Dramatic Foundations - Computers as Theatre - page 54

What Is Style?
We know from satire that a play (or song or fi lm) can represent the same actions
repeatedly, but with a different style, leading to large differences in the meaning
that people derive from the piece. One of my favorite plays at the Renaissance Faire,
performed by an excellent company called Sound & Fury TM , is “Testacles and Ye Sack
of Rome.” Parental Guidance is recom-
mended. While not cleaving exactly to
any particular text, the play takes the
Odyssey as its spine, performed by be-
wigged and silly fellows in such a way as
to be hilarious and quite naughty. This is
an extreme example that goes some-
what beyond the notion of style, but I
mention it here to make the point that
it is not simply the actions represented,
but also how they are represented that
distinguishes one play from another.
“Style” is not an Aristotelean concept, but it can be defi ned in Aristotelean
terms as the intersection between the “means” and the “manner” of a represen-
tation. The “means” include primarily music (pattern) and diction (language). In
theatre, the actors and director strongly infl uence the “manner” of the represen-
tation. Manner includes things like gesture, posture, tone of voice, and cultural
infl uences of the time. Style is also manifest in costume and scene design—ele-
ments of spectacle that are formulated with a certain point of view and within a
particular cultural context.
Usually, the style of a production will be dictated by the cultural context of
the time in which the play was written. We've all seen such horrors as Hamlet on
the Basketball Court or some such stylistic hack that doesn't work because it's fun-
damentally goofy. In contrast, the 2000 fi lm Hamlet directed by Michael Almereyda
starring Ethan Hawke does a fairly persuasive job of resetting the action of the play
in contemporary New York City. Likewise, Franco Zeferreli's 1968 fi lm of Romeo and
Juliet , set in contemporary Los Angeles, seems neither improbable nor out of place.
In my experience, only the strongest, most organic dramatic action can stand up to
being culturally uprooted.

Sound & Fury in performance at the Northern
California Renaissance Faire. Photo by Quinn
Dombrowski (CC BY-SA).