Narration vs Observation

One big difference that I noticed between the dramatic version and the short story version of “Trifles”, indeed, between most prose and drama, is the immediacy of the story and dialogue. When drama is acted on stage the audience is exposed to the setting and much narration through the sense of sight. There are no long explanations of how a character is feeling or how a certain room looks. The latter is seen immediately, while the former needs to be deduced from the dialogue and the mannerisms that the actors have. When reading a written drama we lack the visual setting and characters, but we are still unencumbered by long bits of narration. It creates that sense of immediacy that we saw in “Popular Mechanics” where there was only action (except for the introduction), but in a more cohesive form. Of course, the lack of narration can be a disadvantage, especially when reading the drama on paper. It is much harder to develop a character without any insight into the character’s emotions and thoughts. A drama tends to limit the point-of-view to that of a first person observer without any attachment to a specific character.