Please allow this picture, this ‘gif’?  to represent Clarity. Ahhhh, it is moving!! It moves!!!!

Okay so: I think that one of the biggest of the 11,000 things that are hard about playwriting is the delicate balance between clarity and subtlety.  An audience can get really frustrated when they don’t understand WHY they are watching the play, what the ‘point’ is. This requires clarity. But you can’t have your characters walking around quirkily stating your thesis. Believe me, I have tried. I tend to err on the side of non-clarity, especially in terms of emotional arcs of characters.  Because I think in real life, we never know that we are changing, being changed, when it is happening. People don’t change over night, it’s a slow burn or shift. And then years later, we remember it, analyze it, realize that that event was a trigger for things x y and z. But in a play: must you, for clarity’s sake, pretend that the character is nearly acting and reacting in hindsight, almost? In the way that they are able to articulate what is happening?

Well, humph. What do you know. That thing that i just said: it lacked clarity.