Stop building castles in the sand

People who have worked with me, know I'm often using the sandpile-metaphor in relation to the creative process or to the script or performance itself. Especially as a correction of perception when people get stuck, get anxious or get too eager to determine the outcome. This metaphor comes from the scientific experiment made by Per Bak in 1987, which was the first discovery of self-organizing criticality in a complex system. In my eyes this is one of the later years major breakthroughs in science, as it has far greater implications on our perception of reality than most are aware of. When I encountered this research in 2004 through two books, Per Bak's "How Nature Works" and the more popular scientific "Ubiquity" by Mark Buchanan, it radically changed my approach to my work in the dramatic arts. Or it gave me the solid foundation to implement, what I had already been toiling with the last four years. It delivered the framework of understanding, which confirmed many of my own notions about dramaturgy, drama and the creative process.

Ordinary physics and much of our modern way of thinking rely on a Newtonian understanding of the world. The cause and effect; the idea, that if we know enough about a system, we can control it. The sandpile experiment was an extremely simple experiment, which would undermine the Newtonian paradigm. Under the Newtonian world view, the world, and within it, the human beings, are all like a machine. Know enough about the machine, and you can master it. This realisation freed us from religion and superstition; allowed our culture to find belief in ourselves to shape our destiny, instead of a remote God. That was great and much needed, but the other truth, the part of the world, which doesn't operate like a machine, has been left to superstition and the irrational.

In dramaturgy the Newtonian outlook gradually helped us develop the many models for how a play or film script works. They are all linear, they all rely on a cause-and-effect-thinking. They're all driven by the idea of a perfect form. And they fitted perfectly with the Hollywood-movie-making-machine's control-freak-mind-set.
As I read the two books about our complex world, mentioned above, I had reached a point where I understood the models, but was beginning to doubt they could be anything but a superficial truth. I was looking for the DNA behind the outer forms, thinking that the dramaturgic models had to be like the drawings the early biology-researchers, who went out into the world and drew pictures of how an oak leaf looked, or should look, ignoring the fact, that all leafs look very different, even though there are basic similarities. Later with the discovery of DNA biology found the simple code, which gives rise the multitude of forms.

So back in 1987 Per Bak, Chao Tang and Kurt Wiesenfeld made the sandpile experiment, which is a computer simulation of the creation of a sandpile. One by one grains of sand fall from above to a flat surface. In the beginning everything that happens can be predicted (by laws of gravity etc), but eventually as a pile forms, and the slopes of the pile becomes so steep, that avalanches can occur, what was a predictable, newtonian system changes into an unpredictable, complex system. All the grains of sand in the pile are in essence connected. A new grain of sand landing on the slopes can send a multiplying chain reaction throughout the pile and trigger avalanches – but if, when, how many or how big is impossible to predict. A Newtonian mind might say; "Well, it's only a matter of knowing all the interactions in the pile", but it isn't – what Per Bak proved that day in '87, was that when a system becomes complex, it is also unpredictable and thereby uncontrollable.

It shouldn't really come as a surprise to anyone who lives in reality. We know inherently that life is unpredictable, we see the meteorologists get it wrong again and again, we see the stock markets crash, revolutions spring up when least expected, earth quakes happen – all events that not only seem unpredictable, but which Per Bak proved actually are so. And so is the human system in itself, and so is the creative process.

This is what I want you to take away from the lesson of the sandpile – you can't control it, so stop trying – you can't predict the outcome, so stop trying – instead what you can do, is to make sure the grains of sand land in a pile – where they'll pile up, and eventually avalanches will occur – which in this metaphor is the ideas or even the great idea. And if you stop worrying about predicting and controlling, you'll be much better able to catch that idea, when it breaks loose from the pile.

So stop building castles in the sand and just pile on instead.

Wanna think outside the box? Stay inside it.

Obviously this metaphor holds a value, in the sense that you shouldn't allow yourself to be boxed in by conventional thinking. Viewed from my principled design-based approach to the creative process, it doesn't really make a lot of sense. Recently I was reminded about this by my old teacher, Ingolf Gabold, who is both a wise and gifted dramaturge.

One of the fundamental aspects of the principle of unity is that a piece of drama is one system, and a system is defined by a set of borders. So if you go outside those borders, you will undermine your system.

This happens quite often, when people write, direct and perform drama. We will always get ideas and notions, that are outside the box, the system of the drama, and perhaps include them. One or two might actually be working for you and for the system, because of the old adage – the exception that proves the rule. Or you might, if your are disciplined and experienced, come to realise, your system has a different set of borders. But often its not working, and just weakens the material, because it doesn't add to the complexity of meaning.

Working as a consultant for others, or working in groups with devising, I have often seen a pattern in behaviour, when people begin to get the un-useful outside-the-box-ideas. Very often it happens as a reaction to difficulty with the existing material, the system as it is, and there might be real problems, that needs fixing – but instead of confronting those problems inside the box, people tend to jump outside the box to find a quick fix, or even being drawn by the allure of the grass is always greener..

And this is not a very productive behaviour, you'll waste time, energy and only find new material, which at first looks great, all new and shining, but will also present difficult problems later on, as it needs to be developed and incorporated into the system – something which might not even be possible if it is foreign to the system – and again, there's also a time factor in our design process – we need to go over our material and refine it. If you bring in new material late in the process, it may end up never being properly developed.

Instead we need to stay inside the box and confront the problems we have, because often the answer is there, hiding in plain view. We need to dig deeper and ask the difficult questions and the very simple questions to our material – what is the conflict, who is this character, what are the needs, the intention? And we need to be truthful with ourselves in answering – why am I bored with this? what do I really want as a creator? And we need to be patient and wait for the right answer to arise from the questioning.

And this can difficult because it can challenge our faith in ourselves as creators, our faith in the material we have chosen to work with – and even in the worst cases our faith in ourselves as human beings.

And when you find yourself in such a crisis of creation, you can either run or stay inside the box, in the zone.

Out of Book

An expression from the world of chess, describes the phase of the game, when you leave behind the known opening moves and systems of 'the chess book'. This is where real players prefer to be, where the challenge happens. This is the critical state, in between chaos and order, where inspiration and new ideas emerge almost by themselves.

This is also where we should aim to put ourselves when working with drama, be it as writers, directors or actors. As professionals we have an understanding of the rules and systems of drama, and often we need to follow them strictly for a while, as we build up our game. But as soon as we have enough elements brought into play, we need to get out of book.

In my experience, by understanding the rules and systems from a more principled, dynamic view-point rather than as a rule-book, we put ourselves at a starting point, from where we'll quicker reach the 'out of book'-phase. Where the magic and the 'cooking-with-gas' happens.

By disciplining ourselves to constantly look for the unexpected, by reversing our own expectations, by letting any of our own mistakes or stupid criticism from others be a potential source to bring us out of book, we can get there, and stay there, and bring our game beyond book.

True complexity and sandbox-dramaturgy

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.