ABSTRACT
Pure drama, or shall we say tragic action, is then the following: an action of universal significance, serving as a pattern or prototype, which embraces and reflects all the particular stories and actions that belong to the same category as the model action represented. (Universality or permanence is rejected in our own Heraclitic-Hegelian-Marxist period. I am, however, convinced that in reaction to our own period, as is customary, a later period governed by a new intellectual fashion will one of these days rehabilitate universal ideas.)
As for me, sometime I should like to be able to strip dramatic action of all that is particular to it: the plot, the accidental characteristics of the characters, their names, their social setting and historical background, the apparent reasons for the dramatic conflict, and all the justifications, explanations and logic of the conflict. This conflict would have to exist, or else there would be no drama, but no-one would know the reason for it. One may speak of the dramatic quality of a painting, or representational works like those of Van Gogh, or of non-representational works. This dramatic quality quite simply springs from a clashing of forms and lines, from abstract antagonisms, without psychological motivation. One speaks of the dramatic quality of a musical work. One can also say that a natural phenomenon (storms) or a landscape is dramatic. The importance and the truth of this “dramatisation” reside in the fact that it cannot be explained. In the theatre one looks for a motive. And in the theatre of to-day it is being increasingly looked for. In this way the theatre is being devalued.
