To the formalists, the structure of a play, the way it unfolded in time and space, was most important. The meaning was a product of this form, not of the text or the action. Structuralist theatre works with structure in a formal way and makes structure -- the relationship between the parts -- the most important aesthetic element in the performance. Since the relationship between the parts exists to a great extent in time, and since it involves connections between moments or sections of the play through or over or across time, this kind of formalism tends to involve time more than the present moment, the mind more than the eye or ear. They sought a theater that would keep the intellect in motion and cause it to actively compare elements within a work, seek out similarities and measure differences. Repetition of identical, like, or similar elements is perhaps the basic kind of nonsemiotic discontinuous structure. When a phrase, gesture, or object reappears more than once, it has the tendency to invoke, at some point, the expectation that there will be another. Thus repetition "jumps" in both directions on the time continuum, relating disparate points in an alogical fashion.