"In the theatre the audience wants to be surprised - but by things that they expect"

Audiences enter the theatre carrying a quiet contract: they want to recognize the world and be startled by it at the same time. The pleasure comes from a paradox, novelty that confirms a deeper pattern. A murder mystery should expose the killer in a way no one saw coming, yet afterward it must feel fair, even inevitable. A romantic comedy should culminate in union, but through turns that feel fresh, risky, and earned. Break the promise entirely and it’s a cheat; fulfill it without surprise and it’s dull.

Dramaturgy thrives in the space where foreshadowing and misdirection dance. Planting details early lets the later reveal land as both shock and confirmation: the mind experiences a jolt, then a satisfying click as pieces align. Aristotle praised endings that feel “unexpected yet inevitable,” a standard that acknowledges our need for coherence while rewarding our curiosity. Call it pattern with variation, like a musical cadence that resolves in a slightly altered harmony.

Psychologically, people predict constantly. Small violations of expectation generate pleasure, the prediction error that sparks attention and delight, while wholesale betrayal produces confusion or anger. The deus ex machina disappoints not because it’s surprising, but because it is unrelated to what the play has taught us to anticipate. Genre functions as a set of promises: tragedy offers moral reckoning, comedy restoration, thriller escalation. The artist’s task is to honor the core promise while bending its contours.

This is why clever subversions work only when they arise from the story’s own logic. Dramatic irony, red herrings, and reversals are tools, not ends; the goal is recognition transformed. Let the audience foresee the storm and still gasp at the lightning’s path. The craft lies in seeding what must happen without revealing how, so that when it arrives, the audience feels both surprise and the comfort of having always, on some level, expected it.