2.4 “Curiosity” and “Interest”
In the world of drama the aim is to study how to awaken and to sustain the keen interest, or curiosity, which can be felt only by those who see the play for the first time. The challenge is that popular plays are subject to media scrutiny and criticism, with the effect that few in the audience attend in an unbiased mindset and completely open minded. The first-night audience determines in great measure a play’s success or failure. Wisdom for the dramatist is to direct all thought and care towards conciliating and engaging an audience to which his theme is entirely unknown and so hopefully to succeed in the challenging first performance. Popular knowledge may impose new limitations on the playwright. In some cases he can rely on a general knowledge of the historic background of a given period, which may save him some exposition.
However well known a play may be, the playwright must assume that in every audience there will be a number of persons who know practically nothing about it, and whose enjoyment will depend, like that of the first-night audience, on the skill with which he develops his
story. On the other hand, he can never rely on taking an audience by
surprise at any particular point.
The dramatist has little option but to assume complete ignorance in his audience, but only the first-night audience will be entirely in this condition, since the more successful the play is, the more extensively subsequent audiences will tend to have prior knowledge about it.
Experience shows that dramatic “interest” is entirely distinct from mere “curiosity”, and survives when curiosity is dead. Though a skillfully told story is not of itself enough to secure long life for a play, it enhances the attractiveness of a play which has other and higher claims to longevity. The arousing and sustaining of curiosity should be a primary concern, but it is only a means to the more abiding forms of interest. With too to little foresee in the road ahead, the audience’s particular interest may fade.
However well we may know a play beforehand, we seldom know it by heart or nearly by heart - so that, though we may anticipate a development in general outline, we do not clearly foresee the ordering of its details, which may give us almost the same sort of pleasure that it gave us when the story was new to us. A great play is like a great piece of music: we can hear it repeatedly and every time discover new subtle beauties and complex harmonies, enjoying the better and lesser merits of each time it is performed. In truly great drama, the foreknowledge possessed by the audience is not a disadvantage, but is the source of the highest pleasure that the theatre is capable of affording. “Curiosity “ is the accidental enjoyment of a single night’s performance, whereas the essential and abiding pleasure of the theatre lies in foreknowledge.