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Jul
10th
2017

Writing: Plotters and pantsers in other walks of life, and Commedia dell'Arte · 2:53am Jul 10th, 2017

To plot, or not to plot?

You know about the eternal feud friendly debates between plotters and pantsers, right?  Plotters make a plot outline or at least know how a story will end before they write it.  (Seat-of-the)-pantsers don't, saying they need the spontaneity to make characters come to life.

I have a book on management called Maestro: A surprising story about leading by listening.  It's a story of an executive learning how to manage from a great orchestra conductor.  Partly, it's about how the leader communicates a grand vision without micro-managing and in a way that allows the input of the players to influence the vision.

I just saw the title of another book, Organizational Jazz: Extraordinary performance through extraordinary leadership.  Presumably this is about an executive learning how to manage from a jazz band.  Presumably, this executive will not learn how to communicate a grand vision to his team, but how to train his team to work improvisationally.

It struck me that symphony orchestras are plotters, and jazz bands are pantsers.  (And, apparently, executives can be plotters or pantsers, too.)

This is a significant clue--that an entire genre of music may lend itself to either plotting or pantsing.

Computer programmers can also be plotters or pantsers.  A plotter makes a complete requirements specification, then does a top-down design.  Now, a coding pantser doesn't just sit down and start writing code at the beginning, stop when she reaches the end, and try to compile it.  (Well, I started out writing code that way, and now I've written enough code that sometimes I can do it that way, but only to show off.)  A code pantser might not write down a list of requirements, but might instead start coding up little object classes that he's pretty sure he's going to need, in a bottom-up approach.  A code-pantser will probably use an incremental design, first developing the simplest version of the program that can run, maybe with lots of functionality dummied or stubbed.

People in other occupations can also probably be plotters or pantsers.  Parents, military leaders, and pickup artists can all plan what they're going to do in detail, or wing it.  I don't know, but I'm going to guess that not only are different people more inclined toward one approach or the other, but also one approach or the other is better for different kinds of kids, battles, and women.



Commedia dell'Arte

For an example closer to writing, consider live theater.  A performance can rely on plotting or pantsing actors.  Shakespeare wrote down every word for every actor.  At the same time, the most-popular performances on the continent were Italian Commedia dell'Arte. These were improvisational plays (usually comedies) in which the actors would, without the aide of a writer, construct by mere permutation one variation on a standard plot structure using a standard cast of characters, maybe rehearse it once, then jump on stage and improvise.

In a basic commedia scenario, there is an initial conflict between the older generation and the younger generation about the choice of a marital partner.  Through machinations of the old and the young, carried out by their servants, the conflict is eliminated, predominantly through the actions of the servants.  Additional complications occur through the middle of the plot, but all is eventually settled, ends happily, and the young people get married.

--Dina Ternullo,  Characters & Scenarios of Early Commedia dell'Arte (2016, The Compleat Anachronist #172), p. 33

Typically, the story would involve two noble houses, and at least one young man and young woman from opposite houses who fall in love over the objections of both houses' patriarchs (C&SoECdA p. 38).  (The story would not involve love between people of the same gender or of different social classes.)

CdA operated in a time when the Italian Church and state were simultaneously weak and at odds with each other, and could be played off each other to avoid censorship and control.  The Church still forbade women to perform on stage, but the commedians just did it anyway, and this--having beautiful women perform in public--was one of their main appeals.  The improvisation was partly to evade censorship. The authorities couldn't censor a script that didn't exist.

The character of these two types of plays are radically different.  A Shakespeare play is tightly controlled; the actors, even in a farce, walk naturally and act somewhat like real people.  CdA, on the other hand, resembles a Keystone Kops show: rapid, out-of-control farce.  The pace is faster.  The actors exaggerate every line and every action wildly, stomping about on stage, shouting and being as emotional as possible.  The stomping and shouting of Commedia actors was one of the regular background noises at Pennsic.

The reason Shakespeare comedies are so bad is that Shakespeare was trying to adapt the Commedia for the English stage, as shown by the fact that many (most?) of his comedies are commedia scenarios using commedia characters, often set in an Italian city-state.  Commedia troupes were very popular, but weren't allowed to perform in England because they used female actors.

According to  Characters & Scenarios of Early Commedia dell'Arte, Twelfth Night, which I think I've mentioned two or five times is a terrible play, was based on a 1532 commedia erudita (early Commedia dell'Arte) named Gli inganniti.  But the plot of a Commedia is farcical, and only goes over right with a farcical, pantser performance, not with naturalistic acting and Shakespearian elevated speech.  Shakespeare was possibly the worst possible playwright to try to adapt the Commedia.

