one hundred essays I don't have time to write*
*Please consider these essays as starting points. Consider them starting points for someone else to finish.
7. Drama is conflict?
I think there has never been a more misunderstood phrase than drama is conflict, conflict is drama. Could it be that there is occasionally drama in a strange unexpected proliferation of assent?
Instead of thinking of conflict, I like to think of dialectic, a need for opposites and contrasts, in the same way that a painting might have contrast, whereas a painting wouldn’t necessarily need large family fights and mud-slinging. Of course, watching people insulting other people is entertaining to watch as is watching arm-wrestling etc. But I’m not sure that it’s necessary to the “drama”—for a drama is also a spectacle, a thing of interest, a thing happening, an event eventing, which is not necessarily a thing fighting. Though fighting can certainly be dramatic, it is not a necessary precondition to the dramatic.
The proliferation of assent leads to transformation whereas conflict (of a non-dialectical kind) leads to dramatic grid-lock. The first law of improvising is to say yes, but the first law of playwriting is to say no. Why?