When the writer intends to write a new play, he finds himself from the beginning a busy thinking between the idea of theatrical text and its subject. The topic may be preceded by the basic idea of the play, and the idea may advance on the topic from which he will emerge. It is not important that one of them precedes the other during the preparation of a theatrical text. The idea may advance on the topic or vice versa, but the artistic reality indicates that one of the two is generated from the other.
In his book “The Art of the Theatrical”, which includes a group of lectures delivered by Ali Ahmed Bakthir at the Institute of High Arab Studies, the writer benefits from his basic theatrical experiences and its topics. Before we offer a lot of an analysis of this relationship, it is important for us to note the importance of the fundamental idea of the theatrical work intended to be accomplished, as it determines the purpose of the play without the need to resort to the way of preaching and guidance to highlight it, but the successful theatrical theatrical seeing it seeks to develop his basic idea in an indirect artistic style. The successful play must adopt one basic idea, as it is not permissible to address a secondary idea unless the author sees that it enhances and deepens the basic idea, as he was able with dramatic ingenuity to achieve this.
We return to the experience of Professor Ali Ahmed Bakthir in dealing with the idea and the topic, to know from him that the theatrical idea often preceded the topic. And we see him discussing in this regard with experimental cases that were going through, namely:
- The playwright may find a subject of a former writer, so he borrows his story or novel, which is consistent with his prejudices, and he will play her play. This trend does not negate the writer’s originality and his ability to theatrical authorship. Rather, it can show his dramatic ingenuity in parallel to the pseudonym or outperforming it.
- The topic may precede the theatrical idea of the writer, as the theatrical author shall be a topic, personality or position, and what happens in his hands is studied until the basic idea is generated.
- The writer may suffer from a special or public psychological crisis that finds an outlet in a theatrical work in which the topic overlaps the idea. In the beginning, the writer is not aware of his topic or idea, and with the escalation and rumination of his psychological crisis, he finds himself in front of a clear topic that involves a basic idea.
Choose theatrical topic
In order for the playwright to be successful in choosing the appropriate topic for his own idea, it is necessary to resort to two objective conditions, which are the desire for the methods of the subject, and the freedom to select it from several topics that it can occur to him.
When choosing the appropriate topic, the writer must emphasize all his life experience and fertile imagination, in order to be able to transfer the photographic reality to the artistic reality with all its events, people and dramatic atmosphere. It is better for the writer here to be the owner of a principle or a life view based on a philosophy in dealing with the reality of human life. When he adopts special ideas he calls for, he has a rush towards a hot and distinctive vital topic, running other than what the writer used to.
In order for the theatrical author to mate his idea and his subject warmly and honestly, away from fabrication and cost, he must be interacting with his environment and society, adopting the problems, issues, individual and association concerns, not neglected to the issues of his country and nation. From the premise of this interaction and adoption, who are committed, good ideas and chunted topics stem.
The theatrical writer has complete freedom in ways of any aspect of political, social and economic life, as he does not restrict himself to the three theatrical units (time, place, subject), so he can bring together the East and West, between the present, the past and the future, and between the aspects of life combined, but without deviating from the unity of the subject and the unity of the dramatic character, which is the front of the front of the theatrical action.
Theatrical topic unit
While the theatrical critic Aardis Nicole stresses the importance of the theatrical idea, saying that “the play is the art of expressing ideas for life in a dramatic image that makes this expression possible to clarify through actors”, we see at the same time he goes to demand the separation of the theatrical issue unit from the units of time and space, because of the importance of this in his view. He sees the necessity of preserving the unity of the subject in the serious play, so it is not permissible for him to add a secondary topic to the original topic so that the secondary topic does not account for the public’s interest, which istes the purpose of the play and absent its basic idea.
In addition, the subject unit must be distinguished by one dramatic character, so the author does not combine or intermarry between two contradictory colors of drama, such as confusing the tragedy and the cheerful in one theatrical scene, especially if this confusion comes arbitrary and unjustified confusion and without psychological consistency. The mixing between the funny and the crying in the case of one play remains a method that contradicts the emotional state of the viewer.
In fact, we find most of the theatrical critics who have been tending for several centuries to a priority that achieves the unity of theatrical character in one play with one subject, so they call for the necessity of separating the comedy from tragedy in the same play that must be distinguished by one dramatic color. This Spanish playwright (Dlu de Deja) in 1609 insists that it is not permissible to mix the raising of the tragedy and the decline in the mortar, which he described as the sacrifice. As for Edison, he commented at the beginning of the 18th century on what was called tragedy, saying: “It is one of the most malicious dramatic inventions that took place in the imagination of a poet.”
On the other hand, we find Deriden, Dr. Johnson, and Victor Hugo, bypassing the famous Edison saying, and they are confronted to defend the phenomenon of mixing the comedy element and the tragic element in the same theatrical text, relying on the nature of human life and the reality of life full of crying and laughing together.
The bottom line in this regard, the issue is not here for the theatrical writer to mix the tragedy with a cheerful or not mix in one theatrical work, but the dramatic issue here lies in his artistic ability and dramatic ingenuity in preserving the unity of the theatrical topic, without which he cannot highlight his targeted theatrical idea and express it the most effective expression that is appreciated and admired by the audience.
On our return to the dialectic of the relationship between the idea and the subject, it must be noted that there are many ideas that the theatrical writer picks up from the reality of daily life, or it comes to his mind when he uses memory. And the writer with knowledge and experience is not confused from one idea to another, as he quickly received one of the ideas is a passion for himself, and she is accounted for with his interest, and it leads to a topic or influential position that he passed or witnessed to other people, so he worried him and still worries him and disappointed him, so he generates a strong and honest emotion to address this issue and address his dramatic by evoking the characters and highlighting the event by managing the conflict until he reaches the conflict.
Perhaps the most powerful, most effective and influential plays in the audience, that the play in which the author appears during his presentation of the subject, is angry, and protested against silence on the problem resulting from its subject and its negative effects, as if he calls the audience to participate in thinking about the matter and trying to search for the solution during their follow -up the development of the event and the growing dialogue, which takes place between the characters that are often contradictory positions and opinions.
And when the theatrical writer is very enthusiastic to raise his topic and adopt his strongly, he adds to him his imagination what he crys and strengthens his dramatic presence, so he is more clear and attractive to stir interest. This is the theater message in society, and the educational task that the successful theatrical writer aspires.
