How Plays Work

Author : David Edgar
Publisher : Nick Hern Books
ISBN 13 : 9781854593719
Total Pages : 220 pages
Book Rating : 4.14/5 ( download)

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Download or read book How Plays Work written by David Edgar and published by Nick Hern Books. This book was released on 2009 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Distinguished playwright David Edgar examines the mechanisms and techniques which dramatists throughout the ages have employed to structure their plays and to express their meaning. Written for playwrights and playgoers alike, Edgar’s analysis starts with the building blocks of whole plays – plot, character creation, genre and structure – and moves on to scenes and devices. He shows how plays share a common architecture without which the uniqueness of their authors’ vision would be invisible. What does King Lear have in common with Cinderella? What does Jaws owe to Ibsen? From Aeschylus to Alan Ayckbourn, from Chekhov to Caryl Churchill, are there common principles by which all plays work? How Plays Work is a masterclass for playwrights and playmakers and a fascinating guide to the anatomy of drama. 'lucid, deeply intelligent... combines theoretical acumen with the assured know-how of a working dramatist' Terry Eagleton, TLS 'Fascinating... Read it. You will learn a lot' The Stage

Author : Martin Meisel
Publisher : Oxford University Press on Demand
ISBN 13 : 0199215499
Total Pages : 291 pages
Book Rating : 4.92/5 ( download)

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Download or read book How Plays Work written by Martin Meisel and published by Oxford University Press on Demand. This book was released on 2007-06-28 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Meisel begins with a look at matters often taken for granted in coding and convention, and then - under 'Beginnings' - at what is entailed in establishing and entering the invented world of the play. Each succeeding chapter is a gesture at enlarging the scope. The final chapters explore ways in which both the drive for significant understanding and the appetite for wonder can and do find satisfaction and delight." "Cultivated in tone and jargon-free, How Plays Work is illuminated by dozens of judiciously chosen examples from western drama - from classical Greek dramatists to contemporary playwrights, both canonical and relatively obscure. It will appeal as much to the serious student of the theatre as to the playgoer who likes to read a play before seeing it performed."--BOOK JACKET.

Author : John Fiske
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317498550
Total Pages : 378 pages
Book Rating : 4.51/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Power Plays Power Works written by John Fiske and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-02-05 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now, more than 20 years since its initial release, John Fiske’s classic text Power Plays Power Works remains both timely and insightful as a theoretically driven examination of the terrain where the politics of culture and the culture of politics collide. Drawing on a diverse set of cultural sites - from alternative talk radio forums, museums, celebrity fandom, to social problems such as homelessness - Fiske traverses the topography of the American cultural landscape to highlight the ways that ordinary people creatively construct their social identities and relationships through the use of the resources available to them, while constrained by social conditions not of their own choosing. This important analysis provides a set of critical methodological and analytical tools to grapple with the complexities and struggles of contemporary social life. A new introductory essay by former Fiske student Black Hawk Hancock entitled ‘Learning How to Fiske: Theorizing Power, Knowledge, and Bodies in the 21st Century’ elucidates Fiske’s methods for today’s students, providing them with the ultimate guide to thinking and analyzing like John Fiske; the art of ‘Learning How to Fiske’.

Author : Steve Waters
Publisher : Nick Hern Books
ISBN 13 : 9781848420007
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.05/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Secret Life of Plays written by Steve Waters and published by Nick Hern Books. This book was released on 2010 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A guide to the hidden workings of plays and the trade secrets that govern their writing - by the acclaimed playwright Steve Waters. Drawing on a wide range of drama, both historical and modern, Waters takes the reader through the key elements of dramatic writing - scenes, acts, space, time, characters, language and images - to show how a play is more than the sum of its parts, with as much inner vitality as a living organism. Almost uniquely amongst accounts of playwriting, Waters' book looks at the ways in which good plays move their audiences, generating powerful emotional responses that often defy conventional analysis. The Secret Life of Plays is for playwrights at any stage of their career, and will inspire and inform drama students as well as working actors and directors. Most of all it is for anyone who has ever laughed or cried in the theatre - and wants to know why. 'Theatre is a live medium, about bodies, sweat and feeling, even if it is informed by ideas and reason. How a thing composed of words manages to carry within it the currents of energy that generate that impression of life is what I want to explore...' Steve Waters 'Steve Waters' book is like his plays: clear, elegant and stimulating throughout' David Edgar

Author : Hannah Field
Publisher : U of Minnesota Press
ISBN 13 : 1452959595
Total Pages : 359 pages
Book Rating : 4.97/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Playing with the Book written by Hannah Field and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2019-07-02 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A beautifully illustrated exploration of how Victorian novelty picture books reshape the ways children read and interact with texts The Victorian era saw an explosion of novelty picture books with flaps to lift and tabs to pull, pages that could fold out, pop-up scenes, and even mechanical toys mounted on pages. Analyzing books for young children published between 1835 and 1914, Playing with the Book studies how these elaborately designed works raise questions not just about what books should look like but also about what reading is, particularly in relation to children’s literature and child readers. Novelty books promised (or threatened) to make reading a physical as well as intellectual activity, requiring the child to pull a tab or lift a flap to continue the story. These books changed the relationship between pictures, words, and format in both productive and troubling ways. Hannah Field considers these aspects of children’s reading through case studies of different formats of novelty and movable books and intensive examination of editions that have survived from the nineteenth century. She discovers that children ripped, tore, and colored in their novelty books—despite these books’ explicit instructions against such behaviors. Richly illustrated with images of these ingenious constructions, Playing with the Book argues that novelty books construct a process of reading that involves touch as well as sight, thus reconfiguring our understanding of the phenomenology of reading.