On the other hand, changing a Commedia plot into a tragedy gave him Romeo and Juliet.

So a big part of the answer to "Plot or pants?" is probably, "Depends what you want to write." I mean, obviously you want to plot a mystery novel. But some styles of story probably benefit from coming off the cuff. Say, a wacky absurdist comedy like The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which Douglas Adams wrote like a fanfiction, writing each episode after broadcasting the previous one.

(Okay, that's a lame and obvious conclusion. Mostly I wanted to tell you about Commedia dell'Arte. :twilightsmile:)

Comments ( 23 )

There is also a middle ground where you start writing with potential endpoints. You pass specific potential endpoints knowing there are others ahead as long as the story goes. I tend to think of them as exit ramps along the highway of the story.

I will say that after reading Stephen King's "On Writing", I've noticed a more definitive thing between plotting and pantsing, here.

King writes great thrillers, because even he doesn't know what's going to happen. However
1) Because he doesn't plan characters by roles, but rather by what's natural to his psyche, they tend to blur together book-to-book. So they feel very real and natural page to page, but they fill bingo-card-esque identical archetypes. Which is why I thought of him first, actually, when you were discussing the style of Commedia dell'Arte

2) His climaxes are visceral and gripping, but his endings are always lacklustre and unfulfilling, with some some works being exceptions (and others being egregious). The endings aren't planned, after all. He works best not knowing.

3) He doesn't write quotable lines. Having read his works top to bottom over my teen years, there's none I could quote for you now that weren't, in turn, him quoting poetry he liked.

I think it's an interesting kind of dissection on the strengths and weaknesses of an archetypical pantser at least.

And it's something I'd hazard as to why Commedia dell'Arte was more popular in its day, but Shakespeare is still performed to this one.

RBDash47
Site Blogger

All three of my completed stories here were "pantsers," and I think that worked well because A. they're short one-shots and B. they're more explorations of a mood or feeling rather than "real" stories/narratives -- and the one that hewed closest towards being a "real" narrative was also the least successful, which I think is interesting. Also interesting is that they required very little editing/drafting; one of them went from conception to publication in less than 12 hours, because it just worked.

By contrast, my in-progress plotted multi-chapter fic feels (currently, at least -- working on rewrites) more wooden, more rote, more like a list of actions than a seamless flow. And frankly it's been much less fun to write. Maybe I'm not cut out to be a plotter, but I don't see how to do a novel-length arc without a good idea of what the beginning, middle, and end will be before setting out.

I'm almost always a pantser as you can probably guess.

n a basic commedia scenario, there is an initial conflict between the older generation and the younger generation about the choice of a marital partner.  Through machinations of the old and the young, carried out by their servants, the conflict is eliminated, predominantly through the actions of the servants.  Additional complications occur through the middle of the plot, but all is eventually settled, ends happily, and the young people get married.

But isn't this precisely the work of a plotter? If you said, my story will have this general direction, it will go to this ending, and with this conflicts and key points, but I'll write the text between those points and conflicts in the moment, winging them, what are you, a plotter or a pantsers?

I remember for example, Kkat, saying that that was his method, something like knowhing the end, and vaguely what was going to happen overall in each chapter/arch, but then improvising the actual content of the chapter. This leave both to have space to inspiration, surprise and improvisation, but compressed in a general "planificated" direction.

Also I'm writing this some minutes before falling slept, so maybe it's pure shit. Nice choice of picture btw.

I've had an interest in commedia dell'arte for a long time... as a teenager I took a strangely in depth interest in the history of the sitcom, and through that I learned a smattering about the history of vulgar (as in common, rather than dirty) comedy and theater in general. Commedia dell'arte dovetailed nicely with my other hobbies like renaissance festival and D&D and cool looking masquerade-style masks. But the stock characters and their influence on comedy to this day are totally worth knowing about if you have any interest in writing or analyzing the subject.

If anyone's interested, a totally fictional account that gives a good overview with an interesting plot is Carnival of Saints by George A. Herman. I picked it up at a library booksale and really enjoyed it.

If I remember correctly, well-established, professional authors used to earn their rent money by writing detailed outlines and a couple of the first chapters, then approaching their usual editors to see if one of them would pay them a salary to flesh out those outlines into books. Deviations may or may not be expected, depending as much on the author as it did on the editor.

