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Playwriting: A Practical Guide
by Noël GreigPlaywriting offers a practical guide to the creation of text for live performance. It contains a wealth of exercises for amateur and professional playwrights. Usable in a range of contexts, the book works as: a step-by-step guide to the creation of an individual play a handy resource for a teacher or workshop leader a stimulus for the group-devised play. The result of Noël Greig's thirty years' experience as a playwright, actor, director and teacher, Playwriting is the ideal handbook for anyone who engages with playwriting and is ultimately concerned with creating a story and bringing it to life on the stage.
Playwriting: The First Workshop
by Kathleen E. GeorgeThis is a practical introduction to the basic principles, structures and processes of writing plays. Beginning with simple concepts and exercises, this book gradually builds in complexity, until the reader is writing his or her one act play. Writing plays is unique because feedback, alternative approaches and discussion spur creativity. This book encourages this and thereby encourages the reader to write. The reader will discover how stage plays differ from screenplays, novels and television. The book also describes how autobiographical materials are transformed into playable parts, and how characters are moved by action. `Playwriting: The first workshop' gives readers the necessary background to begin working on their first play. Captures the workshop experience through writing, analyzing and testing plays. Contains synopsis and analysis of several well-known plays, such as `The Dining Room'. Each chapter provides study questions and exercises that reinforce important concepts.
Playwriting: Writing, Producing And Selling Your Play
by Louis E. CatronA practical guidebook for effective playwriting! This imaginative and enthusiastic book is designed especially for those having the desire to create, to entertain, and to express their emotions and ideas. It features a practical, down-to-earth emphasis on craft and structure rather than on theory as its step-by-step approach shows just what’s involved in creating a stageworthy play. Coverage includes basic considerations such as plot and character development, theme and dialogue as well as production and publication considerations. Outstanding features: offers concrete writing guidelines; includes exercises that get the reader going and inspirational anecdotes; presents excerpts from such classics as Macbeth, The Glass Menagerie, and The Dumb Waiter that help the student grasp key concepts; lists plays to read for instruction; includes valuable information not usually found in comparable collections.
Plot, Like Gravy, Thickens
by Billy St. JohnComedic Murder Mystery / 5m (to play 7 roles), 9f / Interior / Great storm effects, spiffy costumes and lots of fun and mystery distinguish this work by the author of Abduction, The Reunion and others. Ever want to commit a murder? Walter, the playwright's alter ego in this madcap mystery, demonstrates just how to do someone in in your imagination, of course! After introducing the audience to tyrannical millionaire Edward Worthington's relatives, business associates and household staff most of whom have reason to wish the man dead Walter exits, only to reappear in a tuxedo as Worthington. Gathered on a stormy evening at Worthington Manor to celebrate Edward's fiftieth birthday are his attractive wife, her playboy brother, Edward's befuddled older sister, his ex wife and his daughter, a college student. Also present are his shady lawyer and his up tight business manager with his giddy wife and sexy southern secretary as well as the butler, the housekeeper, the maid and the cook. Each has a motive that is barely established when the lights go out! Seconds later they come bock on to reveal the knife for the birthday cake protruding from Edward's back. In Act II, the police detective also played by Walter investigates, eventually allowing the audience to question or accuse suspects before the killer's identity is revealed in a surprising climax.
Plots (Leonard Hastings Schoff Lectures)
by Robert L. BelknapRobert L. Belknap's theory of plot illustrates the active and passive roles literature plays in creating its own dynamic reading experience. Literary narrative enchants us through its development of plot, but plot tells its own story about the making of narrative, revealing through its structures, preoccupations, and strategies of representation critical details about how and when a work came into being.Through a rich reading of Shakespeare's King Lear and Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, Belknap explores the spatial, chronological, and causal aspects of plot, its brilliant manipulation of reader frustration and involvement, and its critical cohesion of characters. He considers Shakespeare's transformation of dramatic plot through parallelism, conflict, resolution, and recognition. He then follows with Dostoevsky's development of the rhetorical and moral devices of nineteenth-century Russian fiction, along with its epistolary and detective genres, to embed the reader in the murder Raskolnikov commits. Dostoevsky's reinvention of the psychological plot was profound, and Belknap effectively challenges the idea that the author abused causality to achieve his ideological conclusion. In a final chapter, Belknap argues that plots teach us novelistic rather than poetic justice. Operating according to their own logic, plots provide us with a compelling way to see and order our world.
