"Three boys appear before the third trumpet sounds to debate who will speak the prologue . . . There is also a Stoppardian twist, since the boys decide initially to settle the dispute by drawing straws--what exactly is a chance event on stage?"
One of the blog recommendations we received today was to break articles apart and pull out quotes or single ideas to help digest and integrate them into our own process. This idea is quite a large leap from a small quote in the Witmore article.
Witmore brings up the possibility of a random event onstage that would dramatically effect the outcome of the stage, just as the presence of child actors does in a less localized way. This made me think of a series of gimmicky, ridiculous books that I enjoyed very much in elementary school called Choose Your Own Adventure. Maybe some of you encountered these literary gems at some point in your life as well. Each book presents a basic scenario in which the hero is the reader, addressed in the second person. You are the inventor of a supercomputer, you are making first contact with an alien race, you are the recipient of a magically fast bicycle. At the end of each scene, you are presented with a choice, and you flip to the page number where the story of your choice continues.
This kind of device is employed in a more sophisticated way in games like Mass Effect, where the player as protagonist makes choices that determine the outcome of the game. The choices presented in games like these are increasingly becoming difficult, gray-area problems rather than simple good-and-evil options.
All this makes me wonder if a device like this could be employed on a stage. Introducing a truly random event at key moments in the play could result in infinite versions of the same scenario, and it would highlight the fact that each performance is unique and unrepeatable, dependent on the actors, crew, audience, and whims of nature and technology. It would require a flexibility on the part of the performers that goes beyond script and would become a kind of semi-scripted improv. Bring the audience in on the decisions or random events that affect the play and they become active participants in the drama.
I don't know if it would be possible to create a play like this, or if the resulting creation could even be called a play, but it might be a fruitful experiment in chance events on stage. At the very least, it would bring back memories of those Choose Your Own Adventure books.
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