Losing the Sense of an Ending: A Reflection on Theater Education

As I observe young people working in theater workshops, I have noticed an increasingly evident phenomenon: many of them struggle to create an ending for the stories they develop.

They can find a beginning, invent situations, and add characters and plot twists. But when the time comes to conclude, they often introduce yet another event.

The story does not end: at some point, it simply stops.

In my experience, this difficulty is especially evident among high school students. I see it to a lesser extent in middle school, while among children I notice only occasional signs.

The pattern recurs so consistently in my work that I do not believe it is accidental.

I do not believe there is a single cause, but I am convinced that it is connected to the increasingly fragmented way in which stories are experienced. As young people grow, their exposure to interrupted, multiplied, or potentially endless narratives increases. At the same time, it becomes harder for them to define the boundaries of a story and carry it through to its conclusion.

Incomplete Stories: Open Circles and Suspended Windows

The image that came to mind as I worked with young people was that of a circle.

A complete story is like a closed circle—not because it must explain everything, but because its ending connects back to its beginning and reveals the change that has taken place along the way.

Even a story with an open ending can close its circle. It may leave a question unanswered, provided that it takes the audience to the precise point at which that question becomes meaningful.

An incomplete story is different. Its elements remain separate, like windows that are continually opened and closed. A new character, image, or event enters through each one, but nothing remains long enough to transform what is already there.

In workshops, I often see narratives constructed in this way: something happens, then something else happens, then a new character arrives, and finally another problem appears. Each event opens up a possibility, but none of them produces a real consequence.

Adding events does not mean developing a story. Sometimes it simply means postponing its conclusion.

A scene does not end when time runs out or when we no longer know what else to add. It ends when an action has produced a consequence and the characters are no longer in exactly the same position as they were at the beginning.

Ten Minutes at a Time

I have noticed something similar outside the workshop as well.

On several occasions, I have recommended films to high school students that I consider important and still regard as excellent. Their verdicts were often lukewarm at best. At first, I wondered whether my own view of those films had become dated or was simply too far removed from their tastes.

Then I asked them how they had watched the films.

Many told me that they had watched them in sessions of around ten minutes, perhaps on the subway or the bus, stopping and resuming them over the following days.

At that point, I understood that we were not judging the same experience. The film was the same; the way we encountered it was not.

A film builds its journey through rhythm, anticipation, internal echoes, transformations, and the gradual build-up of emotion. Breaking it up repeatedly means interrupting that journey and having to reconstruct it every time viewing resumes.

A scene, an image, or a line of dialogue may remain, but it becomes harder to retain the overall trajectory of the work. This is what I observe when I ask young people to tell me about a film or explain why it affected them: isolated fragments emerge, but much more rarely the path that held them together.

This does not always happen. But it happens often enough to constitute a concrete educational problem for me.

Fragmented, Serial, and Interrupted Are Not the Same Thing

Fragmentation is not inherently a flaw. We need to distinguish between very different phenomena.

• A fragmented narrative uses leaps, gaps, and discontinuities as elements of its construction.

• Fragmented viewing interrupts a work from the outside, regardless of the rhythm for which it was designed.

• Serial storytelling distributes a narrative across episodes or seasons, but it can still construct precise and complex arcs.

• An open ending does not resolve every question, but it still brings the story to a deliberate and meaningful point.

Serial storytelling, therefore, does not necessarily entail a loss of complexity. In his analysis of Diabolik, Giovanni Boccia Artieri shows how repetition and variety can coexist and produce increasingly intricate narrative structures over time.

Similarly, films such as Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’Avventura and Christopher Nolan’s Inception do not lack endings. They bring viewers to a precise threshold and entrust the final stage of interpretation to them.

An open ending does not leave every door open: it chooses which door to leave open.

The problem, then, is not fragmentation as an expressive choice. It is the habit of taking in every story as a succession of interchangeable fragments, without recognizing the structure that holds them together.

What I Observe in Workshops

The consequences I am describing do not arise solely from theoretical reflection. I encounter them every day in my work with children and young people.

I see a growing difficulty in connecting causes and effects. An action does not necessarily produce a consequence: it is often erased or forgotten by the next event.

I see narrative memory becoming more fragile. Particularly striking images or moments remain, but their place within the story—and therefore their function—is lost.

I see imaginations overflowing with immediate stimuli, yet scattered. There is no shortage of ideas. What is often missing is the ability to choose one, develop it, and explore its possibilities before replacing it with the next.

