The playwright creates the blueprint or structure for a play by choosing the story, plot structure, and characters. The playwright crafts conflicts, limits, and intensity through dramatic structure. Common structures include climactic, episodic, ritual, patterns, cyclical, serial, experimental/avant-garde, and oral structures. Empirical studies have analyzed dramatic structures to test if audiences perceive tension and sequences similarly to theoretical models or the production team.

1. Crafting Structure
Creating the Blueprint
Chapter 4
Theatre: The Lively Art
Rebecca Pearson

2. The Playwright

Creates “blueprint” for the collaborative effort
which is a play

Chooses
− Story (Subject, Focus, Purpose)
− Plot Structure
− Characters (Dialogue)

Centrality?
− Exception: Improv
− Some critics: Play is only a starting point

3. Dramatic Structure

Playwright crafts:
− Conflicts
− Limits
− Intensity

“Each play … should have its own internal
laws and its own framework, which give it
shape, strength, and meaning.”

4. Essentials of Structure

Plot 
Opening Scene
→ − Exposition

Action − Characterizatio
n

Conflict

Obstacles /

Opposing Forces
Complications

Balance 
Crises / Climaxes

5. Climactic and Episodic Structures

Intensive 
Extensive

Originated in Greece 
Proliferate

Focuses late in plot 
Subplots
− Exposition 
Juxtaposition

Restricted 
Cumulative effect

Tight Construction

Ex:The Zoo Story 
Ex: RENT

6. Other Structures

Ritual

Patterns

Cyclical

Serial

Experimental (Avant-Garde)

Tableaux

7. The Sounds of Feminist Theory
“... linear plot is incompatible with oral narrative which
unfolds according to the storyteller's memory and
interaction with specific listeners. Indeed one of the
most distrinctive qualities of oral narrative is its
tendency to enact the immediacy and tumult of
experience. A storyteller may well get carried away
with a detail or delve into a flashback. Instead of
following the kind of sequential structure of the typical
climactic plot, oral storytellers are often driven by the
episodic and ever-changing dynamics of life as it
unfolds from day to day.”
-
Ruth Salvaggio

8. Orality and Literacy:
the technolgizing of the word
“What made a good epic poet was not mastery of a
climactic linear plot,” but was, “among other things
of course, first, tacit acceptance of the fact that
episodic structure was the only way and the totally
natural way of imagining and handling lengthy
narrative, and second, possession of supreme skill
in managing flashbacks and other episodic
techniques.” -
Walter Ong

9. Empirical Analysis of Dramatic
Structure
“It is tradition to discuss the form of Western drama by describing its
linear structure, i.e., how the sequences of the play relate to one
another over time according to some unifying construct such as
“tension build” or “level of interest.” Aristotle seems to have set this
precedent in the Poetics by defining plot as “the arrangement of the
incidents (VI. 6) and devoting parts of all subsequent chapters to
procedures for analyzing such arrangement … This tradition can be
seen in modern works on dramatic theory and, closer to actual
production, in directing texts such as Dietrich's popular Play Direction
(1953), which offers the Aristotle-Freytag-Matthews model in refined
form including embellishments which make it resemble a scientifically
respectable line graph …”

10. Freytag's Pyramid

11. Dramatic Structure “Line Graph”

12. Empirical Analysis of Dramatic
Structure (continued)
“… This precision and the importance of the construct it
operationalizes suggests the need to bring behavioral research
methods to bear in testing its operations inductively. To what
extent do individual audience members perceive the dramatic
structure of a given theatrical event similarly? If this similarity of
judgements exists, how does it compare to such a priori
theoretical models as those in the Brander Matthews heritage?
Does the production team (actors-director) analyze the tension-
time configuration of a given play similarly to that of an audience
as well as an a priori standard?”
-Gil Lazier, Douglas Zahn, Joseph
Bellinghiere

13. Works Cited

Lazier, Gil, Douglas Zahn, and Joseph Bellinghiere.
"Empirical Analysis of Dramatic Structure."
Communication Monographs 41.4 (1974): 381-90.
Print.

Ong, Walter J. Orality and Literacy: The
Technologizing of the Word. London: Methuen, 1982.
Print.

Salvaggio, Ruth. The Sounds of Feminist Theory.
Albany: State University of New York, 1999. Print.