ABSTRACT
Events are huge decisive moments that forever alter the circumstances of the characters and the worlds they inhabit. The event is the manifestation of a something that enters our world and, upon its entrance, changes our basic situation in some significant fashion. This chapter looks at three types of events, such as micro-events, macro-events, and architectonic events, and discusses what else they tell about the nature of this phenomenon. Macro-events deal with a major event that organizes the actions of an entire act. Architectonic events organize the unfolding of the play as a whole. There are four fundamental architectonic events: the inciting event; the irrevocable event; the penultimate event; and the culminating event. The peripeteia, like the event, creates a before and after, with the peripeteia as hinge between the two states. Even plays which seem to eschew events often prove, on closer examination, to rely on some sort of re-purposing of the expectations audiences have for events.
