In New York theater tickets can cost $300.00.It is very good but many cannot afford it.Others do not care for Aristotle's unity of time and space, These want space ripped apart in no time at all. A playwright's life is hard (so is a screenwriter's but that is another story.

Hi Jim,

The cost of tickets is a deterrent undoubtedly, but when plays were written and produced, it was not  very cheap. Aristotle in his Poetics spoke of the three unities - of time, place and action, and not of time and space. I fail to understand what you mean by 'unity of time and space.' I also fail to make out the meaning of your sentence: ' These want space ripped apart in no time at all.' A playwright's life is hard definitely, but today no playwright takes play-writing as his sole profession. I also fail to understand what you mean by your remark: 'so is a screenwriter's but that is another story'. Do you mean to say 'script-writer'?

Actually, this is the age of fiction. Film, Television and Video like Youtube provide pleasure to the people who can enjoy them while being seated in the sofa. However, dramatic art must stay; otherwise, there will be a decline in film and television shows.

Sincerely,

Professor Sibaprasad Dutta M.A. (English), ACIB (London), PhD

Hi Jim,

The cost of tickets is a deterrent undoubtedly, but when plays were written and produced, it was not  very cheap. Aristotle in his Poetics spoke of the three unities - of time, place and action, and not of time and space. I fail to understand what you mean by 'unity of time and space.' I also fail to make out the meaning of your sentence: ' These want space ripped apart in no time at all.' A playwright's life is hard definitely, but today no playwright takes play-writing as his sole profession. I also fail to understand what you mean by your remark: 'so is a screenwriter's but that is another story'. Do you mean to say 'script-writer'?

Actually, this is the age of fiction. Film, Television and Video like Youtube provide pleasure to the people who can enjoy them while being seated in the sofa. However, dramatic art must stay; otherwise, there will be a decline in film and television shows.

Sincerely,

Professor Sibaprasad Dutta M.A. (English), ACIB (London), PhD

Hi Jim,

The cost of tickets is a deterrent undoubtedly, but when plays were written and produced, it was not  very cheap. Aristotle in his Poetics spoke of the three unities - of time, place and action, and not of time and space. I fail to understand what you mean by 'unity of time and space.' I also fail to make out the meaning of your sentence: ' These want space ripped apart in no time at all.' A playwright's life is hard definitely, but today no playwright takes play-writing as his sole profession. I also fail to understand what you mean by your remark: 'so is a screenwriter's but that is another story'. Do you mean to say 'script-writer'?

Actually, this is the age of fiction. Film, Television and Video like Youtube provide pleasure to the people who can enjoy them while being seated in the sofa. However, dramatic art must stay; otherwise, there will be a decline in film and television shows.

Sincerely,

Professor Sibaprasad Dutta M.A. (English), ACIB (London), PhD

Hi Jim,

The cost of tickets is a deterrent undoubtedly, but when plays were written and produced, it was not  very cheap. Aristotle in his Poetics spoke of the three unities - of time, place and action, and not of time and space. I fail to understand what you mean by 'unity of time and space.' I also fail to make out the meaning of your sentence: ' These want space ripped apart in no time at all.' A playwright's life is hard definitely, but today no playwright takes play-writing as his sole profession. I also fail to understand what you mean by your remark: 'so is a screenwriter's but that is another story'. Do you mean to say 'script-writer'?

Actually, this is the age of fiction. Film, Television and Video like Youtube provide pleasure to the people who can enjoy them while being seated in the sofa. However, dramatic art must stay; otherwise, there will be a decline in film and television shows.

Sincerely,

Professor Sibaprasad Dutta M.A. (English), ACIB (London), PhD

Hi Jim,

The cost of tickets is a deterrent undoubtedly, but when plays were written and produced, it was not  very cheap. Aristotle in his Poetics spoke of the three unities - of time, place and action, and not of time and space. I fail to understand what you mean by 'unity of time and space.' I also fail to make out the meaning of your sentence: ' These want space ripped apart in no time at all.' A playwright's life is hard definitely, but today no playwright takes play-writing as his sole profession. I also fail to understand what you mean by your remark: 'so is a screenwriter's but that is another story'. Do you mean to say 'script-writer'?

Actually, this is the age of fiction. Film, Television and Video like Youtube provide pleasure to the people who can enjoy them while being seated in the sofa. However, dramatic art must stay; otherwise, there will be a decline in film and television shows.

Sincerely,

Professor Sibaprasad Dutta M.A. (English), ACIB (London), PhD

Hi Jim,

The cost of tickets is a deterrent undoubtedly, but when plays were written and produced, it was not  very cheap. Aristotle in his Poetics spoke of the three unities - of time, place and action, and not of time and space. I fail to understand what you mean by 'unity of time and space.' I also fail to make out the meaning of your sentence: ' These want space ripped apart in no time at all.' A playwright's life is hard definitely, but today no playwright takes play-writing as his sole profession. I also fail to understand what you mean by your remark: 'so is a screenwriter's but that is another story'. Do you mean to say 'script-writer'?

