Circularity in DRAMA.

CIRCULAR REASONING is intrinsic to the work of an artist. The artist must juggle multiple variables and establish their constancy and interdependence through their inter-penetration, as in the tying of a knot or the assemblage of a house of cards. (Though of course in the latter example there is some sort of hierarchy.) Each causal reasoning is in fact a way of expressing a possibility or set of possibilities. All of these will be circular, for the system interpenetrates its self.

1.       A character does not have an epiphany by Act V.

2.       The character must therefore have an epiphany by Act IV.

3.       The character’s epiphany fails, resulting in bitterness.

4.       The bitterness ensures to us that no further epiphanies can succeed.

5.       [The] character does not have an epiphany by Act V.

This can be summed up:

1.       Because she does not have an epiphany she is bitter.

2.       Because she is bitter she does not have an epiphany.

a.       We know that the epiphany failed, resulting in bitterness.

b.      This means that the epiphany cannot happen in Act IV.

This can be reversed:

1.       A character is established as bitter by Act V.

2.       As the result of this bitterness we know that the character did NOT have an epiphany by Act IV.

3.       If the character did not have an epiphany by Act IV then the character must have an epiphany by Act V.

4.       The epiphany is known to clear away bitterness.

5.       The character must be bitter by Act V.

The second narrative under-scores the significance of the epiphany, as well as the character. The first narrative STRESSES the bitterness of the character by the fact that she was un-phased by the “epiphany”. Thus it DE-STRESSES the significance OF the “epiphany”. The second narrative, by contrast, refuses even to acknowledge the failed EPIPHANY *as* an epiphany, thus implicitly STRESSING the significance of what an Epiphany is SUPPOSED TO DO whilst DE-STRESSING the integrity of the character, whose bitterness is seen to be the result of a failed epiphany. The bitterness is only significant in that it DEFINES what the epiphany IS.

So it is that the Artist decides upon a constant: the bitterness, and must conclude which cycle of inter-dependence is most accommodating to both this constant and its corollary, the variable of the EPIPHANY that is supposed to eradicate it. And naturally the conclusion is to have the epiphany FOLLOW the bitterness. Yet in explaining this second-hand we stumble upon the problem that all descriptions of the inter-play of these two forces, just like the inter-play its self as the Artist juggles the ideas prior to writing them and after doing so in explaining them, will be circular.

Dm.A.A.

[Dedicated to A.L.McLeod.]