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Backwards and Forwards: A Technical Manual for Reading Plays

by David Ball

Backwards and Forwards: A Technical Manual for Reading Plays Cover

ISBN13: 9780809311101
ISBN10: 0809311100
Condition: Standard
All Product Details

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Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

This guide to playreading for students and practitioners of both theater and literature complements, rather then contradicts or repeats, traditional methods of literary analysis of scripts.

Ball developed his method during his work as Literary Director at the Guthrie Theater, building his guide on the crafts playwrights of every period and style use to make their plays stageworthy. The text is full of tools for students and practitioners to use as they investigate plot, character, theme, exposition, imagery, motivation/obstacle/conflict, theatricality, and the other crucial parts of the superstructure of a play. He includes guides for discovering what the playwright considers the plays most important elements, thus permitting interpretation based on the foundation of the play rather than its details.

Using Hamlet as illustration, Ball assures a familiar base for illustrating script-reading techniques as well as examples of the kinds of misinterpretation readers can fall prey to by ignoring the craft of the playwright. Of immense utility to those who want to put plays on the stage (actors, directors, designers, production specialists) Backwards and Forwards is also a fine playwriting manual because the structures it describes are the primary tools of the playwright.

Review:

“In fewer than 100 pages, this marvelously instructive book shows how to unlock the secrets of plot, character, theme, exposition, imagery, motivation, conflict, theatricality and pacing… Our editor says he learned more about dramatic structure in the few hours he spent with this 96-page book than he has in his 20-years of theater experience.”Stage Directions

About the Author

David Ball is Professor of playwriting, acting, theater history, and literature at Carnegie-Mellon University and Artistic Director, Pittsburgh Metropolitan Stage Company. He has published two plays, Assassin! and an adaptation of Woyzeck, and has written and directed more than one hundred plays in professional, academic, and community theaters.

Product Details

ISBN:
9780809311101
Subtitle:
A Technical Manual for Reading Plays
Author:
Ball, David
Foreword:
Langham, Michael
Author:
Langham, Michael
Publisher:
Southern Illinois University Press
Location:
Carbondale :
Subject:
Theater
Subject:
Composition & Creative Writing - Play/Scriptwriting
Subject:
Drama
Subject:
Shakespeare, William
Subject:
Theater - Playwriting
Subject:
Theater -- Production and direction.
Subject:
Theater - General
Edition Number:
1st Edition
Edition Description:
1st Edition
Series Volume:
8
Publication Date:
July 1983
Binding:
Paperback
Grade Level:
College/higher education:
Language:
English
Illustrations:
Yes
Pages:
104
Dimensions:
8.50x5.42x.40 in. .30 lbs.

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