My friend Stephanie and I had a good conversation about Mike Nichols‘ assertion that there are only three types of scenes: “negotiations, seductions, and fights.”
She pointed out that this formulation excludes soliloquies or any sort of scene with fewer than two interacting characters. I was uncomfortable with the three types, since seductions are just negotiations with a very specific goal and fights are just failed negotiations or negotiations with raised stakes.
We decided that Nichols’ comment makes perfect sense for the kind of plays he directed, like Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, but it said less about plays in general and more about mid-20th century American plays by people like Albee or Miller or O’Neill or even Neil Simon.