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How to read a play is an introductory guide to the art of translating the printed page of a play or screenplay into dramatic mental images; this book includes a chapter about how to read a screenplay, noting the intrinisic differences between a screenplay and a playscript.
Now in a fully updated second edition, How to Read a Play offers methods for analyzing play scripts from a diverse range of perspectives, giving directors practical tools as they prepare for production. Based on interviews with award-winning directors, university professors, and experimental theatre companies, How to Read a Play provides practical advice on how to first approach a script, prepare for design meetings, get ready for casting sessions, and lay the groundwork for rehearsals with actors. The book starts with a brief historical overview of famous directors, surveys the work of experimental theatres that devise their work, and ends with twenty-one practical exercises. The second edition includes material from interviews with a diverse range of directors and features perspectives on identity, race, trauma, and joy in working on new plays and redefined classic works. How to Read a Play is written for anyone who loves studying the craft of directing. Students and early career directors will be introduced to basic techniques for breaking down a script for production. Established artists will enjoy a behind the scenes peek at the methods and processes of directors with a diverse range of perspectives.
An invaluable introductory guide for students on how to engage with the original printed texts of Shakespeare and his contemporaries.
'Could be read with profit and pleasure by any theatregoer.' -Steven Poole, The Guardian'A good basic introduction for first year students to problems of reading plays as performance texts, i.e. reading theatrically.' -Professor R. A. Cave, Royal HollowayA compact, wide-ranging, and accessible guide to reading plays, The Drama Handbook stresses the importance of understanding performance conventions and production processes through history, and offers clearly defined and presented critical vocabularies.
"Considered an essential text since its publication thirty-five years ago, this guide for students and practitioners of both theater and literature complements, rather than contradicts or repeats, traditional methods of literary analysis of scripts
Designed for readers who want to know how to go about reading Shakespeare's works for pleasure, this work offers readings of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream', 'Romeo and Juliet', 'Henry IV Part I', 'Hamlet', 'King Lear' and 'The Tempest'. It also talks in theatrical terms about producing the plays on stage or screen.
The Well Read Play, deepens our appreciation and enjoyment of drama. Clear and practical guidance helps the reader to understand the workings of a play, spot clues that the playwright has planted, imagine how it can be staged, and decide whether it will stand the test of time. Absorbing and informative, whether for purposes of study, staging or simply leisure, it is the ideal guide for students, directors, teachers and anyone who loves the theatre.
"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.