Actually, this is the age of fiction. Film, Television and Video like Youtube provide pleasure to the people who can enjoy them while being seated in the sofa. However, dramatic art must stay; otherwise, there will be a decline in film and television shows.

Sincerely,

Professor Sibaprasad Dutta M.A. (English), ACIB (London), PhD

Of course, the question here is what do you mean by drama?

If you're asking why we don't write theater any more, that very assertion is debatable. There are many pick up theaters with young writers out there. What is true is that they don't reach a wide audience, because theater is limited in time and space: a play is produced in a given theater. If that theater is out of the way, then the play isn't seen by many people. But that doesn't imply that theatrical drama isn't being written.

Writing in general remains a corner stone in the performing arts, and yes, unless you're one of the few writers good enough to have more work than you can handle, you're going to have a day job, which of course crimps the creative process (but the same holds true if your acting, directing, painting or even writing a novel).

However, I do not think that the decline - though I'd prefer the term evolution - in film or television is at all linked to writing theater. I think on the contrary that the narrative forms (films, TV, plays and novels) have all there specific paths, but that each influences the others in rather peculiar ways.

If, on the other hand, you ask why drama as a narrative genre is declining, that's a different question (equally debatable) about which formats are dominant in contemporary theater...

HI SIVAPRASAD--  Sorry I conflated Einstein with Aristotle, :); apocalyptic and violent action films often "rip space apart," freezing or slowing time- slow motion- and substituting utter chaos for "unity" - mimicking the Big Bang every chance they get. Drama is about catharsis and nuance which serves a practical and evolutionary purpose. Popular film is concerned either with making the Everyman feel heroic and falsely powerful, by performing huge robotic feats or by simply walking out of the film experience alive after the world blows up. The dramatist creates within the banks of a structural river, which takes emotional and mental intelligence, The mass blockbuster film turns thew river into a tsunami. Film which is good is drama- e.g. Slumdog Millionaire, The Exotic Marigold Hotel, anything by SATAYAJIT RAY. It is harder to sell dramatic development than simply to end with "Suddenly, everyone was run over by a truck. ' In  any event none of my response here contradicts your more informed comments-  at least as far as I can tell. :)  -- Jim

Hi Francis,

At the end of the day, a drama is not a narrative form of literature.

Sibaprasad

Hi Francis,

At the end of the day, a drama is not a narrative form of literature.

Sibaprasad

That too, is debatable.

When I was working on adaptation, one of the fields I bumped into was narratology.

One of the questions asked was precisely that: is theater a narrative form? And in many ways, it is. Particularly in the ways that count. For starters theater (at least Western theater) is an off shoot of the oral epic (Eschyles, if you will, derives from Homer). Modern western theater has equally epic roots. Shakespeare in England, Corneille in France, are essentially epic writers (my son, who studied theater before shifting to lingustics, has a more cohesive argument for this)

Theater, especially dramatic theater, is essentially narrative in that it shows the events that flow from what one of my script writing profs called "a person with a problem". The events unfold in the visible present, but that doesn't make them less a series of consequential events. Film does the same, yet none seems to dispute the notion that film is a narrative form. The difference between the two is that film emphasises action (and objects) over words while theater emphasises words over action.

However, if you think that theater is not a narrative form, than you have already answered your initial question of 'why is writing drama on the decline'.

For drama is narrative...

Universities are either entirely eliminating or cutting down courses in the humanities. Drama, like in my university, is one of the victims. And while still taught in theater studies, professors in theater arts are practitioners and not necessarily scholars  and don't  usually publish. Since university academics are for the most part those doing research in the genre, the lack of courses and positions in drama (with the exception of Shakespeare) suggests that in the future there will be fewer publications in the genre.

Dear Christine,

Thank you for exposing the truth.  I wish you were in touch with me via email. I believe we have a lot to share mutually.

Sibaprasad

Email: [email protected]

Voice (91) 9883494021

Francis,

I fail to understand what you mean to say. Your post is scholastic. It lacks clarity of thought and felicity of expression. Note: Aeschylus

Yours very sincerely,

Prof. Sibaprasad Dutta PhD

Then why do say that "a drama is not a narrative form"?

I tend to get my French and English forms of Greek names mixed up!

Dear Professor Schwarz,

That is what I posted. Creative writers must take up the job, but sponsorship of big business houses is essential. We do not have so many theatres now as we had in the past when film and television were not in the field. It is not possible for the playwrights to team up and build theatres. This can be done only by business houses.

Prof. Sibaprasad Dutta

Of course, the very notion that there is a decline in drama is debatable. I don't think it is. Students put up plays, there are local troups that set up plays, there are young playwrites that get their stuff produced. Just walk around Paris and see all the little playhouses (starting with the two r three right around where Ilive) as well as the bug league theaters (the Comédie Française, the Odéon, the Théatre du Chatelet, the Théatre de Chaillot...).

Go see the Colony in LA (if it's still there, or all the theaters in London. Minneapolis is the second most important theater city in the US. Theater is alive and kicking.

Where do you see a decline?

