Although you should never mention your premise in the dialogue of your play, the audience must know what the message is. And whatever it is, you must prove it.
Interpretation
A playwright must effectively convey their message without explicitly stating it in the dialogue.
This quote by Lajos Egri emphasizes the importance of subtlety in storytelling, particularly in playwriting. While the underlying themes or messages of a play should be clear to the audience, they should emerge organically from the narrative and characters rather than being overtly stated in the dialogues. This approach challenges the playwright to craft compelling and nuanced storytelling that invites audience engagement and interpretation.
In practice
A director might use this quote during a workshop on developing character-driven narratives in theater.
I can talk endlessly about characters, or why someone did this or that, and what that dynamic and interaction is. I really love it, and I think that actors really respond positively to the fact that I like to talk about that stuff, because I'm not sure that all directors do.
The office of poetry is not to make us think accurately, but feel truly.
People talk of beauty lightly, and having no feeling for words, they use that one carelessly, so that it loses its force; and the thing it stands for, sharing its name with a hundred trivial objects, is deprived of dignity. They call beautiful a dress, a dog, a sermon; and when they are face to face with Beauty cannot recognise it.
Traditionally art is to create and not to revive. To revive: leave that to the historians, who are looking backward.
I wake up every morning, and I go to ballet class no matter what's going on the night before. That's my priority, and that's what makes me feel sane and not removed from the realities of my world.
I couldn't possibly write 'Next to Normal,' but God, I can weep and watch 'Next to Normal' five times.
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