4597301 Interesting you brought up Kkat, because I was thinking the same thing. I remember he once called the process of writing Fallout: Equestria to be like playing "connect the dots". By that, he meant that he started out with a limited list of "dots" that the story had to hit, and that sequence of dots were planned, but everything that happened between the dots was made up on the spot during the writing process.

I wonder if plotting vs. pantsing just comes down to whether the seed of your story is a beginning or an ending.

Brandon Sanderson, for example, apparently starts with imagining a climactic ending scene. Then he plans his story to reach that ending, making a list of what needs to happen to reach that point, then another list on how to reach that point, etc.

On the other hand, if a story idea starts with a beginning - a world idea or a what-if scenario - with no end goal in mind, that's more the sort of thing you'd have to wander with to see where it goes.

4597301

But isn't this precisely the work of a plotter? If you said, my story will have this general direction, it will go to this ending, and with this conflicts and key points, but I'll write the text between those points and conflicts in the moment, winging them, what are you, a plotter or a pantsers?

I think the difference is that a lot of this ends up being intuitive, and still not specifically planned out. the storyteller knows to keep a consistent tone: if it's a comedy, gotta have a happy ending. and if the story begins with a conflict (can't get married), it'll usually end with resolving that (everyone gets married!). it's not quite plotting out the ending, so much as having the common sense not to go off in the wrong direction.

there's not really a hard line between the two categories. one person's careful planning could look like sloppy improvisation to someone else.

A Shakespeare play is tightly controlled

I have to object, briefly (tablet, leaving for work): Shakespeare plays are tightly controlled now, but don't mistake the imposition of late 19th century form upon the original for the thing itself. There are be virtually no stage directions in Shakespeare. The "elevated speech" and "natural movement" are present nowhere in the plays themselves, but are how they have come to be interpreted. Most of the humour is lost in translation to modern English, too. I have a video, which I'll link when I get home this evening, to show what I mean.

So a big part of the answer to "Plot or pants?" is probably, "Depends what you want to write." I mean, obviously you want to plot a mystery novel. But some styles of story probably benefit from coming off the cuff. Say, a wacky absurdist comedy like The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which Douglas Adams wrote like a fanfiction, writing each episode after broadcasting the previous one.

It seems worth mentioning that whenever I really like a story, even an episodic one, I would rather it end with a tidy conclusion than one that's just another chapter. This is true for adventure, slice of life, mystery, comedy, romance, and so on. That suggests to me that, regardless of how pantsy the story is in getting to the end, the end (if there is one) should make it look planned.

I have a theory that every climax ideally wavers on the question of what that plan should end up being, whether that wavering comes from shifting a pants to a plot or from threatening to catastrophically turn one plot into another.

4597405
This is exactly the experience of writing a ten-year webcomics with overplot, BTW.

4597449
What this fine fellow said.

Quality is subjective, of course, but it would be less accurate to say that Shakespeare's comedies are bad than it would be to say they've aged very poorly and that in the modern era they're staged and preformed in ways inconsistent with their materiel in its original context.

Preformed in the style they would have been at the Globe or on tour, Shakespeare's comedies are huge and absurd. There's constant stomping around the stage and especially a lot of mugging for the audience. There were big pauses for laugh laugh lines, which were preformed in such a way to let the audience know a laugh line was coming.

They're also riddled with at-the-time cutting-edge cultural references, in-jokes, and linguistic puns and rhymes that haven't aged well and don't at all scan in modern English pronunciation. Shakespeare is a lot more decipherable to us than Chaucer is (despite the fact that we're four hundred years removed from him and he's only two hundred from Chaucer) but the English accent at the time was way different and sounded more like a modern Irish accent.

Example: the word "hour" becomes rhymable, and punnable, with an entire different category of words when you pronounce it less like "our" and more like "or."

I've been in at least two productions of Midsummer Night's Dream, probably the most famous of the comedies. Everyone in them took them very seriously (as they should, because comedy is serious business) but, and I didn't realize this was a problem at the time, they were doing this in a way that sucked the comedy right out of them. They were staging and treating it like a drama, playing it utterly straight like we should be seriously concerned about these people and the magical mayhem they've gotten themselves into.

That's not a good way to stage the materiel! Midsummer Night's Dream is a bloody absurd farce filled with love potions and people with donkey's head and Greek people being absolute fucking idiots and tits to each other. It has a literal trickster god in it.

