Sunday

Lope de Vega Plays


As the course of my life two days ago become subject to a bomb threat, or an actual bomb, my thoughts are now free.  

And I just decided that I’ve been thinking about how to write of a Spanish Golden Age play writer, for far too long: The evolutionary findings regarding theatrical artistry determines that indeed the Golden Age was the beacon of light from which more recent artists have developed. There's Broadway in New York, cinema, and not just theatrical television but also television as a production.   

We have auditory effects and types of tension, as sub topics on play beginnings in Bulletin of the Comediantes, Vol. 54, No. 2 (2002), John T. Cull.  He makes us aware of, and offers a theory on, the evolution of theatre.  This ultimate theory is like a theatrical mustard seed.

I cannot think of a way so please, allow me to extract and duplicate sentences from this one most telling paragraph:

An aspect of Lope’s play openings that merits comment is the number of characters who come onstage to get the play going...This apparent lack of spatial equilibrium is perhaps intended as a visual indication of the initial disruption or lack of balance that is typical of so many Spanish Golden Age plays... The play beginnings that are least frequent in Lope are those are those in which a single character emerges and recites some sort of monologue....  Why is this?  We can only speculate that the initial appearance of a single character on the stage is the least dramatic in terms of theatrical dynamics, and the most difficult to create dramatic tension. 

On this, funny, several years back I chanced an opportunity to write a screenplay for a successful filmmaker, that’s the funny part.  Anyway, in learning about writing fiction I repeatedly read about an essential quality, creating tension. 

Alas!  I’ve written what I was about to write.

No comments:

Post a Comment