Author : Lauren Gunderson
Publisher : Dramatists Play Service, Inc.
ISBN 13 : 0822237725
Total Pages : 95 pages
Book Rating : 4.23/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Book of Will written by Lauren Gunderson and published by Dramatists Play Service, Inc.. This book was released on 2018-06-18 with total page 95 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Without William Shakespeare, we wouldn’t have literary masterpieces like Romeo and Juliet. But without Henry Condell and John Heminges, we would have lost half of Shakespeare’s plays forever! After the death of their friend and mentor, the two actors are determined to compile the First Folio and preserve the words that shaped their lives. They’ll just have to borrow, beg, and band together to get it done. Amidst the noise and color of Elizabethan London, THE BOOK OF WILL finds an unforgettable true story of love, loss, and laughter, and sheds new light on a man you may think you know.

Author : Jan Balakian
Publisher : Hal Leonard Corporation
ISBN 13 : 1557837252
Total Pages : 259 pages
Book Rating : 4.57/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Reading the Plays of Wendy Wasserstein written by Jan Balakian and published by Hal Leonard Corporation. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: (Applause Books). Playwright Wendy Wasserstein is, above all, a social historian. Her plays balance drama and comedy to address such issues as social class and Jewish-American identity. Most notably, however, WassersteinOs work explores the lives and struggles of women. Although she never wanted to be called a feminist playwright, her plays ask whether women can have both satisfying careers and families, concluding that even well-educated women have not yet achieved parity with men. In Reading the Plays of Wendy Wasserstein, author Jan Balakian places WassersteinOs seven major plays in a historical context. Close readings of each play are interwoven with discussion of such topics as the Gilded Age (Old Money), life at a womenOs college in the early 1970s (Uncommon Women and Others), challenges to liberal assumptions (Third), and the rise and fall of feminism (The Heidi Chronicles, winner of the Pulitzer Prize). Drawing on the recently established Wasserstein archives at Mount Holyoke College, this book delves into primary sources such as commencement speeches and popular songs and features unpublished handwritten pages from the playwrightOs notebooks. Lending further insight into WassersteinOs concerns are BalakianOs own interviews with the playwright herself and conversations with WassersteinOs friends, including playwright Christopher Durang, director Dan Sullivan, and playwright and director Emily Mann. Thoroughly researched, accessible, and rich in detail, Reading the Plays of Wendy Wasserstein will provide students, teachers, theatergoers, and other readers with fresh perspective on the work of one of AmericaOs great contemporary playwrights.

Author : Stephen Unwin
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 140815031X
Total Pages : 328 pages
Book Rating : 4.13/5 ( download)

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Download or read book A Guide To The Plays Of Bertolt Brecht written by Stephen Unwin and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2015-01-30 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stephen Unwin's A Guide to the Plays of Bertolt Brecht is an indispensable, comprehensive and highly readable companion to the dramatic work of this challenging and rewarding writer. Besides providing detailed accounts of nineteen key plays, it explores their context and Brecht's dramatic theory to equip readers with a rich understanding of how Brecht's work was shaped by his times and by his evolving thinking about the function of theatre. Bertolt Brecht's work as a director, his critical and theoretical writing, and above all the remarkable plays that emerged from one of the most turbulent periods in history have had a profound and lasting influence on theatre. Central to theatre studies courses and whose plays are frequently revived on stage, Brecht is nevertheless perceived as a difficult writer. This companion is divided into two sections: the first seven chapters outline the tumultuous historical, cultural and theatrical context of Brecht's work. They explore his theatrical theory and provide an account of his approach to staging his plays which informs an understanding of how they work in practice. The second section provides an analysis of nineteen plays in six chronological groupings, each prefaced by a brief sketch of Brecht's life and theatrical development in that period. For each play, Stephen Unwin offers a synopsis, a critical commentary and an account of the work in performance. The book concludes with an examination of Brecht's legacy and a chronicle of his life and times. Written by experienced theatre director Stephen Unwin, this is the perfect companion to Brecht's plays and life for student and theatre practitioner alike.

Author : Ontroerend Goed
Publisher : Oberon Books
ISBN 13 : 9781783191055
Total Pages : 520 pages
Book Rating : 4.58/5 ( download)

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Download or read book All Work and No Plays written by Ontroerend Goed and published by Oberon Books. This book was released on 2014-12-23 with total page 520 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ontroerend Goed is a Belgian, Ghent-based theatre performance group of international renown. The group is made of young creators who explore the space between theatre and performance, writing their own texts from a strong basic concept and adapting familiar formats from various media. From sensorial experiences with blindfolded, individual audience members, over anarchistic teenage performances up to shows that profoundly explore what it means to be a theatre-goer, the group continues to create work that is equally challenging and treacherously shallow. A lot of contemporary plays cannot be experienced unless you've attended them and many of those performances are hard to transcribe on paper, because of their visual and physical nature. Of course, it's always possible to make a video recording, but watching that is a diminished experience. Although Ontroerend Goed embrace the 'nowness' of theatre and its visual and physical possibilities, the group wanted to take an extra step to share its work. In this book, Ontroerend Goed explore different forms to convey a theatrical experience on paper. Each performance has its own way of approaching the audience, so each text has its own way to address the reader. This book is not made to turn the page and document the performances as a past experience, but for people to use it as a tool. A tool to play, adapt, oppose, relive, challenge and inspire.

Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780030644290
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.91/5 ( download)

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Download or read book A Book of Plays written by and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents a student guide to ten plays including "The Happy Journey to Trenton and Camden", "Our Town," "Here We Are", "The Bear", "Sorry, Wrong Number", "Trifles", "Riders to the Sea", "Thunder on Sycamore Street", "Twelve Angry Men," and "The Glass Menagerie" and includes worksheets covering topics of plot structure, theme, setting, and conflict, as well as journals and discussion logs.