I also see difficulty in creating something together. Each participant tends to introduce their own material without taking up and transforming what others have proposed. The scene becomes an accumulation of individual inventions rather than a shared narrative.

Finally, I see the discomfort caused by having to conclude. When I ask young people to find an ending, many try to avoid it by adding a new event, resorting to an arbitrary solution, or ending abruptly with devices such as “it was all a dream.”

These are not clinical diagnoses. They are professional observations that recur, with varying degrees of intensity, across different groups, age ranges, and years of work.

Field experience does not need to be recast as neuroscience in order to have value. It allows me to state what I see and formulate an educational conviction: people who encounter stories primarily as a stream of fragments have fewer opportunities to practice staying with them over time, recognizing their consequences, and carrying them toward a conclusion.

Experience and Research

Jerome Bruner devoted much of his work to the way narrative organizes experience and creates meaning.

A story is not simply a succession of facts. Events become a narrative when they enter into a relationship: someone wants something, encounters an obstacle, takes action, and produces a consequence.

The ending makes this relationship visible. It is not something attached to a story simply to close it off, but the point from which we can observe the trajectory that has been completed and understand what it has produced.

In 2023, a study commissioned by the European Parliament, The influence of social media on the development of children and young people, examined more than two hundred studies on children’s and young people’s use of social media. The report acknowledges the positive possibilities offered by digital tools, but also the risks associated with problematic and pervasive use, emphasizing the importance of education and awareness.

None of this research can replace what happens in a workshop or prove on its own the specific connection I observe between fragmented engagement with stories and the difficulty of creating endings. It does, however, provide a broader context in which my observation is far from isolated.

Learning to Bring a Story to an End

When a story cannot find its ending, the simplest solution would be to provide one. But if I decide how it must end, I have solved the story’s problem without teaching the participants how to recognize and address it.

I know the destination: we need to arrive at a story that works. But I do not know the route in advance or the exact form the result will take. When the people change, the process inevitably changes as well.

My task is to ensure that the group reaches the destination without depriving its members of the opportunity to surprise me and become the active authors of the work.

To work on endings, we can ask very concrete questions:

• What has changed since the beginning?

• Which action has produced a consequence that cannot be ignored?

• What have the characters understood?

• What image could embody the meaning of what has happened?

• If the story ended one scene earlier or one scene later, what would change?

We can complete stories that begin with open-ended situations, rewrite the endings of familiar stories, or compare closed endings, open endings, and endings that leave us in suspense.

We can also establish that, from a certain point onward, no new characters or events may be introduced. The participants must reach a conclusion using what they have already created. In this way, they can no longer avoid the problem by pushing the story forward: they must recognize the consequences of the actions that have already taken place.

It is also useful to offer narrative experiences that require sustained time and attention: a novel, a film watched without interruption, or a performance followed from beginning to end. This is not because long forms are always better than short ones, but because they train us to inhabit a story in a different way.

From the Stage to Life

The way we tell our experiences also influences the way we understand them.

If everything remains open, if each event is immediately replaced by the next, it becomes harder to recognize that a transition has taken place and to give it meaning.

I am not suggesting that a theater exercise can automatically teach someone how to cope with grief or separation. Theater does not eliminate pain or provide formulas for resolving it.

It can, however, train us to recognize a transformation, make a choice, let go of possibilities that will not be pursued, and take responsibility for an ending.

Ending does not mean erasing what has happened. It means giving it a form that allows us to preserve it while also making room for something new.

Conclusion

The tendency to consume stories in a fragmented way is not the fault of young people. It is a possibility that has been made habitual by the cultural context in which they live.

There is no need to demonize social media, television series, or video games. But neither should we regard them as neutral or stop observing the habits they create.

As theater educators, we must also defend the value of duration, continuity, attention, and conclusion.

We should not impose only closed narratives. We must help participants understand that an ending may be open, suspended, unsettling, or even unpleasant, but it cannot be arbitrary. It must arrive at the point where what has happened produces a consequence.

A story does not end when we have nothing left to add.

It ends when we have chosen what it should leave behind.

References

• Jerome Bruner, Acts of Meaning, Harvard University Press, 1990.

• Brian O’Neill, The influence of social media on the development of children and young people, European Parliament, Policy Department for Structural and Cohesion Policies, PE 733.109, 2023.

• Giovanni Boccia Artieri, “Tutto ha una fine? Diabolik & Eva Kant: la serialità a fumetti tra ridondanza e varietà,” Mediascapes Journal, 21(1), 12–31, 2023.

• Michelangelo Antonioni, L’Avventura, 1960.

• Christopher Nolan, Inception, 2010.