Dramatic stories are environments in which storytellers, characters, audiences and tribes meet and address one another within the context of a narrative founded upon the purposeful actions and interactions of characters rooted in a tribally based and emotionally charged logic that operates by way of cause and effect. The logic presumes a set of identifiable circumstances that provide the contextual basis for the characters’ actions. Stanislavsky referred to these as “the given circumstances” – the totality of necessary assumptions a dramatist makes concerning the world that the characters inhabit. One cannot hope to enter the drama so long as one refuses to enter into a relationship with the environments that define and condition the scope and value of every character’s actions.