Film and television are not even competing with them. Arthur Miller, Camus, Sarte, Giraudoux. while off hand, all these writers are from the mid twentieth century, they all were born after the advent of film. the only reason I have no more rescent writers that spring to mind, it's just that I'm more familiar with the era; It doesn't mean nothing is happening now. Many Theater men also worked on Film: Welles, Guitry, Pagnol, Branaugh. the various media aren't so much in competition as they influence one another, greatly enriching both.

Oh and by the way, considering your posts, there is little point in specifying the difference between 'theater' in general and 'drama' in particular.

To Christina: I was originallly a Classics scholar, and  I can only agree with your assessement that the humanities are under sustained attack, though taht doesn't really answer the initial question...

Hello Wolfgong,

Would you kindly post or email to me the names of the recent plays and the names of the playwrights in Germany ? I would also request you to discuss how they are received by the audience.

Regards,

Sibaprasad

It all depends on definitions: drama as a traditional, narrative form of writing for theater may be declining. I doubt it, but it doesn't make sense to discuss it without any evidence and parameters. Writing for the theater is in no way declining, texts for theater productions are being written every day. What can be detected in recent times is so-called "post-dramatic" theater: text and productions with no clear-cut characters, no narrative, and so on. There are post-dramatic texts written for theater as well as post-dramatic productions of traditional dramas mixing them with non-narrative texts, etc. As for the theater-film relation: one media is not just replacing another, there is a complex process of re-defining the media (or art form), #media convergence.

Dear Claus & Wolfgang,

A drama has a plot, but it is not a narrative plot like we find in fiction. A plot differs from a story. Emerson says in Aspects of the Novel : ' The king died, and then the queen died' is a story ; but ' the king died and then the queen died from grief' is a plot. An epic is a long narrative poem, and a novel is a long narrative in prose. To be successful, both the novel and the epic must be action-packed on the basis of necessity and probability ( Ref: Aristotle's Poetics), but while similes, description of scenes, verbal portrayal of characters, flashbacks and other embellishments adorn epics and novels,  the chief element in a play is action which must be so compact as to be staged within three hours, even less. A drama can be anything but lyrical. There has been an abundance of poetic drama, but that is a different genre. There is a lyrical drama in the field too; it is Shelley's Prometheus Unbound.

With admiration,

Sibaprasad

Dear Claus & Wolfgang,

A drama has a plot, but it is not a narrative plot like we find in fiction. A plot differs from a story. Emerson says in Aspects of the Novel : ' The king died, and then the queen died' is a story ; but ' the king died and then the queen died from grief' is a plot. An epic is a long narrative poem, and a novel is a long narrative in prose. To be successful, both the novel and the epic must be action-packed on the basis of necessity and probability ( Ref: Aristotle's Poetics), but while similes, description of scenes, verbal portrayal of characters, flashbacks and other embellishments adorn epics and novels,  the chief element in a play is action which must be so compact as to be staged within three hours, even less. A drama can be anything but lyrical. There has been an abundance of poetic drama, but that is a different genre. There is a lyrical drama in the field too; it is Shelley's Prometheus Unbound.

With admiration,

Sibaprasad

Dear Claus & Wolfgang,

A drama has a plot, but it is not a narrative plot like we find in fiction. A plot differs from a story. Emerson says in Aspects of the Novel : ' The king died, and then the queen died' is a story ; but ' the king died and then the queen died from grief' is a plot. An epic is a long narrative poem, and a novel is a long narrative in prose. To be successful, both the novel and the epic must be action-packed on the basis of necessity and probability ( Ref: Aristotle's Poetics), but while similes, description of scenes, verbal portrayal of characters, flashbacks and other embellishments adorn epics and novels,  the chief element in a play is action which must be so compact as to be staged within three hours, even less. A drama can be anything but lyrical. There has been an abundance of poetic drama, but that is a different genre. There is a lyrical drama in the field too; it is Shelley's Prometheus Unbound.

With admiration,

Sibaprasad

Dear Claus & Wolfgang,

A drama has a plot, but it is not a narrative plot like we find in fiction. A plot differs from a story. Emerson says in Aspects of the Novel : ' The king died, and then the queen died' is a story ; but ' the king died and then the queen died from grief' is a plot. An epic is a long narrative poem, and a novel is a long narrative in prose. To be successful, both the novel and the epic must be action-packed on the basis of necessity and probability ( Ref: Aristotle's Poetics), but while similes, description of scenes, verbal portrayal of characters, flashbacks and other embellishments adorn epics and novels,  the chief element in a play is action which must be so compact as to be staged within three hours, even less. A drama can be anything but lyrical. There has been an abundance of poetic drama, but that is a different genre. There is a lyrical drama in the field too; it is Shelley's Prometheus Unbound.

With admiration,

Sibaprasad

If memory serves, Aristotle Poetics discusses theater.

Your distinction between plot and story strikes me as specious. The addendum 'from grief' is as much story as it is plot, as it isays why the queen died. Why is as important as what in any narrative (or dramatic) form. It is 'why' that links the various 'whats'.

In that sense, dramatic theater is a present-tense narrative.

