bending, stretching, and changing the rules
Watkins 1 Jessica Watkins Survey and Analysis Dr. Diane Brewer 20 October 2003 “Bending, Stretching, and CHANGING The Rules” Playwright Doug Stout once aptly noted, "If I give you a formula for how to select the best play or what makes a good play, someone will write a play violating that formula that will be better than anything in the formula. This is the purpose of theatre. To bend, stretch, and sometimes change all the rules.” Stout’s words are taken to heart when one compares Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman” or David Henry Hwang’s “M. Butterfly”, to Anton Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard” and Samuel Beckett’s “Endgame.” A frustrated reader knowledgeable on Aristotle’s The Poetics could feel that both of the latter are completely pointless and ridiculously terrible because of the lack of change in characters and plot. Unlike Miller and Hwang, playwrights Chekhov and Beckett forged their own paths and refused to follow the guidelines set out by Aristotle’s The Poetics. Yet, Chekhov and Beckett still managed to create thought provoking, entertaining plays in their own fashion, and by doing so, changed society‘s concept of what exactly it is that makes a complete play. Does a play have to be a tragedy and include a reversal, transformation, and recognition to have merit?