Day 2

3rd July 2019

Activities:

1. Yesterday, we’d been told to each prepare a presentation on three sources (audio, visual, text-based, etc.) in which we would share what our sources made us feel, and a short analysis of the sources. We began the day by sharing our presentations; the group presented a wide variety of source material, from surrealist paintings to jazz to poems and short stories. 
2. Then, we began discussing scene-writing and a scene’s structure; we spoke about the Aristotelian model of employing a clear conflict and defined beginning, middle, and end. Chanakya introduced the triangular structure, in which the vertices of a triangle represent three different characters and can be used to motivate changes in their behaviours and dispositions. We employed the archetypes of a rescuer character, a persecutor character, and a victim character to look at how one might use this structure to propel a play forward. 
3. Then we did a short writing assignment with this structure where we were asked to write a scene with three characters—Rama, Sita, Ravana—in the context of the Ramayana, who must all take on the roles of rescuer, persecutor, and victim once. So, for example, if one began writing a scene where Rama was the rescuer, Sita the victim, and Ravana the persecutor, over the course of the scene they must propel the characters to switch roles so that, perhaps, Rama becomes the persecutor, Sita the rescuer, and Ravana the victim. 
4. After each of us shared our scenes with the group, we noted how competing ideologies and opposing actions caused each of the scenes’ characters to appear in new light, and how these changes in the characters served to push the scene forward. 
5. Then, we also discussed how, if these were in fact the opening scenes of longer plays, an audience would be able to discern the the style of the play—a satire, a comedy, an ideological critique of the original myth—from the character shifts and their actions. 
6. We observed the importance of keeping in mind that one character’s actions impact all the other characters as well, and that the finite world of a play—a conventional play at least—offers a playwright the room to toy with action and reaction. 
7. Then, as our last exercise for the day, in groups, we read the opening scenes from Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” and Caryl Churchill’s “Top Girls,” again. This time, we focused our attention on seeing what any one character revealed about themselves (their personality, dispositions, likes, dislikes, and so forth) and what that same character revealed about another character. Through this exercise, we were able to look at the way in which the development of one character is interconnected with the development of another character, reinforcing the notion that all the characters in a play are inextricably linked.

Questions considered: 

1. What is it about a specific piece of art that moves us? How does one bring those qualities to their own work?
2. What is a scene? What moves a scene forward? What are the different ways in which one can structure a scene? What role does time play in pushing a scene forward? 
3. How are characters in a play linked to one another? Are these relationships causal? How is character developed through dialogue?