An epic is a heroic narrative that centers on a character in a given situation (The Wrath of Achilles). There are other types of narratives, but that is a different series of problems.

'Superb and Wild' is lacking in modern drama.Synge was exponent of combination of reality and joy in drama. He said springtime of local life is forgotten, harvest is memory only, and the straw has been turned into bricks.

In India English and Hindi plays may not be miraculous but regional theatres are still popular .The plays based on traditional stories (with treatment) and modern techniques of drama are successful.

http://vipinbeharigoyal.blogspot.in/2015/10/waiting-for-godot-absurd-drama-by.html

A final addendum:

The plot is how a story is constructed (much the same way a navigator plots a course.

To say 'the king died, then the queen died' is to states to facts that follow sequentially. However post hoc does not imply propter hoc. it is the codicil 'of grief' that creates a narrative, for it creates a consequentiality (if one accepts the implication that queen died from the grief felt after the death of her husband - but then again the enitre story can be built on that very quid pro quo; see The Importance of Being Ernest)

In short narrative is a sequence of events that are related. Event A, therefore event B, therefore event C. Plot is how those events are told. The teller need not go from A to B to C, but rather chose to invert the sequence of events or mix then up, depending on the desired narrative effect.

To say that there is decline in dramatic writing is to imply that there is no longer any narrative writiing in the theater. Where is that happenening?

Dear Sibaprasad,

I am not aware of the statistics - and the situation can be different from culture to culture. But in my country there is a whole new generation of playwrights and therefore I am not sure that your initial supposition stands in our context. 

But if statistics supports your question's implied claim, I would say an important element in the "decline" must be mediation - that we leave in a culture which gets more and more virtualised (mobil phones, digital networks, television).

Dear Wolfgang,

Thanks for your kind and precise reply. I agree with your second point (drama as exposed to a medial process as art at all, and instead of decline - evolution).But then the interesting questions might be:

1. Why in the decline in the numbers of new productions (as long as we accept that in a given culture it was declining)

2. How does drama compete with other forms of mediated culture, and how can it accomodate itself to the new media-technical environment? In this respect the key element of it is that as a rule it requires the presence of the audience. No televised, digitalised performance offers the same experience as the one you get on the spot.

Of course, the base question is the following:

Is drama declining? How? What does the very term decline cover? Are there fewer productions (which I doubt)? Fewer plays being written (which I also doubt)? But if so, how are these nubers tallied, and what do they signify?

What would be a more interesting question then, is this: how is drama changing?  Art, like everything else changes. We may not be seeing more big productions of major dramatic endeavors (although even deserves verification), but what may be returning is a more popular fom of drama and theater, where audiences are also players (again, which needs verification) or a more highbrow theater that question the very forms theater takes (again, a reality check would help)

One must be wary of these Chicken Little assertions if they aren't back up by anything (let alone anything verifiable)...

I understand that concern. The decline , I think, is not focused on the production of dramatic works. I think the decline is on the quality of texts produced and published. Today any thing can be published in the name of drama and literature since  with money one can publish. I have the feeling that most of our writers, especially today, have two problems: 1) they get into literature with no or little knowledge of the literary culture and 2) being hasty.

I suggest that writers should go back to the principles that guided great playwrights like Sophocles, Shakespeare, Walcott, Soyinka, Beckett, Mollier and Racine to mention just these. These men were artist who focus on HOW to transmit the message and not WHAT message to pass out. It is not only in India that we find this decline, it is in Cameroon, in Nigeria and even the USA and the UK too.

Most of what I have to say about this "decline" has already been expressed to some degree by other contributors, but still ...

I do not think we can say that drama has declined, nor poetry for that matter, but it has a very different relationship, a different dynamic, with regards to print since Gutenberg's gizmo. The novel thrives in print, as Cervantes taught us, while poetry in general, and drama in particular, still depend a great deal upon other forms of performance, live performances, television, cinema, et cetera, in order to connect with an audience. The relationship has more in common with the sheet-music to musical performance relationship than it does to any readership-as-audience dynamic. Now, cinema gives us more poetry/drama than Lope de Vega ever did.  

Dear Carlos,

I agree with you on drama as opposed to Lope de Vega, but I am not sure about this latter's relationship to poetry. Mind you, there is a renaissance in my country of slam poetry: live performances of improvised poetry in front of large crowds.

Dear Wolfgang,

 your report of your own personal experience of a real time event on the spot is convincing enough! :)

Ferenc, you seem to be making my point for me. Drama/poetry is not in decline, by any means! I make little distinction between drama and poetry; the former is a subcategory of the latter. Both have as their two primordial elements: language and performance. My point is that seeing the printed form as performance works much better for the novel than it does for poetry/drama. The poetry slam example would seem to illustrate that point quite well.

Dear Dutta,

Theaters have been into evolution since centuries and its still continuing... You can see many theater workshops happening in cities.... the old traditional arts forms declined though! But its still there!!! 

Of Course we can witness a slight change... That's because of the 21st Century Speed we are into!!! We need pocket size stories and Novellas for reading.... Hope I made a minimal justice to your question ....

