Yesterday I happened to read a fantastic book about teaching Shakespeare to children [1], and it was clear to me that the author had a passion for drama. This is a passion that is surprisingly common, if our general culture can be well understood. Whether one is a religious viewer of dramatic television (the way some of my female coworkers talk about shows like Orange Is The New Black) or soap operas, or whether one prefers reality television with its carefully edited portrayals of real life competitions, or whether one likes sports or reads the gossip rags in the grocery aisle, or one participates in gossip about friends and acquaintances, our lives are filled with drama. There are many ways this passion for drama can manifest itself in life, but it is a passion that many people share and that shows itself in our lives in a variety of ways.

I do not wish to condemn or criticize the love of drama itself, which would be immensely critical at any rate, since even more than most people I have a passion for drama. My passion for drama, for example, is at the extent where I read and write about drama regularly in a variety of ways. How many ways? Let us count them. First, let us examine the fact that I go out of my way to read and comment on plays, drama that has been translated from other languages and that is centuries old [2]. It is one thing to have a passion for contemporary drama, but an entirely different order of magnitude to have a passion for drama that hardly anyone else remembers anymore. Then there is the passion for writing drama. I have written more than sixty plays, most of them between the ages of 22 and 25, plays that dealt with subjects of history, romance, death, divorce, child abuse, and other serious matters, some of them written in poetic language, including a couple of musicals. Again, this is far from the normal pattern of people and takes drama to the next level. We won’t even talk about my blogs. No drama to see there.

So, clearly I share the same passion for drama that everyone else does, though (as usual) in eccentric or unusual ways. Why do we even have a passion for drama in the first place, though? Of what benefit or use for such a thing? For one, it would appear as if our passion for drama is related to the tendency of human beings to seek narrativity in life. We remember stories better than we remember facts, and so if facts are to endure they must form part of a larger context. We see this tendency in the fact that historical movies are often immensely popular (well, except for Gods & Generals, but the Lost Cause myth of the Confederacy doesn’t make for very skilled or worthwhile drama, to be sure) but students complain about having to remember dates and times in history while reading books like Game of Thrones for fun, where one gets to read about the bloody dynastic drama of fictional worlds. Real life is just as full of drama, if we know where and how to look for it.

Our passion for drama also appears to exist as a way of avoiding boredom and tedium. Most people get frustrated by everything being the same and nothing exciting happening, and those who are more curious or inquisitive will tend to poke and fuss at situations in order to do something or to make something happen. This is not often particularly wise behavior, but wisdom seldom enters into the equation. Knowing that I am the sort of person to poke at things, I do what I can to keep myself from boredom. Stillness is not a particularly easy thing, as enforced rest and solitude do not tend to work well with my state of mind. As a result I write a lot, I read a lot, I like spending time in conversation with others where there is a shared appreciation of life, and I make projects for myself just to have something productive and useful to do, lest I create the sort of drama that I am ill-prepared to deal with, as if that does not happen well enough inadvertently as it is.

[1] https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2014/06/21/book-review-how-to-teach-your-children-shakespeare/

[2] See, for example:

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2014/03/18/ghosts-of-the-taira-the-relationship-between-the-wars-of-the-gempei-and-the-warrior-ghost-noh-dramas/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2010/11/19/contested-legitimacy-in-lope-de-vegas-fuente-ovejuna/