fIHIEOII AMP with a new introductory essay OF on the contemporary theatre by JOHN HOWARD LAWSON A DRAMABOQK $1.9X Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2011 with funding from LYRASIS IVIembers and Sloan Foundation http://www.archive.org/details/theorytechniqueoOOinlaws THEORY AND TECHNIQUE OF PLAYWRITING By John Howard Lawson Books Theory and Technique of Playwritinc The Hidden Heritage Film in the Battle of Ideas Film: The Creative Process Plays Roger Bloomer The International Processional Success Story Nirvana Gentlewoman Loudspeaker The Pure in Heart Marching Song Motion Pictures Blockade Four Sons Algiers Sahara They Shall Have Music cou nterattack Earthbound Smashup Action in the North Atlantic THEORY AND TECHNIQUE OF PLAYWRITING WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY JOHN HOWARD LAWSON A DRAMABOOK |g{| HILL AND WANG - New York ; Copyright 1936, 1949, © i960 by John Howard Lawson ISBN 0-8090-0525-5 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 60-14493 Reprinted by permission of G. P. Putnam's Sons All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission. Acknowledgment of permission to quote from Brunetiere's The Laiv of the Drama is herewith made with thanks to the Brander Matthews Dramatic Museum of Columbia University; from Maxwell Anderson's Both Your Houses to Maxwell Anderson through Samuel French, Inc. from Barrett H. Clark's European Theories of the Drama and A Study of the Modern Drama to Barrett H. Clark. Manufactured in the United States of America FIRST DRAMABOOK EDITION AUGUST 1960 789 10 II 12 CONTENTS Introduction vii PART r HISTORY OF DRAMATIC THOUGHT I. Aristotle 3 II. The Renaissance 10 III. The Eighteenth Century 21 IV. The Nineteenth Century 31 V. Ibsen 63 PART 2 THE THEATRE TODAY I. Conscious Will and Social Necessity 87 II. Dualism of Modern Thought 98 III. George Bernard Shaw 107 IV. Critical and Technical Trends 1 14 V. Eugene O'Neill 129 VI. The Technique of the Modern Play 142 PART 3 DRAMATIC STRUCTURE I. The Law of Conflict 163 II. Dramatic Action 168 III. Unity in Terms of Climax 174 IV. The Process of Selection 187 V^. The Social Framework 200 vi Contents PART 4 DRAMATIC COMPOSITION I. Continuity 221 II. Exposition 233 III. Progression 244 IV. The Obligatory Scene 262 V. Climax 267 VI. Characterization 279 VII. Dialogue 287 VIII. The Audience 298 Index 303 — INTRODUCTION The Changing Years THIS study of dramatic theory and technique was first published in 1936, in the midst of the social and theatrical upheaval that Harold Clurman calls "The Fervent Years." Today, the arts display less fervor, and far less interest in "social significance." The transition in dramatic thought from Waiting for Lefty to Waiting for Godot is almost as sweeping as the changes that have taken place among the world's peoples and powers. There are those who regard the culture of the thirties as dead and best forgotten. The question need not be debated here except insofar as this book offers testimony to the contrary. My beliefs have not changed, nor has my fervor abated. I can hope that my understanding has ripened. But I see no need to modify or revise the theory of dramatic art on which this work is based. The theory holds that the dramatic process follows certain general laws, derived from the function of drama and its historical evolution. A play is a mimed fable, an acted and spoken story. The tale is presented because it has meaning to its creator. It embodies a vision, poses an ethical or emotional problem, praises heroes or laughs at fools. The playwright may not be conscious of any purpose beyond the telling of a tale. He may be more interested in box-office receipts than in social values. Nonetheless, the events taking place on the stage embody a point of view, a judgment of human relationships. Conceptual understanding is the key to mastery of dramatic technique. The structure of a play, the design of each scene and the movement of the action to its climax, are the means by which the concept is communicated. The theatre is a difficult art form. No labor of thought can give talent to the untalented or sensitivity to the insensitive. The pattern of a play is as subtle and chromatic as the pattern of a symphony. Theatrical concepts are profoundly, and at best magi- cally, theatrical, growing out of the culture of the theatre as part of the culture and history of mankind. Therefore, dramatic crafts- manship encompasses the past from which it has evolved. The artist is not bound by traditional styles. He is more likely to be bound by ignorance, enslaving him to the parochial devices and cheap inventions of "show business." The true creator turns to the theatre's heritage in order to attain freedom, to select and vii viii Introduction develop modes of expression suited to his need, to give radiance to his vision and substance to his dream. The historj?