Hi Dutta,

Theaters have their prominence still....

There are grade exams fortheatre, workshops, programmes happening all around....

But we are into speed and that way short stories and novellas have taken their place....

But still dramas stand a way high... And there are companies who promote them...

Hope my idea was helpful!! 

Francis,

To reassure you, by drama I mean the artistic genre that has acquired various dimensions over time. Yes, some dramatists came out even after the advent of film.  But during their time film was at its neo-natal stage. Just watch the graph - the growth of film, novel and TV serial soars while drama  shows a decline. Shakespeare, Marlowe, Kyd and even Shaw's plays can be enjoyed by mere reading; Brecht cannot be. During the last  60-70 years, we do not have many plays, not even quite a few, that have been included in the university curriculum of  Literature as new designs. Some have been included  only into theatre studies. Still their number is lamentably few.

Sibaprasad

Francis,

To reassure you, by drama I mean the artistic genre that has acquired various dimensions over time. Yes, some dramatists came out even after the advent of film.  But during their time film was at its neo-natal stage. Just watch the graph - the growth of film, novel and TV serial soars while drama  shows a decline. Shakespeare, Marlowe, Kyd and even Shaw's plays can be enjoyed by mere reading; Brecht cannot be. During the last  60-70 years, we do not have many plays, not even quite a few, that have been included in the university curriculum of  Literature as new designs. Some have been included  only into theatre studies. Still their number is lamentably few.

Sibaprasad

Yes, but that implies that theater in university studies is on the decline. It's not the same thing, and it even may be the case, as it is true that the humanities in general are being heccled out of business.

But to say that we haven't many plays since the War is to say that Camus, Sartre, Ionesco, Beckett, Arthur Miller, Neil Simon... don't exist. Beware of the Ivory Tower.

By the way, I don't think that Shakespeare, Marlowe, Kyd or Shaw (or Dryden, Corneille or Molière or Racine) are best appreciated be being only read, although they are enjoyable as texts, I agree. They are plays and reach their full potenital as such. Only Musset wrote plays that were meant to be read. Conversely, I think you can read Brecht or Beckett and get a kick out of it.

Serious novels may be showing the same wear and tear theater is showing in the face of film and television. But in the end, I don't believe in the competitive dichotomy among performing media (film vs. plays), nor do I think that novels are threatened by film or theater by novels, or whatever... On the contrary they tend to enrich one another. Griffith introduced modern filmmaking by studying Dickens Raymond Queneau electrified novels by injecting film editing strategies. Some of Welles' greatest achievement are his Shakesperean adaptations, and he had enjoyed also a brilliant career on the stage...

Indeed, the only medium to have withered away is radio...

You only need to have a look at the amount of films based on plays that were prodiced in the last ten or 15 years to realize that drama is not on the decline. 

Which just goes to show that if you know what's going on, there more out there then you'd think!

Moreover the problem stated on the outset as novels vs. drama  is even more puzzling when you consider that the modern novel is at least three hundred years old...

john guare terence mcnally david mamet tracy letts sam shepard tom stoppard just over here. theater thrives in the light and in the dark.

Jim, 

I cannot understand your language. Please post in English only.

Sibaprasad

Jim, 

I cannot understand your language. Please post in English only.

Sibaprasad

Sibaprasad- those are the names of vibrant playwrights, first name, then last-- john guare, terence mcnally, david mamet, tracy letts,sam shepard,tom stoppard. some theater is lighthearted, some is more noir. forgive lack of capital letters.

Thanks, Jim.

Sibaprasad

Hi,

I apologize that I am not a researcher.I am a student at Bow Valley College. I misunderstood your Research Gate as I thought that this site help me in my English 30-1. Therefore, I did not submit.

Best Regards,

Rashida Aamir

Dear Wolfgang, 

What is the storyline of Metropolis? How many Acts and Scenes are there in the play? Are the stagecraft and the histrionics traditional or new? Since you speak of catharsis, the play must be a tragedy. Then what is the hamartia of the hero or the heroine?  It is encouraging that plays are regularly staged in Germany. Would my friends from other countries enlighten me about the state of drama in their homelands? 

Sibaprasad

some facts and figures from the US and UK:

AMERICAN THEATRE’S TOP 10 MOST-PRODUCED PLAYS OF 2014-15 (Actually 11 Because of Ties)*

Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike by Christopher Durang: 27**

Outside Mullingar by John Patrick Shanley: 10

Bad Jews by Joshua Harmon: 8***

Other Desert Cities by Jon Robin Baitz: 8****

Around the World in 80 Days adapted from the novel by Jules Verne: 7(note, 6 for the Mark Brown adaptation and 1 for the Toby Hulse adaptation)

Peter and the Starcatcher, adapted by Rick Elice from Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson: 7

The Whipping Man by Matthew Lopez: 7

Tribes by Nina Raine: 7*****

4000 Miles by Amy Herzog: 6

Into the Woods, book by James Lapine, music and lyricsby Stephen Sondheim: 6

Venus in Fur by David Ives: 6

source: http://www.americantheatre.org/2014/09/23/top-10-plays-2014-2015/

UK: 172 new plays, up 26% on 2009

Source: http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-30701781

Dear Wolfgang,

English is not also my mother tongue. Yet I take care, with all seriousness, in keeping with the dignity of RG, when I type out a post. Grammarly helps me find out the errors during composition.