It needs to be staged and played like that. The guy playing Nick Bottom should be playing the donkey thing all the way to the hilt and beyond. The guy playing Puck needs to act like a vaudevillian pitchman and narrator in a screwball comedy. Instead he's often played straight-up sinister, like a supervillain, delivering his lines like he's Loki revealing how he's going to defeat the Avengers and take over earth.

You know what part of Midsummer Night's Dream holds up the best in a modern staging? The play-within-a-play, Pyramus and Thisbe. And that's because its purpose has all the subtlety of a bag of hammers, and that's a good thing in this instance. People staging the play know that Pyramus and Thisbe is supposed to be bad. That the people preforming are, within the context of the play, bad actors who are unintentionally turning a drama into a comedy by the absolute, unknowing patheticness of their performance. So the actors are given permission to absolutely go nuts with it, and it tends to get laughs even today because of that.

And this of course is without even getting into how cultural context has changed a lot and many things found hilarious by Shakespeare and his contemporaries are maybe not so hilarious or have different baggage attached to them now.

So are the comedies bad? Maybe. They were sure as hell thought of as being hilarious when they originally dropped. Broadly hilarious, too, at all levels of English society. (Remember, attending the theater at the time was popular entertainment, not an niche activity and expensive proposition for dedicated art-lovers like it is today.) I'm not above looking at popular entertainment and going "well, those people were idiots" but at the same time I have to consider context and the fact that certain kinds of comedy seem to just not age well.

If you write an ending near the beginning of a story, unless you spoil it by doing a flash-forward, be prepared to ditch that ending if the story doesn't end up going there.

I've tossed things that I have written because the story more naturally flowed in a different direction making the stuff I had partially written no longer valid.

4597545
4597449

Got the vid. It's well worth watching. They go through how the plays were originally spoken, then explore some of the jokes and asides that are completely lost in the translation to modern "Shakespearean" english.

I'm definitely a combination of the two, depending on what I'm writing. For most stories, I have the beginning, ending, and most of the major events laid out in advance; I see scenes in my head that I want to include, and then improvise the actual story that connects them. But there are a few stories that I'm working on where all I have are the characters and a rough framework, no idea where it's going to go.

Even when I do have everything solidly plotted out, the characters often have something to say that is different from what I originally intended. I've started writing stories with a solid idea of how I wanted things to go, only to have my characters take over and steer things off in a completely different direction entirely.

I also do not write linearly for the most part. I jump around a lot, mostly writing out specific scenes and bits of dialog, then going back and labouriously linking them together. There's no way that I could write a serial story the way that some people here seem to.

Oh, and anyone who says that Jazz is not plotted (sometimes very heavily plotted) has never really tried to learn it. While there is room for improvisation, particularly with Free Jazz, there is also a great deal of plotting involved. Many of the greats were big on musical theory and constructing elaborate instrumentations that sound a good deal more chaotic than they really are.

This reminds me of one of my favorite quotes, from one of my favorite films:

Hank: See, you can't rewrite, 'cause to rewrite is to deceive and lie, and you betray your own thoughts. To rethink the flow and the rhythm, the tumbling out of the words, is a betrayal, and it's a sin, Martin, it's a sin.

Martin: I don't accept your, uh, Catholic interpretation of my compulsive, uh, necessity to rewrite every single word at least a hundred times. Guilt is -- thanks -- Guilt is the key, not sin. Guilt re not writing the best that I can. Guilt re not, uh, considering everything from every possible angle. Balancing everything.

Hank: Well, how about guilt re censoring your best thoughts? Your most honest, primitive, real thoughts. Because that's what your laborious rewriting amounts to, Martin.

Martin: Is rewriting really censorship, Bill? Because I'm completely fucked if it is.

Bill Lee: Exterminate all rational thought. That is the conclusion I have come to.

4597545

This. A great deal of humour in Shakespeare is either highly topical, or very low humour. He had a profound predilection not only for elaborate and overblown wordplays and puns, but also for crude, scatalogical humour (his favorite thing appeared to be combining the two). Due to linguistic drift, it's often hard to recognize these if you're not familiar with the vocabulary and idiom of the time.

And the plays themselves are only codified as precisely as they are in our eyes; because we only have a very limited selection of his writings. At the time, there was often a great deal of improvisation involved. He would "test out" his material much as a modern stand-up comedian would do, and revise the texts of the plays to include the bits that "killed" and remove the stuff that "died". He was also under a great deal of censorship pressure from the monarchy. Being a secret Catholic, he threw in a lot of subtle (and occasionally less than subtle) jabs at and lampoons of Queen Liz and her government.

