How do plays tell stories

Ingham, Michael McIntyre, Dan Oropeza-Escobar, Minerva Direct reported speech as a frame for implicit reflexivity. Xiang, Dingding Linguistics Discourse studies. Library of Congress Control Number: Marc record. Chapter 1. Slightly silly real-world example: compare a script to traffic rules. A red light tells you that you have to stop. More problematically still, what if a car runs a red light?

A narrative can unfold linearly, and often does, but it can never go beyond, or even reach, the point from which it is being told. Performances, on the other hand, always necessarily rely on the present moment, and they carry on forward — if narration is limited in its exclusively backwards gaze, performance may be limited in its inability to look back.

And the things, the actions, the voices that are so present in the theatre point towards that elsewhere. They show you something very much like it, and ask you to make the mental connection between the visible and audible reality in front of you, and the fictional, absent world of the play.

Theatre Presents, rather than represents, unless it is a staged piece of storytelling told in the past tense. Does it mean that stories must always be told in past tense?

Does it mean that they must be telling truthful events? And in so far as theatre is a product — our memory of a theatrical event is all we are ever left with. Every piece you wrote about here, every piece of theatre you have ever experienced, belongs to you as a memory.

Unless you are watching a durational piece that lasts your entire life. The same is true of films or any prose written in the present tense, both of which are usually referred to as story-telling mediums. It is in looking back on immersive artistic events that we assess them as narrative and decide how successful they were. So maybe how meaningful the narrative created by the memory of the experience is what theatremakers are concerned with when they talk about storytelling.

Thank you! So theatre uses presence to representational ends. Obviously this gets much more problematic the more postdramatic things get. But I do think they always have to be about what, from the perspective of the teller, is the past. Well… it is, in one sense: the play always exists before the performance [again, with the same qualifications as above]. The character is always there already, in part. So there is always an element of pastness in all dramatic performances.

Too many alwayses. She opens the door. Are there? I have to think about your argument about retroactive narrativization. Quick postscript, though: agree re. You may remember one thing, but on re-reading or re-watching discover that you were misremembering. That may not matter, though — the memory in itself may be more important than its accuracy. But you can, at least in theory, check your memories against those things. At best, your memory might be up against the memories of a group of actors or fellow audience members.

Very true indeed. However I find that most of Canadian Theatre establishment including the reviewers are uniquely opposed to any other form of theatre. Of course, the art of directing itself is a bit circumspect in Canadian theatre. It is quite often that the director is not even mentioned in the reviews or mentioned somewhere in the end, among other things, as if the show directed itself or was put together by the actors which is not uncommon Add to it an absence of serious education for the young directors and here you have it: 19th century theatre, but instead of melodrama being at the centre of it — it is centered on issues of various sorts.

Which often makes it a politically correct motivational speaking delivered in a confessional style. Of course, there are quite a few exceptions to this, but working differently makes them immediately marginalized and minimizes the chances for any support, however minimal it is.

Why is that? Images may be reused as long as their source is properly attributed in accordance with the Creative Commons License detailed above. Traditional storytelling by word of mouth still takes place whenever a group of people get together to socialize, and it has helped to shape current studies in the field of communications. There is evidence of written symbols that date back to about 9, years ago. The first written stories were manually transcribed, whether on paper, stone or clay.

As described above, writing began as drawings, but over time changed into script. The current alphabets were derived from older forms of writing, such as the Phoenician alphabet. The transition from oral to written culture overlapped, but is predominantly accounted for in ancient Greece, where the earliest inscriptions date from to B. Scholars suggest that "The Iliad" by Homer is the oldest surviving work in the Greek language that originated from oral tradition, according to History of Information.

Unfortunately, not all populations were literate, so only the educated class was able to read and write stories. This era also brought about the use of plays to tell stories. The next great milestone in communications history is the introduction of mass printing that would make news and other information more readily available to all. Printing helped increase literacy among lay people. Johannes Gutenberg is considered the inventor of the printing press in the 15th century; however, years before Gutenberg, Chinese monks created a block printing mechanism that set ink to paper using wooden blocks.

The use of technology has shaped the way that we interact with others and how we tell stories. Another child with low vision may enjoy simple picture books with limited print. Audio and braille are other mediums that may be used to share a story with others. We make sense of our life experiences in part by the stories we learn or tell ourselves. Imagine a story the young child might create and revisit. I am frightened.

I think I see a monster in my closet. Will it hurt me? If I cry out loud Dad or Mom will come save me. He is just building a story based on his experience of what happens when he cries out at night.

But the power of that story may help to calm him and take action to meet his own needs. This can be true of many stories we read or hear. Even stories that might frighten us a bit, help us to cope because the outcome for the protagonist or hero ultimately turns out well. So, when we face challenges in our own lives we may have a certain belief that everything will be alright eventually if we take action.

Research actually shows that using expressive writing can help us deal with stressful and traumatic events and can even positively impact our health. Humans are constantly creating stories. We make up stories in our heads about how our day will go before we head for the office. We tell ourselves stories about the amazing places we will see and exciting things we will do as we plan our vacations.

We tell ourselves stories about how people treat us and how we treat them. We are our stories. Many people may not agree that this is storytelling, but it is where many of us begin to learn the power our own memory and imagination.

Stories told within a family or in a culture become even more powerful as they are shared year after year.