world depicted in drama. From ancient time to modern time to present day, settings in drama have always remained important to draw meaning or knowledge from drama. This dissertation focuses on elaborating the significance of setting in drama through reading and analysis of wide varieties of six Nepali drama: Balkrishna Sama's Bhimsen ko Antya (2012 B.S.), Bhimnidi Tiwari's Sahanshila Sushila (1995 B.S.), Govinda Bahadur Malla 'Gothale''s Bhus ko Aago (2018 B.S.), Ashesh Malla's Sakuni Pasaharu (2068 B.S.), Sarubhakta's Sirumaraani (2061 B.S.), and Abhi Subedi's Dreams of Peach Blossoms (2058 B.S.) all of them written and performed during modern time. Regarding modern time drama, we need to know that the period from Balkrishna Sama to Abhi Subedi was actually preceded by two major events: Political Revolution and Access to Globalization. So, this modern time represented massive social, political, economic, philosophical and artistic changes. Especially, art and literature no longer depended on authority and religion. With the spirit of modernism, the above-mentioned dramatists are concerned about social issues which made drama as medium for social criticism. While doing so, these dramatists and others of modern time rejected traditional conventions, influences from Parsi and other melodramatic forms of play to make foundation for realistic and original drama. Before exploring into the analysis of the drama from these six writers, this Neupane 3 dissertation traces what different scholars and theatre practitioners have written about the setting and its use in deriving meaning. For this purpose, the dissertation draws on concept of performance and theatre conceptualized by Jon Whitmore to reflect how setting supports in development of artistic vision in transformation of the text into the stage. Apart from Whitmore, the ideas related to study of setting and design of drama as developed by Martin Esslin, Stephanie Arnold, Stanley L. Glenn, Katharine Anne Ommaney, Edwin Wilson and others are also constituted to support the analysis. The study limits on study of setting in drama – the written text and avoid setting in play- the performance due to lack of time and space. The thesis is divided into three chapters. The first chapter introduces the concept of setting in a drama and also presents the introduction and goal of the dissertation. It focuses on emphasis on a few questions – Why do dramatists create setting? What is the role or existence of setting? Is it possible to write drama excluding setting? How do dialogue and setting exist together in drama? – to trace out significance of setting in drama. This chapter makes literature review of the settings used in modern drama. It also includes the theory and framework used in settings of drama. Likewise, second chapter analyses and evaluates the setting used in six selected Nepali dramas. It explores the evolution of setting in Nepali drama based on selected dramas of different dramatists. The chapter will reflect on how construction of such settings in those dramas help to transfer message to readers in more appropriate and meaningful way. Finally, third chapter sums up the preceding chapters tracing significance of setting and it reflects on potential directions for future work. There is no clear point to say from where discussion on setting in academic field started. However, setting's presence in each drama is so important that it is Neupane 4 obvious that dramatists, readers and critics put energy to think on setting. Jon Whitmore in Directing Postmodern Theatre argues that drama is created or presented on the stage "to communicate meanings" (1). It is often believed that drama brings meanings from dialogues of character like the one Peter Szondi and Michael Hays assert,". the dialogue carries the Drama. The Drama is possible only when dialogue is possible" (10). However, the setting in drama is equally important to depict the time, space, mood, social situation, and weather condition of the story in the drama. It reflects background of characters and prepares foundation for the story of drama. Likewise, setting helps actors to carry the meaning of the text towards audience or reader in more credible ways. The use of setting makes the stage not merely a platform to act; in fact, the stage becomes the atmosphere, which becomes essential to the meaning of the drama. Setting in drama, the artistic vision of the dramatists or director or scenic designer, supports to transfer the text into the stage, which is generally ignored while deriving meaning. Setting involves design of stage, props construction and placement, costumes, focus and color of lights, makeup, sound and visual engineering, stage management and others, which is practiced from ancient time to modern days in different ways. However, new forms of settings have challenged the old with privilege of having more advanced technologies and interdisciplinary involvement in theatre. All forms of setting should be understood to draw meaning of drama. Setting works as exterior of the drama to understand what characters speak and what dramatists mean to say. J. L. Styan, on study of Shakespearean stagecraft, points that the study of signals, signs, and symbols is significant to understand the drama. Styan says, "One of the actor's tasks is to decode lines, in order to discover, often by trial and error, what their signs and directions, explicit or hidden, expect of him" (138). The actors or readers of Neupane 5 drama cannot neglect setting to develop the proper meaning instead of merely understanding dialogues. Therefore, music, song, dance, focus and colors of lights, costume and ornaments, sets, props and placement, makeup, stage, and other forms of settings deliberated by dramatists are powerful medium to understand the text. The form of using setting has changed over time. The dramatists have replaced the illusionistic settings with the real properties and settings. The real settings give more realistic and make believe world for the readers. Robert Cohen in Theatre Brief Version classifies setting into realistic and abstract, which "are used in combination, and often the line between them in difficult to draw" (119). In the same context, John Gassner in The Theatre in Our Times argues that dramatists became more aware about setting in the recent time. He writes, "Realism, departing from its late nineteenth- century literalness, became selective and expressive. Symbolism achieved a finesse and range it had never revealed in earlier decades" (7). Cohen further illustrates about realistic setting in drama: Realistic settings carry on the tradition of "illusionism" established in eighteenth-century painted perspective staging; the familiar "box set" of modern realistic or naturalistic theatre is essentially a series of interconnected flats of framed canvas painted to resemble walls and ceilings, filled with real furniture and real properties taken from ordinary real-world environments. (119-120) The realistic setting creates more creadible world by replacing abstract and illusionistic setting. The environment of the drama with such setting resembles real world that readers have seen or heard. However, in contemporary period, setting in drama is more flexible, kinetic, symbolic and evocative than stable or realistic setting. This is possible because of abstract setting. Cohen believes that abstract setting are Neupane 6 "more effectives in establishing moods and styles" (121). He differentiates between these two forms of setting as such: Of course, mood and style can be established to some extent by realistic scenery as well: by creating a theatrical space that is tall and airy, for example, or cramped and squat, by using or withholding color and clutter, the designer in any mode can define an environment in such a way that the action of the play takes on highly special tone.

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