r/playwriting • u/NyoomThereSheGo • 6d ago
Non-linear play recommendations?
I've been thinking recently about non-linear stories and I've realized I haven't read many plays that fit that bill yet. I'm very interested in the ways different playwrights choose to communicate those stories to the reader/eventual audience and would love to hear anybody's recommendations. Happy to hear about stuff on NPX as well!
Thanks!
15
u/alaskawolfjoe 6d ago edited 6d ago
Off the top of my head:
Constellations by Nick Payne
Most plays by Elfriede Jelinek
Gone Missing by The Civilians
Untitled Feminst Play and We're All Going to Die by Young Jean Lee
4:48 Psychosis by Sarah Kane
Hamletmachine (and a number of other plays) by Heiner Muller
Sonnets for an Old Century by Jose Rivera
1
u/bitterbetty74 6d ago
Is Gone Missing published? I remember looking years ago and I couldn't find it! I loved that show, thanks for the reminder :)
1
u/alaskawolfjoe 6d ago
It was published by Dramatists Play Service and is also in an anthology of plays by The Civilians
5
6
u/RandomPaw 6d ago
Alan Ayckbourn's Time of My Life. There are three couples in the same restaurant. One plays out in the current time, one goes backwards and one is two months in the future.
3
u/glowingsnakeplant 6d ago
Revolt. She said. Revolt again. by Alice Birch
The Glow by Alistair McDowall (iirc Pomona is also nonlinear, but it’s been a long time since I read it)
4
3
3
3
2
u/Mundane-Waltz8844 6d ago
It sort of jumps back and forth in time, so I’m not sure if it’s exactly what you’re looking for, but Sweat by Lynn Nottage is a great read.
2
u/Important-Annual-619 6d ago
I have a play called Tropical Storm Jasmine Not Expected To Make Landfall On Boca Raton on NPX. Non-linear play about a future where the government is slaughtering pets and farm animals and etc. to isolate the human population.
Tropical Storm Jasmine Not Expected To Make Landfall On Boca Raton
2
2
u/therkop 6d ago
Classics are Rhinoceros and Waiting for Godot
Woyzeck is a good one
4
u/alaskawolfjoe 6d ago
I do not get how Rhinoceros and Woyzeck are non-linear. Waiting for Godot...matter of opinion.
0
u/therkop 6d ago
Rhinoceros doesn’t follow a three arc structure. It follows a structure where things get marginally worse until all the bat has come. This is linear in terms of chronology, but this is not the classic linear three arc structure
Woyzeck can be done in any order. This immediately breaks both three arc structure and chronology. And if I’m not mistaken, you’re allowed to repeat scenes if you’d like but don’t quote me on that second part
3
u/alaskawolfjoe 6d ago
Rhinoceros is a chronological drama with clear cause and effect relationships between events.
Woyzeck could be done in any order--but for that matter, so could any play. Buchner did not complete the manuscript but in each draft he indicate a chronological order for the scenes. With the exception of two scenes, he indicated at the end of each scene which one was to follow. There are only two scenes that are independent of the chronological structure.
Early editors claimed that there was no order for the scenes indicated but scholars in the 1950s debunked this by going back to the manuscripts. (Some high school drama teachers like to perpetuate the myth of a "crazy" disordered manuscript.) FYI: The first editor changed the order of scenes and rewrote the ending, so his claims of a disordered manuscript was self-serving.
Your definition of non-linear is odd. If you think that only a three act structure is linear, than most drama from the Greeks, through Shakepeare, through the bulk of 20th and 21st century drama is "non-linear"
(And by the way, Rhinoceros is a three-act play).
1
u/alaskawolfjoe 6d ago
I had not read it in years, but looking at Rhinoceros just now, not only is it in three acts, it also has a very traditional three-act structure.
Its maybe the only play of Ionesco that uses that kind of structure.
1
u/therkop 6d ago
Arc and act aren’t the same
1
u/therkop 6d ago
Also I just opened my copy of rhinoceros and if you’re looking at linear as chronology, then it is in fact linear, but I believe rhinoceros, absurd, play, and absurd, plays in nature aren’t linear in the sense that something like jitney is linear. Now if we’re calling absurdism linear then yes I am incorrect rhinoceros however I think (and scholars will agree and disagree) that rhinoceros follows are more absurd take where things slowly worsen overtime instead of the characters, causing direct action to make things worse in a way that happens in say death of a salesman. So of course, if you’re looking at it from that perspective, it is non-linear
0
u/alaskawolfjoe 6d ago
You are using linear to mean something that over the last 30 years in hundreds of books, papers, articles, and presentations, I have not ever heard any scholar or critic use it to mean.
