The post to start all posts

And so at St. Peter's Abbey, at the height of a hot, hot summer day, another blog springs from God's green earth, sustained by hope and fertilizer. My postings to The Opposite of Work will document my travails as a playwright, but I wouldn't rule out the occasional digression into semi-related territory.

The canola is high and the wifi ain't spry, and I'm making steady progress on Tulipomania, one of the two plays I'm currently working on.

I've been pondering a quote from Aristotle via the Playwrights Guild of Canada as I tear down and rebuild NOT's dramatic engine:

"If you string together a set of speeches expressive of character, and well finished in point and diction and thought, you will not produce the essential tragic effect nearly so well as with a play which, however deficient in these respects, yet has a plot and artistically constructed incidents." -Aristotle, Poetics

The balancing of Aristotle's elements and the achievement of the essential tragic (or in my case, comedic) effect will happily occupy me for the rest of my days. In the early drafting stage, my characters tend to sit around metaphorically, having coffee and rubbing the sleep from their eyes - not the most stirring of scenarios. It's up to me to clap my hands and get them up on their feet so they're actually doing something. And when my brain and Internet Explorer (remember, the wifi ain't spry) both start spinning their wheels, I just pack it in and go for a bike ride.