4597545 Those are very good points--I think Midsummer Night's Dream would work a lot better performed that way.

I still think it's not very funny, though.

Shakespeare took many or most of his comedy plots either from Commedia, or from the Roman Plautus, who copied them from the ancient Greek Diphilus. Diphilus wrote in the very old tradition of farce, insult humor, and cruel humor (eg hurting people is funny). Commedia is mostly farce and laughing at stupid people.

This is mostly what Shakespeare relies on, and mostly what people write in idealistic societies. When I say "idealistic", I have a very specific definition, but you can approximate it as medieval Christianity. In these cultures, all art must be propaganda. The purpose of art is to instruct, and what it does is show examples of good people and good behavior, and bad people and bad behavior. So what you get in comedy, in such a culture, is comedy where the humor comes from laughing at bad people, because they're stupid or because they get hurt. Satire is their primary form of humor, followed by farce. This is how comedy was in Greece until the middle of the Classical era. Same basic phenomenon in the Middle Ages and under Hitler and Stalin.

Idealism accidentally encourages people to be callous and to respond with laughter instead of sympathy when someone gets hurt, because it dehumanizes humans. It teaches that the humans we know and encounter aren't real humans. Real humans are an ideal model, like Achilles to the Greeks, Jesus to the Christians, or the various self-sacrificing workers and soldiers held up as ideals under Hitler, Stalin, and Mao. There is also a devaluing of individual life in idealistic societies; the collective and its eternal destination (Heaven, the Thousand Year Reich, the final, eternal communist society) are all that matters.

In the Hellenistic era, art lost its idealism; it was no longer bound to a set of spiritual beliefs it was obligated to respect. Then humor from insults and violence is less funny, individuals are more interesting, and art could do other things besides show you good examples and bad examples, and comedy became a study of the foibles of people who were neither evil nor incompetent. Only in a non-idealistic society can you have individualistic humor--a thing that one person says or does that is funny only when that person does it. That is what I consider humor. Shakespeare doesn't do it.

One of the main conclusions to the giant blog post I've been writing for 2 years is that there are roughly 2 opposing, contradictory views of what art is and what it's for, and these are characterized by idealistic Archaic Greece on one hand, and naturalistic Hellenistic Greece on the other. The differences are so complete that people from one of those cultural extremes cannot appreciate art from the other extreme, or even recognize it as art.

Baseline enlightenment liberal humanist worldview corresponds to the Hellenistic era. Shakespeare's sense of humor descends from more idealistic models. To me, it just isn't humor. Kicking people in the behind was never funny to me, not even when I was 4.

That still doesn't explain why I don't like Restoration comedies of manners...

4598085

Those are very good points--I think Midsummer Night's Dream would work a lot better performed that way.

I still think it's not very funny, though.

The thing is, neither do I... but I don't know if that's up to aesthetics or content.

Most of Shakespeare's humor is stuff I need to close-read or consult an analysis by an actual expert in the period to understand. (Not all of it; a lot of the physical bits still play, and there's a very occasional one-liner in there whose meaning is preserved. But overall.) Needing to pay very close attention and think hard isn't necessarily a barrier to jokes being funny, but it is if the joke wasn't designed along those lines. And that means that once I've puzzled out the joke it isn't actually hilarious anymore.

Example: there's a scene in Hamlet that, shorn of the flowery language, basically amounts to Hamlet repeatedly asking Guildenstern if he can play the pipes, and when Guldenstern demurs, Hamlet fires back with, "well that's pretty insulting, considering you thought you could play me and I'm a hell of a lot more complicated than pipes are, aren't I, bitch."

There are a million and one ways I could think of for writing and staging that precise joke that would make it land in a way that'd make me laugh and think it was funny. It's a solid joke, a pretty good pun with a sinister undertone. But I don't think the joke the way it is done in Hamlet is very funny, even when staged well (which, by the way, it almost never is, because the humorous asides in Shakespeares dramas and tragedies are never staged well) because the amount of effort it takes to drill down to it is incredibly exhausting. But it worked back in the day.

I know the joke could play. But it doesn't play to me because of the archaic container it is wrapped in. Is that an aesthetic objection or a substantive objection?

Now extend that to damn near everything he wrote. (Well, I say that. I am intimately familiar with... maybe ten of his plays? There's ones I've not even ever read.) That's my problem with his comedy. And it might very well be just that... my problem.