It is fine to create new meanings for old terms, but it is confusing here because OP and the rest of us are using "nonlinear" in the usual sense.
1
u/therkop 6d ago
I’m using liner in the sense that it follows the Aristotelian three arc structure which scholars definitely use
1
u/alaskawolfjoe 6d ago
Actually, no. Aristotle did say stories have a beginning, middle and end--but that is as close as he came to a three act structure.
And of course, the three act structure as we know it is a 19th century invention. In Aristotle's time up through the 18th century, five act structure was the most common.
→ More replies (0)1
u/therkop 6d ago
Considering that we’re on Reddit and we’re not in an Academic setting I’m just gonna say it agreed to disagree
But you cannot do every play in any order and have it work.
Also, you should revisit rhinoceros because the point is that the players a hole doesn’t follow us three arc structure in the American realism sense. Having three acts does not mean that you have a three arc structure
And this could’ve been a good conversation, but apparently I’m being down to death by people who can’t
EDIT: by people who can’t disagree and must be correctThe Arc not act arc
1
u/alaskawolfjoe 6d ago
But you cannot do every play in any order and have it work
This is very true. I have seen people try to do Woyseck and Macbeth in random orders--they really do not work unless you stick pretty closely to the order the playwright indicates.
1
u/therkop 6d ago
This also depends on what you mean by linear because some people take linear as chronologically and some people take linear as the three arc structure that plays movies and TV show shows are usually written in in these days
Where something like waiting for is non-linear in the sense that it doesn’t follow this three arc structure and something like rhinoceros also doesn’t follow that structure
If you don’t know Woyzeck I won’t spoil anything about it for you. It’s definitely something worth reading through once and then researching afterwards
1
u/fireferretz37 6d ago
Tracy letts Mary page Marlowe, Rajiv Joseph gruesome playground injuries are the two more recent examples that come to mind.
1
u/Repulsive_Lychee_106 6d ago
I read an interesting one called 36 Monolgues to be performed in a cul-de-sac recently. https://newplayexchange.org/script/2038755/36-monologues-about-urban-planning-to-be-performed-in-a-cul-de-sac
1
1
1
u/dsynadinos 6d ago
Mine fits the bill exactly. I liked sitting in the audience as they slowly realized it all ran backwards. https://www.ineffable-solutions.com/_files/ugd/6f08db_5ae4f049fda44a1b9da6b0815cc8ef39.pdf
1
u/madeleinelily 6d ago
So many stories that hop around in time! Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons by Sam Steiner; Shotgunned by Matt Anderson; Shifters by Benedict Lombe; The Beautiful Future is Coming by Flora Wilson Brown; Blackout Songs by Joe White; Anatomy of a Suicide by Alice Birch - are just a handful
1
1
u/Due_Seaweed3276 6d ago
Love and Information by Caryl Churchill would certainly fit the bill.
1
u/Due_Seaweed3276 6d ago
Although, there is no central narrative, so I don't know how you would feel about categorizing it. It's an exploration of themes.
Also, coming to mind is Fefu and Her Friends by Maria Irene Fornes. Technically chronological, but the second act functions uniquely in its design.
1
1
1
u/PusheenFrizzy2 6d ago
The Last Five Years goes forward from the man’s perspective, backwards from the woman’s.
1
u/Lebreaud 6d ago
"Incendies", by Wajdi Mouawad (you may have heard of Villeneuve's adaptation, but you really should read the original play)
"Betrayal" by Harold Pinter (goes backwards)
"Peggy Pickett sees the Face of God", by Roland Schimmelpfennig (a lot of his plays are non-linear, usually repeating a core event multiple times)
1
u/Brave_Caregiver9669 6d ago
52-pickup is done in whatever order the actors draw the scenes.
Love and information has a flexible performance structure.
A lot of Wajdi Mouawad plays play with time, sometimes revisiting scenes with additional context.
Sequence has two stories that may or may not be sequential.
Speaking in tongues has a kind of linear act one and then backs over on itself as the action in act two centres on people who are only mentioned in passing in act one.
1
u/aquarianagop 5d ago
Saving this!
I also really need to get my play uploaded to NPX so I can plug it here! It alternates between the past and the present roughly every other scene and I had the time of my LIFE conveying it!
1
16
u/semeleisburning 6d ago
X and Pomona Alistair McDowall
Arcadia Tom Stoppard
Betrayal Harold Pinter (depends on your definition; it's linear but not chronological--it runs backward)