THEA 3700 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Status Quo
Document Summary
Action: an event is anything that happens, one event causes another event; 2 events = 1 action, actions are a play"s primary building blocks. Triggers and heaps: each action = 2 events. Second event = heap: each heap becomes the next action"s trigger, sometimes a trigger has more than one heap. Creates 2 lines of action that can be followed: do not skip steps! If you can"t find a heap, try again! It"s either an error in your reading or an error in the writing of the play: action analysis tracing the triggers and heaps. But do it backwards: while reading a play regularly, there seem to be infinite possibilities as to what could happen. However, we know the destiny of the play is already determined: if we know what the heap before us is, the trigger could be unclear, the best way to trace the actions is to read the play backwards.