Plutus
by AristophanesThe story of 'Plutus' concerns Chremylus, a poor but just man, who accompanied by his body-servant Cario, consults the Delphic Oracle concerning his son, whether he ought not to be instructed in injustice and knavery and the other arts whereby worldly men acquire riches. By way of answer the god only tells him that he is to follow whomsoever he first meets upon leaving the temple, who proves to be a blind and ragged old man.
Pléadáil Pablo
by Erick Carballo"Pléadáil Pablo" is úrscéal é ina bhfuil uaigneas, bulaíocht, leas agus féiniúlacht athar fite fuaite ina chéile, agus neamhshuim mháthair a thréigeann a mac lena chinniúint chun saol nua a thosú le fear a chinntíonn todhchaí gealladh fúthu. Is buachaill ocht mbliana d’aois é Pablo nach bhfuil ach cara amháin aige ar féidir leis muinín a bheith aige ann, ach bíonn cinniúint thragóideach mar thoradh ar shraith imeachtaí.
Pobre diablo: Cuentos Y Relatos De Valor En Tiempos De Angustia
by Pedro ParraBrillante relato en donde el bien y el mal conviven en situaciones jocosas e inesperadas. Cada día iba siendo mayor la necesidad de calor y luz por parte de Lucifer y sus huestes. De sus demonios, el que ocupaba el escalafón más bajo era el Chamuco, quien tenía que permanecer muy cerca del fuego y en un descuido su hermoso cuerpo terminó calcinado. Por lo que a partir de ese día, hacía uso de cuerpos ajenos que tomaba prestados por momentos. Lo mismo era un cerdo, que un león o un ser humano, pero lo único que era en realidad, era un pobre diablo. Con el fin de ganar almas para su causa y llevar al Infierno la mayor cantidad de seres humanos, todos los demonios tuvieron la oportunidad de escoger una zona geográfica y población a conquistar. Es por eso que el Chamuco escogió a San Cirilo, pueblo alejado de la mano de Dios, como decían sus habitantes. La tradición del pueblo se integró con diversos personajes. Con la melodía de la flauta del Chamuco los habitantes se ven tentados a caer en el pecado y a pasar por encima de las leyes y la moral. Lo que el Chamuco no sabe es que su conquista no es tarea sencilla y tiene que ser muy astuto para manipular a los habitantes que algunas veces son más maliciosos que él.
Pochsy IV: Unplugged
by Karen HinesMercury-addled and fabulously flighty, Pochsy is back with a new monologue!Sweet, vapid, and venomous, Pochsy is an endearingly charming embodiment of all that’s gone bats in the world. She used to work at Mercury Packers. Where she packed mercury. Now her employer has moved offshore and Pochsy must grapple with God’s broken promise of a five-star future. This is a night sea journey on an unnaturally sparkling river. Harrowing and high speed, Pochsy IV unboxes precarity, consumer obsessions, the future of humankind ... and whatever else might keep you up at night.Combining magical realism, satire, and horror, this monologue follows the acclaimed trilogy The Pochsy Plays, which have travelled internationally and been a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award, among other citations. Pochsy IV: because what the world needs right now is a little more Pochsy.
Poetic Images, Presence, and the Theater of Kenotic Rituals (Routledge Advances in Theatre & Performance Studies)
by Eniko SepsiThis book explores the interrelation of contemporary French theatre and poetry. Using the pictorial turn in the various branches of art and science, its observable features, and the theoretical framework of the conceptual metaphor, this study seeks to gather together the divergent manners in which French poetry and theatre address this turn. Poetry in space and theatricality of poetry are studied alongside theatre, especially to the performative aspect of the originally theological concept of "kenosis". In doing so the author attempts to make use of the theological concept of kenosis, of central importance in Novarina’s oeuvre, for theatrical and dramatological purposes. Within poetic rituals, kenotic rituals are also examined in the book in a few theatrical practices – János Pilinszky and Robert Wilson, Jerzy Grotowski and Eugenio Barba – facilitating a better understanding of Novarina’s works. Accompanied by new English translations in the appendices, this is the first English language monograph related to the French essayist, dramaturg and director Valère Novarina’s theatre, and will be of great interest to students and scholars in theatre and literature studies.