Regards, 

Sibaprasad

Hello, Sibaprasad!!!

It is true that writing drama is on decline. But going to the theatre is again in fashion. People still prefer plays written before the 1990s. In fact, Greek tragedy, Shakespeare, Carderón and Lope de Vega are still a success and a lot is being written about Renaissance, Baroque, Neoclassical plays by Molière and Racine, as well as by 19th century playwrigths. In the 20th-century, we had great plays by Tennessee Williams and Bertolt Brecht, to mention the two extremes. The last 30 years in theatre have been terribly boring, and musicals have taken the place of the theater. Artsy audiences now prefer "performance", which is short, weird and to the point, and people go to museums for that. 

Best regards, Lilliana

Hi Lilliana, 

I feel encouraged to see that you agree with my proposition. 

=======================================================

Hello, Sibaprasad!!!

It is true that writing drama is on the decline. But going to the theatre is again in fashion. People still prefer plays written before the 1990s. In fact, Greek tragedy, Shakespeare, Carderón and Lope de Vega are still a success and a lot is being written about Renaissance, Baroque, Neoclassical plays by Molière and Racine, as well as by 19th-century playwrights. In the 20th-century, we had great plays by Tennessee Williams and Bertolt Brecht, to mention the two extremes. The last 30 years in theatre have been terribly boring, and musicals have taken the place of the theater. Artsy audiences now prefer "performance", which is short, weird and to the point, and people go to museums for that. 

Best regards,

Lilliana

======================================================

You have said: ... "a lot is being written about Renaissance, Baroque, Neoclassical plays by Molière and Racine, as well as by 19th-century playwrights." When I say, with my limited knowledge,  that writing drama is  on the decline, I do not mean 'writing about' drama. Here, your views are in consonance with mine. 

Thank you very much for your valuable opinion formed by observation and studies. 

Sibaprasad

Dear Friends on RG, 

Let us move to another topic. We have been enlightened on the issue to a considerable degree. 

Regards for all, 

Sibaprasad Dutta ( Initiator) 

Sibaprasad, keep on with your interesting questions. 

Hasta la próxima pregunta... 

Lilliana

Yes, Wolfgang, 

That would be a nice thread. I wish you raised the issue. 

Best regards, 

Sibaprasad

Dear Wolfgang, 

Your upgraded post (WFS 07./08.02. 2016) is a fit ground to designate you not only as a true connoisseur of dramatic art but also as a great dramatic critic. Your post is an invaluable contribution to the discussion on a crucial topic that I raised. I consider your post as the valedictory address to the session.

Best regards,

Sibaprasad

Dear Wolfgang: Goethe has an excellent theory of tragedy that boils down to the staging of "an irreconciliable opposition" that leads the protagonist to a point of no return and where no more decisions can be made. He was in many ways wondering if Greek tragedy was still possible in his age —a "Romantic age". I think this comment is made in his Poetry and Truth, but I'm not sure. I'll check it up. I kind of remember that the difference in approach was that in his day and age the gods we no longer there to establish "truth" and "justice". It also bears noting that Greek tragedy was a political "deep play", following Jeremy Bentham's idea: in "deep play", a community has the opportunity to play out its concerns for the very community, its leaders, its form of government, its priorities, and so it is never about the leader, or the protagonist, but how, pushed into an "irreconciliable opposition", the drama freezes to give the audience the opportunity, through catharsis, to reckon with their own reality. In this sense, tragedy was a collective opportunity for political education. This is not my idea, but that of many recent Greek tragedy scholars. I do not disagree with you, but I want to stress the deeply political will of Greek tragedy and what was the role of the audience, represented by the chorus on stage.  I think it is Goldhill who proposes the dialogicity of important Athenian activities held in the agora: tragedy started there and is a dialogue; the court met originally in the agora, and it was a dialogue; and, most significantly, Plato, the first formal "philosopher", decided to write much of his production as dialogue. This dialogicity is manifested in tragedy with the chorus, and through catharsis. Athenians had a role to play in tragedy.

It bears noting that people had to go to these tragedies, that the whole event was sponsored by the city, and that importat rituals like the ephebia were conducted on the first day of the festival, a ritual where the orphans of war were "adopted" by Athens as a corpus. The rich complexity of the context of Greek tragedy makes me think if the audience had an attitude, expectations and a behaviour that was privative of the situation, and is completely lost to us. What I mean is that Greek tragedy has many elements that make it an unretrievable experience, it is not just a theatrical "form". We should talk more about this, dear friend, because I believe that the fact that tragedy possibly escapes us may explain why theater, that is always in search of an audience, may be loosing ground precisely because it has become entertainment and is no longer a place were we go to think and learn together about the ways of life.

