Play

the staging of tales

A play is the whole production: many plots run inside it, and one arc binds them into a single telling. It does not play out a scene; it sets what every plot inherits and what they all add up to.

Estate

Who holds the play and answers for it: the production it belongs to, the owner of the whole run.

Name

What the play is called: the title its plots run under.

Arc

The overarching story. How the plots interweave into one telling: the bend that makes ten plots a shape and not a list.

Company

The cast the play may field, its Personas and what they carry: the Pieces, Places, Processes, and Positions in play. A plot draws only from here; reach past the Company and it has gone off the play.

Triggers

The conditions that chain the plots. Each plot starts when its entry fires and runs until its exit; one plot's close is the next one's cue.

Stakes

What the whole production is fighting over. The pressure every plot must move: each earns its place by changing what is at stake, in whatever shape the telling takes (rise, fall, or turn).

Estate and Name are whose it is and what it is called. Company and Triggers are its cast and its clockwork. Arc and Stakes are its shape and its pressure. A play file succeeds when the plots, fired in turn from one Company, move the Stakes the Arc was built to resolve.