This is mostly what Shakespeare relies on, and mostly what people write in idealistic societies. When I say "idealistic", I have a very specific definition, but you can approximate it as medieval Christianity.

I'm unsure if this is a useful definition of "idealistic." It seems like there ought to already be a term for what you're describing that fits better and would engender less confusion, but I'm hardly an expert on the matter.

Only in a non-idealistic society can you have individualistic humor--a thing that one person says or does that is funny only when that person does it. That is what I consider humor. Shakespeare doesn't do it.

He does it sometimes; the Hamlet joke is an example of that, I'd submit. Oddly, that sort of more individualistic humor is far more common in his non-comedies.

It might have been interesting to see what Shakespeare produced if he weren't working in an era when producing the wrong sort of art could legitimately land you in prison. Well, I mean, I guess that can still happen today? If I wrote a play called "I Am Going To Murder My Neighbor Hal, Yes You Hal" and preformed it on my lawn every evening complete with a grisly murder of a Hal look-alike dummy, Hal would probably have a decent legal case against me on a number of grounds. But you know what I mean.

To me, it just isn't humor. Kicking people in the behind was never funny to me, not even when I was 4.

I would hesitate to make the pronouncement that basic slapstick isn't humor. You might argue that it isn't societally useful or morally upright humor, but laughing at the guy who just got kicked in the bum is a joke that goes back to pre-literate society and it still plays today. Maybe that says uncharitable things about the sense of humor of a lot of people, but I'm not sure that makes it not humor.

That still doesn't explain why I don't like Restoration comedies of manners...

I've been in a few of those! Back when I was like nineteen I was really great at playing the nominally upstanding but actually out to bone everything British nobleman who is a stock character in those things. My British accent is precisely fake enough to be ironic instead of just bad.

I have two things to say about those: they have some really, really brilliant writing and some appalling cultural and social mores.

4598178

Example: there's a scene in Hamlet that, shorn of the flowery language, basically amounts to Hamlet repeatedly asking Guildenstern if he can play the pipes, and when Guldenstern demurs, Hamlet fires back with, "well that's pretty insulting, considering you thought you could play me and I'm a hell of a lot more complicated than pipes are, aren't I, bitch."

Heh. I'm going to have to look for that.
<looks>
Oh, yeah. I would've remembered that, except I don't remember things. :derpytongue2:

But it worked back in the day.

I wonder how many times you had to watch the play, though. Did people watch a play just once, or come back every day until they got it?
Because Shakespeare's writing isn't archaic Elizabethan; it was meant to sound archaic in Elizabethan times, plus lots of word order inversions. It would be nearly as confusing to an Elizabethan as to us. Read Marlowe for comparison. And if you said it in iambic pentameter, without a breath between players, as it was apparently meant to be said, it would fly by so fast I wonder whether any Elizabethan, let alone the average Elizabethan, could catch the meaning of it all fast enough.

Re. "idealistic", it's quite similar to what Pitirim Sorokin called "ideational". That probably doesn't help, though. "Philosophical realism" may be the closest commonly-used term, but that's misleading because Marxists would strenously deny being philosophical realists. "Rationalism", in its old sense, is a subset of it. I constructed the concept by looking at lots of art, and noticing it seemed mostly to cluster toward one end or another of a dichotomy between realistic art (eg Hellenistic Greece, the 19th-century novel, some mid-19th century painting), and art that tries not to depict ordinary real things on earth, but ideal versions of them (eg classical Greece, Nazi art), or essences (primitive art, ancient Egyptian, Geometric & Archaic Greek, modern art). My "idealistic" ended up being almost the same as Sorokin's Ideational, because that's the same process he followed. I think he categorizes some art wrongly, though, because he doesn't want his team to be associated with it.

4597276 (Insert clever line about Super Trampoline and his pants here) :pinkiehappy:

4597449 4597545 I don't know why I gutted my Commedia post to write this turkey, but I omitted this part about most stages today being too big:

The Globe's stage, at 45 feet by 30 feet, was small by our standards, but verging on too large for Commedia.  The SCA usually performs Commedia on stages up to maybe 30 by 20 feet.

Commedia dell'arte troupe on a wagon in a town square, by Jan Miel, 1640

Commedia has a madcap pace that can't be easily sustained if actors have to cross a big stage to interact.  Today's modern stages are far too large for this type of comedy.

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