Look at that tree...

From The Art of the Playwright by William Packard:

The Russian director Richard Boleslavsky describes dramatic action from a very unusual point of view:

"Look at that tree. It is the protagonist of all arts; it is an ideal structure of action. Upward movement and sideways resistance, balance and growth."

Imagine someone looking at a tree and seeing it as an example of dramatic action! Yet Boleslavsky trained himself to see action everywhere, because he was an actor and a director and a teacher of acting. And he goes on to say that the playwright is the hidden action within that tree: "he is the sap that flows and feeds the whole." That is, the playwright is always the initiator and the mainstream of dramatic action.