I don’t know what to say about this. We were asked to read and react about Aristotle’s and Lajos Egri’s viewpoints on dramatics. On my part, once being a member of a theatrical troupe, knowledge of such things should have already been a plus for me, but I have to be constantly reminded of those things now, thanks to a long hiatus that I took due to my engineering academics.

Anyway, let’s get down to business.

Aristotle is widely known as a philosopher, whose works gained recognition most notably in the fields of physics, logic, politics, ethics, biology, zoology, poetics, theater, and especially, drama.

Aristotle's Poetics aims to give an account of what he calls 'poetry' (for him, the term includes the lyric, the epos, and the drama). Aristotle attempts to explain 'poetry' through 'first principles' and by discerning its different genres and component elements. His analysis of tragedy constitutes the core of his discussion. "Although Aristotle's Poetics is universally acknowledged in Western critical tradition," Marvin Carlson explains, "almost every detail about his seminal work has aroused divergent opinions."

From his Poetics were the derived classical unities: the unity of action, time and location. These three, as far as I’m concerned, that’s why they’re called unities, are not going to stand alone if we’re talking about classical theater. The same reason why television dramas today suck is because either one or all of these unities are missing. Anyway, the only alibi they can produce for that is that TV dramas aren’t plays.

To elaborate on the unities: the unity of action states that a play should follow only one main action. Any more major action (an activity that involves an emotional phase) will result in discontinuity. A certain action, if that is to be the critical part of the plot, should be acted upon from the start to finish, meaning that everything that the characters do should revolve around that action alone.

The unity of time says that the play’s timeline should be no longer than a day. However, that can’t actually apply to most TV shows nowadays, knowing that most of them are episodic; unless we see a feature. The same goes for the unity of location, which says that the play is only to be situated in a certain area of space.

There can be different actions in one location, but as I mentioned, that will cause discontinuity to the play. There can be one action at different times, as long as those times add up to just a day’s length, though my take on that is that the action will go stale for the next hour. The play can feature one location at different times of a day, but not the opposite: it will not fit in to a single play and will betray the emotional message the play has to offer.

Aristotle’s core terms in poetics are the following, arranged in order:

Mythos or 'plot'
Ethos or 'character'
Dianoia or 'thought', 'theme'
Lexis or 'diction', 'speech'
Melos or 'melody'
Opsis or 'spectacle'

You see that in the arrangement, the character comes second to the plot. It’s as if Aristotle dictates that the characters develop through the plot.

Now enter Lajos Egri, Aristotle’s “rival”. There’s a quotation because Egri and Aristotle never met anyway. Egri here begs to differ from Aristotle’s statement by saying that it is always not the case. There are cases when the characters are so well-defined, that they define the plot itself.

Also, Egri stresses a very vital part for making the play’s script: the premise. He says that without it, story would just be circular, much like Masashi Kishimoto’s Naruto. But then again, that was his plan all along, as the mang/anime’s title suggests, which means “whirlpool” in English.

Egri quoted Moses L. Malevinsky from the book he wrote entitled “The Science of Playwrighting”:

“Emotion, or the elements in or of an emotion, constitute the basic things in life. Emotion is life. Life is emotion. Therefore emotion is drama. Drama is emotion.”

Malevinsky also says that a play will not be good if we don’t know what forces set the play’s emotion going. He even analogized emotion to a play as barking to a dog; it’s that important.

Egri then generalizes that the premise is the thumbnail synopsis of the play, which I think is the best way to put it.

If I were to compare both guys at this state, I think Egri made better points than Aristotle. I think Aristotle didn’t conceptualize enough on the field of dramatics and theater because he has physics, biology, politics, etc. to deal with.

After this reaction paper, I think I should study more about emotions. On a personal level, I’ve had so many problems, that I have de-voided myself of significant emotions. I really should regain those emotions back, if I were to replenish my drawing and scriptwriting skills; some inspiration, perhaps?

But no, I don’t think I will want to have a girlfriend anytime soon. Until I'm able to spend for her, at least. XD