Writer’s Introduction

By definition, naturalistic plays aim to accurately depict everyday life, with realistic characters and situations, often focusing on the harsh realities of society.

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Non-naturalistic plays employ techniques that break from the illusion of reality, using symbolism, abstraction, and exaggerated elements to convey a deeper message.

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My first two plays, ADIRA’S SECRET, a tragedy, and SMOLDER TAR, a dark comedy, are non-naturalistic. They are, of course, allegories—speak to greater meanings.

 

Three great quotes are foundational to my playwriting:

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• “Nothing is meaningless or neutral. Everything is in some way related to something else.”  Juan Eduardo Cirlot, Author, Dictionary of Symbols

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• "We have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are built on the never-ending contest in ourselves of good and evil." John Steinbeck, East of Eden, Chapter 34, page 318

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• "The man didn't know who he was." Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman, page 138

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Many years ago, I was fortunate to take Shakespeare classes from an actor and drama professor at a Performing Arts Conservatory.

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Shakespeare left me speechless. Within every play, everything he wrote related to everything else, had many possible or just one meaning and took the reader to some destination.

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Shakespeare, as you know, weaves words, dialogue, imagery, symbols, metaphors into a story.

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I hope to achieve something to some degree with my plays: Nothing is meaningless. Everything is in some way related to something else.

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Symbols, to me, are what you feel when read or heard, next what you think of each in its moment, next what it means in context of all in that moment and within the story’s rhythmic and lyric frame.

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Still water has one feeling and meaning, a brook another, a roaring river a third, clear versus silty at bottom, cloudy, etc. All feel and mean something different, especially when placed correctly within the context of a play’s plot and storyline.

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The shape in M.C. Escher's lithograph Gravity is a small stellated dodecahedron, a nonconvex regular polyhedron.

 

This image is my visual analogy, metaphor, north star for playwriting, M.C. Escher’s famous small stellated dodecahedron.

It has 12 five-pointed stars, each with a pyramid on top. 

 

The pyramids have five trapezoidal doorways, and each doorway has the head and legs of a tailless monster with a long neck and four paws. The monsters are trapped in the pyramids, but their body parts are trying to escape.

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In regard to Steinbeck’s quote, "one story, the never-ending contest in ourselves of good and evil." 

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If this lithograph by Escher were a play, is it rolling upward, downward, in a freefall, flying high, trying to make it above ground, or water?  Where and when will it stop, and why at some predetermined moment?

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Those stellated dodecahedron endpoints are barbs. They stick out, prick, each in its moment. And, they connect to other events, within the image, all connect, interrelate.

 

Are the head and tailless monsters evil poking from good, or is good at the moment poking from evil?

 

The Juan Edward Cirlot and John Steinbeck quotes cited above ask ask such playwriting questions. The quotes articulate with M.C. Escher's Gravity. Quotes and lithographic image ask whether the play is well written.

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We will never know. Yes, in fact, we will—not right away, or  maybe as we read along or watch performed, yet by its end, if the story is told well.

 

The characters, as Arthur Miller suggest weave and arc to and fro and amongst each other not knowing, then knowing, or never knowing whether they know themselves or something.

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We will be entertained. And we will leave its performance having felt, thought, learned something of substance. That is my intention when playwriting.

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