Aristotle and Rivera in Practice: "An Indiscretion" and Shift"

Agreeing with Chandler, I also have some issues with Aristotle's requirements for good plays. He stated that the beginning of a play doesn't necessarily need something before it, but definitely needs to leave room for events after. Although I agree with the latter, I think that plays are much more engaging when conflicts have arisen before the play has even begun. Today in class, we discussed how plays are most efficient and effective when they're of a snapshot of a story, not necessarily the entire duration of one.

The key is to shave off the ends of the story that are the least interesting or necessary. I don't think Aristotle's directives for plays cover this interesting and appealing concept. Frankly, I think his requirements for beginnings, middles, and ends, are extremely obvious and basic.

However, I do think that the playwrights of "An Indiscretion" and "Shift" were both extremely successful in giving views that alluring snapshot. "An Indiscretion" opens with a wife visiting her husband in prison, and ends in the same place. However, the wife's mindset is revealed from the beginning to the end; initially she seems genuinely concerned for her husband's political situation, but by the end it has become apparent that she's purely just following familial obligations, disregarding her own happiness. Just from one conversation, viewers can vividly picture both the wife's life and the husband's life before and after the snapshot they were given.

The play "Shift" gives the audience a similar effect. With the only two characters tensely laying in their apartment, it is clear in the very opening that they have just fought. The audience is expected to jump into the story, a tactic that Aristotle didn't specifically address. By the end of the play, one of the characters, Dane, is in an extremely different place than he was at the beginning of the snapshot: he is ready to leave New York City. Although the transformation in "Shift" is more physical than the one in "An Indiscretion," both leave audience members imagining the rest story after the play is over.

The endings of the two plays we read in class made me hate Aristotle's stark, definitions for "beginnings" and "ends". The best plays I've seen are the ones that leave me tense afterwards, internally begging for a sequel so I don't have to do the imagining myself. I am certainly not in agreement with anyone who thinks that any good play can have an ending that has something before it but not after.

Rivera's playwriting manifesto addressed more interesting facets of plays, which both of the plays we read today possessed. Both plays we read were "mysterious, not confusing," (3). Also, both plays wanted to "show something". "An Indiscretion" and "Shift" both show viewers how fleeting connections with other people can be, as well as how harsh our current world is.

I think Rivera's doctrine of playwriting is more specific and relevant when I think about the two plays we read in class today. Both of them were a lot less standard than what I usually see, and that makes them both extremely memorable.