Based on my effort to understand dramaturgy as principles rather than forms and my experience from creating two theater performances, developed and performed without a script, written or virtual, but with the principled dramaturgy along with devising and improv-techniques, I'm gradually getting ready to talk about sandbox-dramaturgy.
Often complexity is considered an essential quality in art. This is obviously true, but often misunderstood. An incomprehensible piece of art is not necessarily complex, but perhaps just meaningless on every level, hiding behind avant-garde rhetorics. A case of the emperors new clothes.
Science has some very simple definitions of complexity, which could or even should be applied in the understanding of art. Put simply, complexity arises when enough elements within the borders of a system are able to interact and influence each other. And enough elements are quite many, like every word, line, visual, sound etc. in a film. They all need to have connections. They need to operate within the boundaries of a system, or else their connections are not valid, but accidental and not contributing to the accumulation of complexity.
In art this creates the effect that fx. a play can be interpreted in many ways in new performances, while still remaining true to the original text. There are many connections to be made validly within the system of the play, and within its context of the larger system of the theater as an art form, and the even larger system of the human experience.
This is also why art will always be most exciting on the crossroads of the avant-garde; the formulation of new system rules; and the tradition; the established golden system rules which refer to the accumulated system experience of both the art form and human experience. If you leave the tradition completely behind, there are not really any system boundaries, and then no complexity. If you stay completely inside traditional rules, the connections of elements inside the system are bereft of value, as they have all been understood and explored long ago, and thus no real interaction and influence happens between the elements.
My sandbox dramaturgy is an attempt to define tools needed to create the framework for a live theater performance, which is both consistent and satisfying dramatically and yet never repeats itself, but will be different in every performance.
The sandbox-dramaturgy consist of building system boundaries for a dramatic universe, using simple, understandable dramatic tools, like place, time and basic conflict and theme. This is the sandbox. Then it needs to be filled with sand by using the dramatic principles to create elements inside the system; primarily the characters, but also visual, text and other elements, which can be brought into play inside the system boundaries. And actually, if this is for a theater performance, you also need a steady inflow of new elements. Which can both come from the audience, the performers/creators and/or any other other outside source.
This creates a performance, where complexity emerges by itself, which will be constantly renewed in new performances, by meeting a new audience, by accumulating experience, redefining rules as the old ones fades in substantial meaning, but still remaining the same system, exploring the same dramatic territory.
This kind of work is hugely fascinating as a scriptwriter/director, and as you let go of your control of the detail and every moment, you'll discover much more about what drama is and can do. Experiences which can also be brought into more traditional ways of creating drama.
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