^ of dramatic thought which constitutes the first part of this book traces the evolution of European theatre from ancient Athens to the twentieth century. I must acknowledge my regret that it deals only with European development, and does not encompass the riches of theatre culture in other parts of the world. Today we are beginning to realize that our dramatic heritage is not limited to the Greeks and Elizabethans and the English and continental drama of the last three centuries. There is a growing recognition in the United States of the power and resources of the theatre in India, China, and Japan. Yet these forms, and those of other lands, are still regarded as quaint and esoteric. Brecht is the only modern dramatist who has utilized Oriental modes as an integral part of his own creative style. The contemporary stage uses a conglomeration of techniques, ranging from the banalities of the "well-made play" to the splendors of musical comedy; but all this is done eclectically, to achieve an effect, to titillate sensibilities. Broadway uses shreds and patches of theatre experience and related forms of dance, panto- mime, and ritual, drawn from all parts of the globe. But there has been no attempt to consider the order and value of stage tradi- tions, their relation to contemporary culture, their potential use in stimulating the theatrical imagination and developing new modes of dramatic communication. Let us now turn to a more modest historical task—an appraisal of the trend of European and American dramatic thought from the middle thirties to the present. At first glance, we see a kaleidoscope of contradictory tendencies: wider public interest in the theatre is manifested in the growth of "Off-Broadway" production and the activity of community and university theatres; yet all this stir and effort have not stimulated any movement of creative writing. The Stanislavsky method has attained con- siderable prestige, but it is doubtful whether the art of acting has progressed during these decades. The posthumous presentation of O'Neill's last plays has added to his reputation; Brecht and O'Casey exert a growing influence; there is far more interest in Shakespeare and other classics than there was a quarter-century ago. Yet statistical evidence and critical judgment agree that the theatre is sick. The number of playhouses available for professional production in the United States dropped from 647 in 192 1 to 234 in 1954. The decline continues. There were sixty-five legitimate Introduction ix theatres in New York in 193 1 and only thirty in 1959.* The Off-Broadway stage is said to have lost one million dollars during the season of 1958-59. Each year, critics lament the decline of the art. Early in 1945, Mary McCarthy wrote: "In 1944, the stage presents such a spec- tacle of confusion, disintegration and despair that no generaliza- tion can cover the case." f Fifteen years later, Brooks Atkinson wrote in the New York Times of January 3, i960: "Last year was on the whole banal. This season, so far, is worse. There is nothing creative at the center of things, pushing the theatre into significant areas of thought or feeling." On May 14, 1959, President Eisenhower broke ground for the new seventy-five-million-dollar Lincoln Center for the Per- forming Arts in New York City. The Shakespeare festivals at Stratford, Ontario and Stratford, Connecticut attract enthusiastic crowds. There is apparently a need for living theatre in the United States. How does this need relate to the decline of the commercial stage? Why is there "nothing creative at the center of things?" Burden of Guilt A group of European plajr^rights—Giraudoux, Anouilh, Beckett, lonesco, Genet, Sartre, Camus, Duerrenmatt—have been honored and praised in the United States in recent years. Their collective influence goes far beyond Broadway, and is a major factor in creating the climate of thought that pervades the drama departments of our universities and the experimental work of amateur and professional groups. We must turn to these dramatists for the clearest statement, and often the most imaginative theatrical realization, of ideas which are more confusingly and less imaginatively projected in English and American plays. The turning point in the development of the modern French theatre is signalized by one play. The Madwoman of Chaillot. Its author, Jean Giraudoux, who died in 1944, belonged to the older generation of French intellectuals. His rhetoric and fantasy are derived from ancient sources, combining elements of Racine with nineteenth-century sensibility and twentieth-century wit. But underlying Giraudoux's classicism is his mordant sense of the failure of bourgeois values in the society of his own time.