Poetics
by AristotleOne of the most powerful, perceptive and influential works of criticism in Western literary history In his near-contemporary account of classical Greek tragedy, Aristotle examines the dramatic elements of plot, character, language and spectacle that combine to produce pity and fear in the audience, and asks why we derive pleasure from this apparently painful process. Taking examples from the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, the Poetics introduced into literary criticism such central concepts as mimesis ('imitation'), hamartia ('error') and katharsis ('purification'). Aristotle explains how the most effective tragedies rely on complication and resolution, recognition and reversals. The Poetics has informed thinking about drama ever since.Translated with an Introduction and Notes by Malcolm Heath
Poetics (Dover Thrift Editions Ser.)
by AristotleAmong the most influential books in Western civilization, Aristotle's Poetics is really a treatise on fine art. In it are mentioned not only epic and dithyrambic poetry, but tragedy, comedy, and flute and lyre playing. Aristotle's conception of tragedy, i.e. the depiction of a heroic action that arouses pity and fear in the spectators and brings about a catharsis of those emotions, has helped perpetuate the Greek ideal of drama to the present day. Similarly, his dictums concerning unity of time and place, the necessity for a play to have a beginning, middle, and end, the idea of the tragic flaw and other concepts have had enormous influence down through the ages.Throughout the work, Aristotle reveals not only a great intellect analyzing the nature of poetry, music, and drama, but also a down-to-earth understanding of the practical problems facing the poet and playwright. Now, in this inexpensive edition of the Poetics, readers can enjoy the seminal insights of one of the greatest minds in human history as he sets about laying the foundations of critical thought about the arts.
Poetics of History: Rousseau and the Theater of Originary Mimesis
by Philippe Lacoue-LabartheRousseau’s opposition to the theater is well known: Far from purging the passions, it serves only to exacerbate them, and to render them hypocritical. But is it possible that Rousseau’s texts reveal a different conception of theatrical imitation, a more originary form of mimesis? Over and against Heidegger’s dismissal of Rousseau in the 1930s, and in the wake of classic readings by Jacques Derrida and Jean Starobinski, Lacoue-Labarthe asserts the deeply philosophical importance of Rousseau as a thinker who, without formalizing it as such, established a dialectical logic that would determine the future of philosophy: an originary theatricality arising from a dialectic between “nature” and its supplements.Beginning with a reading of Rousseau’s Discourse on Inequality, Lacoue-Labarthe brings out this dialectic in properly philosophical terms, revealing nothing less than a transcendental thinking of origins. For Rousseau, the origin has the form of a “scene”—that is, of theater. On this basis, Rousseau’s texts on the theater, especially the Letter to d’Alembert, emerge as an incisive interrogation of Aristotle’s Poetics. This can be read not in the false and conventional interpretation of this text that Rousseau had inherited, but rather in relation to its fundamental concepts, mimesis and katharsis, and in Rousseau’s interpretation of Greek theater itself. If for Rousseau mimesis is originary, a transcendental structure, katharsis is in turn the basis of a dialectical movement, an Aufhebung that will translate the word itself (for, as Lacoue-Labarthe reminds us, Aufheben translates katharein). By reversing the facilities of the Platonic critique, Rousseau inaugurates what we could call the philosophical theater of the future.
Poetics: A Treatise On Government (Dover Thrift Editions)
by AristotleAmong the most influential books in Western civilization, the Poetics is really a treatise on fine art. It offers seminal ideas on the nature of drama, tragedy, poetry, music, and more, including such concepts as catharsis, the tragic flaw, unities of time and place and other rules of drama. This inexpensive edition enables readers to enjoy the critical insights of one humanity's greatest minds laying the foundations for thought about the arts.
Poetry on Stage: The Theatre of the Italian Neo-Avant-Garde (Toronto Italian Studies)
by Gianluca RizzoPoetry on Stage focuses on exchanges between the writers of the Italian neo-avant-garde with the actors, directors, and playwrights of the Nuovo Teatro. The book sheds light on a forgotten chapter of twentieth-century Italian literature, arguing that the theatre was the ideal incubator for stylistic and linguistic experiments and a means through which authors could establish direct contact with their audience and verify solutions to the practical and theoretical problems raised by their stances in politics and poetics. A robust analysis of a number of exemplary texts grounds these issues in the plays and poems produced at the time and connects them with the experimentations subsequently carried out by some of the same artists. In-depth interviews with four of the most influential figures in the field – critic Valentina Valentini, actor and director Pippo Di Marca, author Giuliano Scabia, and the late poet Nanni Balestrini – conclude the volume, providing invaluable first-hand testimony that brings to life the people and controversies discussed.