It may happen that Greek tragedy can be restaged, but that new tragedy is no longer possible mainly because it was a "machine" expressly constructed for its own community —5th century Athens— reason why there was no tragedy in other Greek cities, just in democratic Athens, where the citizens had a say in city affairs. Other Greek cities staged the tragedies already written by Athenian authors. 

Maybe Shakespeare's tragedies should be counterpointed in this conversation.

As always, I throughly enjoy your erudite comments and learn a lot from you.

Best regards, Lilliana (Sorry for the typos. I am running to class and I am late!)

There are other thoughts in my mind, Sibaprasad. Greek tragedy was a three-part unit, and we only one we have complete tragedy: The Orestia, by Aeschylus. Aeschylus is the oldest  of the authors, and it is evident that Sofocles and Euripides were very different from him, so we do not exactly know how was the three-part tragedy of Oedipus by Sofocles or the three-part tragedy of Medea by Euripides, for example. All three-part tragedies were rounded up in the end by a "satyr play", a sort of antidote to catharsis. We are judging what a tragedy is on the basis of extant single-parts of what were very complex three-part plays. 

It bears noting that Greek tragedy used mythical situations that were never contemporary with the audience, the only exception being Aeschylus' The Persians, for which he was fined by the city because the present time should never be staged on the theater. We should ask why was that: maybe because they thought the audience needed distance in space and time in order to be able to examine clearly the political issues at hand.

Then, in France in the last 20 years or so, there has been a sort of" revolution" of classical philologists who claim that the Greek "dictionary", literally "created" by the Germans in the 18th century, is very confuse and lacking in correct definitions and examples, and they have taken to renewing that dictionary in view of current philological discoveries. A case in point is Nicole Loraux's very eloquent book Tragic ways to kill a woman, where she  explores the meaning of only two words —neck and fly/float— which have a great importance in tragedies where women might be the protagonists. Loraux discovered that current dictionaries of Greek (including classic Greek) do not include the evident meaning of these two key words in their tragic context. If that happens with just two words, can you imagine, Sibaprasad, how many ancient literary words are not being correctly understood by us because we lack their full semantic import?

My guess is that the the meaning we give to tragedy, and our current interpretation of this Athenian phenomenon, are off the mark, and that we have taken away from ancient tragedy what was more important: it's metaphorical import and its intense political intent. Maybe that is one of the reasons why tragic theater is not quite working since Shakespeare and we should ask why Shakespeare has been really the only successful tragedy author after the Greeks.

My best, as always, Lilliana

Dear Lilliana, 

I am grateful to you as you have made a post addressed to me. Anyway, my knowledge of Greek classics is limited, and I haven't pursued the subject after I obtained Master's in 1975. 

I would request you to clarify two things:

(1) the ephebia  ritual;  I have  gathered only the following information  from Wiki-dictionary:

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Ephebos (ἔφηβος) (often in the plural epheboi), also anglicised as ephebe (plural: ephebes) or archaically ephebus (plural: ephebi), is a Greek word for an adolescent age group or a social status reserved for that age in Antiquity.

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(2) What do you mean when you say : 

Maybe Shakespeare's tragedies souls be counterpointed in this conversation.

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Best regards, 

Sibaprasad

Dear Sibaprasad, thank you for your comments, upvotes and questions. During most of the "tragedy age" in Athens, the city was at war, first with the Persians and then with Sparta and its allies. Many Athenian warriors died in those wars and their young now orphaned boys were ritually "adopted" by the City of Athens as an homage to those dead soldiers. That happened on the first day of the Theater Festival honoring the goddess Athena. It was a very emotive ceremony to be taken very seriously by the citizens.

Shakespeare is the next great tragediographer. Nobody in the Roman world was able to be as good as Aeschylus, Sofocles or Euripides. We had to wait for Shakespeare. His tragic plays have also to do with the duties of a king —for example his splendid Hamlet, Macbeth and King Lear— where important issues of kingship and citizenry return to drama to rescue the political intent of tragedy. Many say that Corneille and Racine, in 17th century France managed to reach the same level of Shakespeare, but not quite. Corneille's Le Cid, and Racine's Phaedra are splendid plays, but do not delve into community issues as Shakespeare does, and rather keep closer to their  protagonists as individuals rather than as regents. After that, no more tragedy. Political art had to wait for Piscator and Brecht, and both questioned the ancient tragic theater because, basically, the failed to understand the political import of Greek tragedy.

My best, Lilliana

And dear Sibaprasad, it is I who is thankful. I have not taught the ancient Greek and Latin literature course in almost 20 years. I'm somewhat "rusty", but incredibly happy to return to a literature for which I have the utmost respect: the Greek's.

