The Architecture of Drama: Plot, Character, Theme, Genre, and Style (review)

The Architecture of Drama outlines a basic framework for how drama functions both onstage and in film. The authors, David Letwin, Joe Stockdale, and Robin Stockdale, define architecture in the prologue as “any created form,” and assert that their use of the word implies “that drama has method and that there is a design to its creation” (xiii, emphasis in original). The writers intend their text for both professors and practitioners. While the book offers little that may be considered groundbreaking for script analysis, the authors have written a pragmatic and efficient text that concisely covers a broad range of material and provides readers with a foundation in the basics of Western dramatic structure.

Letwin, Stockdale, and Stockdale organize the text in a logical and effective manner, identifying five elements of dramatic architecture—plot, character, theme, genre, and style—and addressing each element in a separate chapter. The chapter on plot is the strongest and most thorough in the book. The authors handle each element of plot piecemeal and provide numerous examples from plays and films to illustrate each component. They support their ideas mainly with concepts from Aristotle, employing judicious citations from the Poetics. This approach articulates potentially complicated concepts in a direct and accessible style that most readers will comprehend. In the chapter on character, the authors emphasize the interpretation of actions in character analysis, but also recommend the use of stage directions. To demonstrate the latter, Letwin, Stockdale, and Stockdale offer a close reading of Edmund’s description in Long Day’s Journey into Night. Of course, character descriptions from stage directions may aid readers of plays if the playwright is one who, like O’Neill, includes thorough descriptions in texts. But this approach will often not be as valuable for the practitioner who is not bound to the letter of character descriptions in production. On the whole, however, the chapter provides the reader with a basic and useful approach for examining character, citing concepts from Aristotle and Stanislavski, among others. Letwin, Stockdale, and Stockdale present a traditional notion of theme, defining it as the point of view of the playwright as interpreted through the director. The authors articulate this concept most effectively when they compare two distinctive productions of A Streetcar Named Desire, directed by Kazan and Clurman, respectively, to demonstrate how a single play can reflect various themes. The writers are clear about the distinctions in each production, providing the reader with a firm sense of how theme is the result of interpretation.

The chapters on genre and style continue the focus on structural fundamentals, but these sections are less successful than the earlier ones. The writers attempt to approach these subjects with historical context; this requires that they deal with history in such a brief space that the information seems hastily assembled and over-simplified. Letwin, Stockdale, and Stockdale do provide standard definitions of genres such as tragedy and comedy, but charting the development of genre from the Greeks to the present is difficult to accomplish in an abbreviated format. In addressing style, the authors introduce “-isms” in a cursory manner and only briefly discuss the impact of individual artists (e.g., directors, playwrights, etc.) on the emergence of style. The information in these chapters could serve beginning-level students, but would require augmentation through supplemental readings and/ or instruction.

Overall, The Architecture of Drama rehashes the predominant features of linear dramatic structure in ways that can be found in any one of the dozens of textbooks on script analysis. The book does, however, possess three useful features for theatre instructors. First, the language is nontechnical, which makes for a fast-paced read that would benefit beginning students. Second, the authors employ examples from popular films and plays with which many students are likely to be familiar (e.g., The Wizard of Oz and Macbeth). This facilitates a clearer understanding of the concepts. Third, the...