Poetry, Print, and the Making of Postcolonial Literature
by Nathan Suhr-SytsmaPoetry, Print, and the Making of Postcolonial Literature reveals an intriguing history of relationships among poets and editors from Ireland and Nigeria, as well as Britain and the Caribbean, during the mid-twentieth-century era of decolonization. The book explores what such leading anglophone poets as Seamus Heaney, Christopher Okigbo, and Derek Walcott had in common: 'peripheral' origins and a desire to address transnational publics without expatriating themselves. The book reconstructs how they gained the imprimatur of both local and London-based cultural institutions. It shows, furthermore, how political crises challenged them to reconsider their poetry's publics. Making substantial use of unpublished archival material, Nathan Suhr-Sytsma examines poems in print, often the pages on which they first appeared, in order to chart the transformation of the anglophone literary world. He argues that these poets' achievements cannot be extricated from the transnational networks through which their poems circulated - and which they in turn remade.
Pointing the Way
by Martin Buber Maurice S. Friedman"These essays, written between 1909 and 1954 and first published as a collection in 1957, in which the eminent philosopher relates the 'I-Thou' dialogue to such varied fields as religion, social thought, philosophy, myth, drama, literature and art, reveal Buber in the process of responding to the crises and challenges of the 20th century and enable the reader to follow his lifelong struggles toward 'authentic existence.'" -Back Cover
Poison, Play, and Duel: A Study in Hamlet (Routledge Revivals)
by Nigel AlexanderFirst published in 1971, Poison, Play and Duel explores the dominant symbols of the language and action of Hamlet. The Ghost first reveals that Claudius murdered his brother by poison, and this act of poisoning is then dramatically presented before the King. The ultimate consequence of the ‘poison in jest’ performed by the actors is the poisoned ‘play’ with rapiers between Laertes and Hamlet. This representation of violence, and the vengeful response to violence, creates the moral and the psychological problems of Hamlet. Critics naturally question, and disagree about, the way that Hamlet plays his role in this play because the role of Hamlet is a theatrical device designed to bring all human actions into debate and question. It is hardly surprising that audiences have seen mirrored in Hamlet their own most fundamental and inescapable problems. Nigel Alexander shows how Shakespeare, like Raphael, Titian and other Renaissance artists, developed and adapted the imagery inherited from the Christian and classical past. The battle within the soul, the choice of life, the hunt of passion, the triple face of prudence and the dance of the graces are given dramatic habitation in Hamlet’s soliloquies, in the inner-play and in the savage contrast of sexuality between Gertrude and Ophelia. This book will be of interest to students of literature, drama, psychology and philosophy.
Polish Joke: And Other Plays (Books That Changed the World)
by David IvesA collection of four works from the American playwright known as &“wizardly . . . magical and funny . . . a master of language&” (The New York Times). This collection brings together four full-length plays from the same dazzling pen that produced the one-act comic masterpieces of All in the Timing. Polish Joke is about a young Polish-American&’s trip through ethnic stereotypes. Nine-year-old Midwesterner Jan Bogdan Sadlowski, nicknamed Jasiu, is told by his uncle that Poles are thought to be &“backward, stupid, inept, and gloomy.&” The only way out is for Jasiu &“to impersonate someone not Polish.&” In Don Juan in Chicago, a Renaissance innocent makes a deal with the devil, only to become a reluctant Latin lover. Ancient History is a comedy-drama about the holy war that breaks out when two people from two very different cultures fall in love. The Red Address paints a searing portrait of a man with a secret who is forced by tragedy into self-revelation. Praise for David Ives &“A pitcher with a great many tricks up his sleeve. He throws like an all-star . . . mixing comedic moods and styles with a dizzying assortment of changeups.&” —The New York Times Polish Joke &“Ives skillfully climbs the slippery slope of political incorrectness without a single mean-spirited stumble.&” —CurtainUp Don Juan in Chicago &“Ives invents an irresistible premise and has fun making good on its promise.&” —Los Angeles Times Ancient History &“A riveting theatrical experience.&” —Show Business The Red Address &“Mix Glengarry Glen Ross with Glen or Glenda . . . A tough-talking drama that mixes business sharks, blackmail, cross-dressing and murder.&” —Variety
Polish Romantic Drama: Three Plays in English Translation (Polish Theatre Archives Ser. #Vol. 5)
by Harold B. SegelThis is the first volume in English to be devoted entirely to Polish Romantic drama. It contains translations of three major plays: Forefathers; Eve, Part III, by Adam Mickiewics; The Un-Divine Comedy by Zygmunt Krasinski; and Fantazy by Juliusz Slowacki. In his highly informative introduction, Professor Segel discusses the plays against the background of the Romantic movement in Poland and points out their ideological and artistic importance. As products of a revolutionary Poland; they were written and published in Paris by writers who either resettled there after the Insurrection of 1830 or otherwise identified with the Great Emigration; they are permeated with the spirit of Romantic Rebellion, with pleas for universial justice, and with queries concerning the role of the poet in society. Brillant productions of the plays in Poland in the late nineteenth and early twentieth-centuries gave impetus to an entire tradition of modern Polish theatrical experimentation as well as dramatic writing which extends to the present day.
