Your Dramaturg reporting in! This week we have really been exploring the ideas of journeys and stories. We started with Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey, a topic that makes me nerd out hard core. Campbell’s theory mainly states that there is one basic structure in any hero story and it can be applied successfully to many of our most loved tales from ancient times to modern films.
Here is a diagram of his basic thoughts, the idea of the Monomyth:
And here are puppets explaining the various roles characters take on that journey and how it applies in pop culture:
We took this idea of the hero’s journey and asked, what is a monster’s journey? Is it the same? Is it the opposite? Either way, it is a transformative path, changing who the protagonist is to what he needs to become to fulfill his ultimate destiny. We explored this through the story of Frankenstein, one of my very favorite tales, taking moments in the Hero’s Journey and moments in the story of Frankenstein and finding where they merged and branched off and through that created a very moving piece.
Conversely, we explored the story of the Odyssey, essentially a tale of a man just wanting to get home. The heroism of dogged determination in the face of temptations and side quests.
In all the pieces we have been examining their particular arc: what happens in the beginning, what happens in the middle, and what happens in the end. Each section is distinct in purpose and at every transition, something shifts, adding a deeper level of meaning, turning the story on its head or juxtaposing a countering element to make the piece have a dynamic flow. And yet, sometimes we discover that even that tried and true convention needs to be turned on its head. Not all journeys are the same.
-Megan Reichelt
Flying V Fights: Heroes & Monsters
July 11-28
The Writer’s Center, Bethesda
