A step-by-step guide to studying a modern play

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Let’s start by considering the follow stages:

1 . Establish the conventions
2. Achieve a broad outline of the action
3. Define the protagonist's predicament
4. Trace the main tensions and threats
5. Examine the world of the play and its social order
6. Imagine the play in performance

In order to understand the steps outlined though you will need to have working definitions for a number of the terms we have used including conventions, action, protagonist , tensions and threats, and social order.

Conventions

Conventions usually mean 'a set of rules' but in the case of drama, stage conventions are really an agreement between the playwright and the audience as to what is happening and how.

For example, a playwright may offer the convention that the audience is watching the life of a family through the imaginary 'fourth wall' of their home or that the actors sometimes pretend that the audience is not there and at other times will speak to them directly. Experiments with conventions are a characteristic of Modern Drama.

Action

This describes in the broadest terms what actually happens in a play. Indeed, many modern playwrights have played games with this convention in that very little does appear to happen!

You need to distinguish between action and activity. The first concerns not only physical happenings but also psychological development, whereas the second describes the minutiae of what the actors do: move, sit, laugh, smoke etc.

Protagonist

The protagonist is the central character of any play and, invariably, the fascination of a play comes from watching the protagonist struggle with some predicament. At one time, we might have referred to the central character as hero or heroine, but in much Modern Drama the central character has so few of the qualities that we might have considered heroic that we often use the term anti-hero.

Tensions and threats

These do not have a specific meaning for drama: we all recognise them. Tensions between the characters are very often what makes a drama but much Modern Drama is concerned with characters that feel some sort of threat to their lives.

For example, the playwright David Campton described a number of his own plays as 'Comedies of Menace'. This, you may realise, is an ironic re-working of the expression 'Comedy of Manners' used to describe plays of the Restoration period, a period in which human beings lived in a world that was in some ways predictable.

By great contrast, many modern plays are concerned with people living in a world of obscure and sometimes un-identifiable menace.

Social order

This describes the way in which Society is structured: where authority lies; what its underlying values might be and the role of the family.

Some of the outstanding plays of the modern period are built around the concept of the 'American Dream' whereas others reflect a breakdown in traditional family structures or in Capitalist Society. Every modern play presupposes some kind of social order.

This content has been written by Ken Pickering, author of Studying modern drama