Political Adaptation in Canadian Theatre
by Kailin WrightIn Canada, adaptation is a national mode of survival, but it is also a way to create radical change. Throughout history, Canadians have been inheritors and adaptors: of political systems, stories, and customs from the old world and the new. More than updating popular narratives, adaptation informs understandings of culture, race, gender, and sexuality, as well as individual experiences. In Political Adaptation in Canadian Theatre Kailin Wright investigates adaptations that retell popular stories with a political purpose and examines how they acknowledge diverse realities and transform our past. Political Adaptation in Canadian Theatre explores adaptations of Canadian history, Shakespeare, Greek mythologies, and Indigenous history by playwrights who identify as English-Canadian, African-Canadian, French-Canadian, French, Kuna Rappahannock, and Delaware from the Six Nations. Along with new considerations of the activist potential of popular Canadian theatre, this book outlines eight strategies that adaptors employ to challenge conceptions of what it means to be Indigenous, Black, queer, or female. Recent cancellations of theatre productions whose creators borrowed elements from minority cultures demonstrate the need for a distinction between political adaptation and cultural appropriation. Wright builds on Linda Hutcheon's definition of adaptation as repetition with difference and applies identification theory to illustrate how political adaptation at once underlines and undermines its canonical source. An exciting intervention in adaptation studies, Political Adaptation in Canadian Theatre unsettles the dynamics of popular and political theatre and rethinks the ways performance can contribute to how one country defines itself.
Political Cyberformance: The Etheatre Project
by Christina PapagiannouliWritten from a practice-based perspective, this book focuses on the political character of 'cyberformance': the genre of digital performance that uses the Internet as a performance space. The Etheatre Project comprises a series of experimental cyberformances aiming to reconsider the characteristics of theatre in the Internet age.
Political Performance in Syria
by Edward ZiterPolitical Performance in Syria, charts the history of a theatre that has sought the expansion of civil society and imagined alternate political realities. In doing so, the manuscript situates the current use of performance and theatre by artists of the Syrian Revolution within a long history of political contestation.
Political and Protest Theatre after 9/11: Patriotic Dissent (Routledge Advances in Theatre & Performance Studies)
by Jenny SpencerThis collection documents and examines political and protest theatre produced between the 9/11 attacks in 2001 and Obama’s election in 2008 by British and American artists responding to their own governments’ actions and policies during this time. The plays take up topics such as the ongoing wars on terror, Blair’s support of U.S. policies, the flawed intelligence that led to the Iraq war, and illegal detentions and torture at Abu Ghraib. The authors argue that engaged artists faced a radically different sociopolitical context for their work after 9/11 compared to earlier social protest movements and new forms of theatre, and different emotional strategies were necessary to meet the challenges. The subtitle Patriotic Dissent suggests the double stance of many artists-- influenced by patriotic expressions of national solidarity, yet critical of the ways that patriotic language was put to use against others. The articles represent a broad range of theatre: Broadway musicals, documentary theatre, adaptations of classical theatre, new plays by British playwrights, street performances and installations, and musical concerts. The contributors’ case studies evaluate the effectiveness of important instances of political theatre and protest from this decade, arguing for the significance, relevance, and continuing necessity for evolving forms of political theatre today.
Politicizing Creative Economy: Activism and a Hunger Called Theater
by Dia Da CostaScholars increasingly view the arts, creativity, and the creative economy as engines for regenerating global citizenship, renewing decayed local economies, and nurturing a new type of all-inclusive politics. Dia Da Costa delves into these ideas with a critical ethnography of two activist performance groups in India: the Communist-affiliated Jana Natya Manch, and Bhutan Theatre, a community-based group of the indigenous Chhara people. As Da Costa shows, commodification, heritage, and management discussions inevitably creep into performance. Yet the ability of performance to undermine such subtle invasions make street theater a crucial site for considering what counts as creativity in the cultural politics of creative economy. Da Costa explores the precarious lives, livelihoods, and ideologies at the intersection of heritage projects, planning discourse, and activist performance. By analyzing the creators, performers, and activists involved--individuals at the margins of creative economy as well as society--Da Costa builds a provocative argument. Their creative economy practices may survive, challenge, and even reinforce the economies of death, displacement, and divisiveness used by the urban poor to survive.