From Erik Ehn...

...by way of Erin Courtney.

Is your story about a feather? Maybe the right structure for your story is also a feather.  What does it mean to have a feather-story structure?

In some ways, this is the most compelling (and non-argumentative) argument for alternative form, for a different kind of "story" that I have heard.  As Dietz says, people are narrative animals -- we will MAKE narrative.  And there is much to be said for form following function -- sometimes a playwright's aims may require something more Aristotelian, but sometimes, if the aims of the playwright are less linear, the form the play takes may be as well.  Or rather, more "feather-shaped."

The goal, I think, regardless of one's sensibility, is that there be a purpose or design behind the shape of your play.  Just as we may look at an object in nature and not grasp its underlying design, the fact remains that there almost inevitably IS one -- the feather's sharp linearity, hollow, with thousands of infinitesimal outcroppings...

Maybe I was especially susceptible to that image.  I grew up on beaches, of course, and used t hunt down seagull feathers, tracing their shape with my fingers, pushing against their natural grain to watch the edges separate, then smoothing them back down to their natural shape.  I've watched a lot of coastal birds, too, and seen the feathers as part of the whole, in action.  Feathers, too, serve a purpose.

And of course, I've told my students to think of their plays as mountains, as rivers...why not as feathers?  What would that open up?

What remains critical to me, I think, is that you find a way to invite your audience into your play.  I think that any model you find can work, but for me a play is always about creating a point of connection with a community -- it matters to me that my plays invite people to join me at the table, no matte what their narrative structure.  Everyone loves a good story, and one well-told...but there are as many ways to tell a good story as there are storytellers.

Is this, maybe, a common ground between (what I perceive as) the divide between the "well-made play" folks and the "alternative structure" folks?  Is there no binary to begin with, is it in my head?