Artistic production today is very different from what it was in the past. Drama/theatre basically has religious roots. In ancient Greece it originated in the worship of Dionysus, but in other cultures too (e.g. Balinese theatre) it has a strong spiritual element connected either with religious worship, communal bonding, or fertility rites. As you know, religion is no longer a cultural given--especially in the Western world--nor do people feel the need so much to celebrate their cultural roots and traditional spiritual beliefs. Modernity with its scientific world-view has undermined these. But that is only one of the reasons why drama is in decline. Individualism has made art a personal business (literally) which people experience in private and subjectively, hence the rise of the novel which is the dominant literary genre today. In ancient times, on the other hand poetry, music, and dance were indistinguishable and performed before a live audience. The communal, like the religious, aspect of culture has been undermined. Cinema is the closest thing we have to the communal unified experience which combines performance, music, and text, but cinema too is more and more enjoyed in private due to the internet, rather than in public. Also, the cinema is mediated through various kinds of technology and this also undermines the spirtual/communal element. Theatre production is still very much alive, of course, but losing ground to these more modern art forms.

In addition to what I have said, I iterate that dramatic production demands time. Before stage performance, a great deal of rehearsal is required. Moreover, the audience being limited, the playwright has to keep in mind the possibility of commercial success. Not so was the scene before cinema came in. Now those who prefer to read opt for novels and those who prefer to watch opt for video. Shakespeare is more read than watched. Interestingly, reading Shakespeare gives pleasure more than a classic novel. 

The mass society is only interested in degraded comedy. The drama belongs to high culture. High culture that is in decline, of course.

It's too expensive to mount productions. There is no glory in being an unnoticed playwright.

Difficult question to answer because one only sees the play forms which are allowed to be produced. It is controlled by agents, middlemen and people willing to financially produce the shows. That is the first hurdle. If your standard of good drama is what is commercial, you are not looking at what the audience will appreciate but what you think will make you money. Second, drama is public. It requires an audience and too many people are uncomfortable with being an audience unless it is what I call adrenaline-producing (like much contemporary music). Theatre in the United States killed off its audience by fragmenting it into specialty themes which rarely attracted more than its small social grouping. Movies survived mostly because of the adrenaline-producing ability of the visuals. I lived in New York in the 1970s and saw the diminishment begin.

I was also there trying to break into professional theatre as a playwright. I attended a workshop at a famous actors' studio and handed in an entire play whereas most people handed in scenes. The "instructor" got a group of the actors together for a cold staged reading. Everybody was laughing, including the instructor. When it was over, the first words out of his mouth was "This is not funny. You write too well to ever be commercial." The actors defends me -- that I had written juicy roles for all the characters. Then one of them stated, "And it's in blank verse." That was the way I could control the rhythm of the actors and clue them into the emotional range they could apply to the individual words and lines. The instructor grabbed the script from the woman and began to scan the lines to make sure it was blank verse. Then he looked at me and stated, "who did you study under?" You see, by that time, you had to be affiliated with a "school" for anything and you had to fit into that school or you couldn't be allowed into the sacred precinct of the production line. I did not fit in. I made sure my lines were pentameter and the majority were iambic, but I used liberal substitution which my ear allowed to keep the rhythm of speech I wanted for the display of emotions I wanted to expose. I told the guy that I had been writing verse since I was seven and if I could not write blank verse by the time I was approaching thirty, I would have not tried.

That brings me to another problem with finding drama today. It is a craft. It is both visual and vocal and human. You need to understand what actions you can use, you knew to know how speech is put together to be effective and you have to be an observer of humans and human nature. You can cover a lot up with visuals and but ultimately visuals are boring if that is all there is and you are expecting more as an audience. No one studies speech any longer, its components and how to weave those components together to effectively communicate what you want. That is why people do not read plays as they used to. They have not developed an "inner ear" to translate what they read silently into its spoken and acted visual . version. I took a Renaissance drama class one time and people were complaining about how boring Marlowe's Dr. Faustus was. I asked the prof if I could act out Faustus's last speech. The class was stunned what range of emotion the speech actually had because they could not verbally or visually act out the torment Marlowe wrote into his blank verse. They just saw the construction of the speech as "artificial" twisting of words. They lost the emotion.

People are told to write as they speak but they do not understand how they speak. Speech has more than just words. It has inflection and gesture which require special ways to insert into the written word. They are not trained to do this because their teachers were not trained and eventually the art is lost until a new Renaissance emerges if it is allowed to emerge because people who control the culture do not want to give up the power they have by forcing people to use their system.

I could go on, but those are the problems in a nutshell. The problems can be overcome. Will they be? I doubt in my lifetime. I am 70 and I write for myself. If you have problems reading this, try reading it aloud. I write how I trained my ear to let me articulate.

I don't agree that Drama is on the decline...

Because of COVID restrictions, live theatre is almost dead (same with athletics) -- no audience. This is the physical problem. Secondly, there is no training to write for theatre -- and there has not been for over 50 years. I have written over 200 plays but I was self-taught, responding to Grebanier. I directed my own in college successfully, even with an audience of high school kid who laughed when I wanted them to but shocked and horrified when Abraham kills Isaac and tells the angel "He knows I killed him. If you want him to live, bring him back ... forgetting."

Drama is not declining really.

I don't think dramatization is declining however it has taken an alternate structure in the cutting edge world. Then again, new specialists who settled on sensational structures have a ton of battle to ascend in notoriety.