• What is the shape of a drama and how is it used? Give an example from the reading.

“The shape of a play can be visualized in terms of the pattern of emotional tension created in its audience,”

The conventional and simplistic shape of a drama is Freytag’s triangle where there is an introduction, rise, climax, fall, and a conclusion. A more contemporary version of Freytag’s triangle has been developed into a sophisticated  graph based on in-depth analysis of each incident. Also, the shape of a drama has fractal qualities. As a result, the shape of different play is unique but they all follow the same overall shape of drama. An example from the reading is Hamlet in which each major character has his or her own motif. Each character has his or her own story pattern that contributes to the factual quality as well as the whole action.

• Why is probability so important in drama as well as human-computer interaction?
• What is the key quality of dramatic action? Why is that?

According to the Laurel,  the key quality of dramatic action is probability. She mentions that drama has a progression from possibility to probability to necessity, which helps construct a whole action that satisfies audience’s expectation as story progressed. Each character and each action has the causality that leads audience to expect a probability of where the story could lead them to. In a drama that is performed according to scripts, the causality stays the same when actors follow the script to perform, so the probability is more predictable. Where as in improvising theater or immersive theater, it is more like in human-computer interaction. Again, take Sleep No More as an example, the moment audience walked into the mysterious space, it is full of unknown. The dramatic action is mostly following the scripts, but the interactive elements of the play can always introduce new potential to the audience. From the perspective of the audience, the probability lies in that they have the freedom of exploring the work the way they want, which is the causality. In human-computer interaction, understanding the causality of the agent, which is the goal of the user, is important because it is tightly linked to probability. By introducing probability through understanding the causality, designers can shape the experience of interactors.