Drametrics is a quantitative approach to analyzing dramatic texts that emerged as part of the broader field of computational criticism (distant reading) and digital humanities.
The term was introduced by Polish-American scholar and playwright, Magda Romanska in 2014 in her essay "Drametrics: What Dramaturgs Should Learn From Mathematicians" included in The Routledge Companion to Dramaturgy.
Romanska posits that these mathematical relationships contribute to the aesthetic and dramatic effectiveness of theatrical works, just as the golden ratio (approximately 1.618:1) and Fibonacci spiral appear in classical architecture and visual art.
Romanska shows not only that the drametrics theory works for the conventional well-made play, such as Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, but also for the more contemporary dramas such as Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot.
[12] Rather than relying solely on explicit scene divisions, researchers can use algorithms to detect natural breaks in the dramatic action based on: The VED (Visually Encoded Drama) format has emerged as a standardized way to encode dramatic texts for computational analysis, with each textual entity (line, character speech, stage direction) corresponding to a single line in the format.