On the Unity of Time and Space in Dramaturgy

When I go to the Globe Theatre with my wife, I find the production confusing, because the first scene is set in USA 1984, but, when the curtain closes and reopens, we are now in Ancient Rome. I don’t understand how the characters in the story could start out in one geographic area, in roughly modern times, and then, with the clap of the hands, they’re all in some other galaxy that’s far away in the distant past. 

Also, I don’t want to see a character begin Act One as a teenager but then by Act Five he’s already in his mid-thirties. Only a couple hours have passed: how could he have grown so old? 

Let us therefore establish a law stating that all playacts must remain consistent, logical, believable, real, and rational in their use of space and time. 

And when people get married onstage, at the end of the play, the contract should be binding. If a babe is born to a damsel in a Christmas pageant, that child should be a live birth onstage — it should be the mother’s biological son. 

All dramatic performances should be as realistic as possible. Stage directors should take a lesson from the motion picture industry; nobody wants to see a gunshot result in a fake wound, no, the gore should look authentic: warm blood should gush out and splatter against the movie set and drip sickeningly. All actors should do their own stunts and swing real swords in fights and lose their actual limbs and die authentic deaths in car crashes. 

If we’re not careful — that is, if we choose to go the opposite route and trust the audience to suspend their disbelief — then we’ll soon have old gray-bearded men thinking that they can play the role of a beautiful young woman like Juliet, just by putting on a wig of yellow yarn. That’s insanity. Who’s going to want to play Romeo and let that old man kiss you on the lips, and then poison yourself onstage for the sake of his love? 

Additionally, the venue where the drama is performed should have at least one vendor selling T-shirts with the drama’s title printed on them, so that we members of the audience can purchase something to commemorate all those brave thespians who made the ultimate sacrifice for their art.