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9780809311101

Backwards and Forwards: A Technical Manual for Reading Plays

by
  • ISBN13:

    9780809311101

  • ISBN10:

    0809311100

  • Edition: 1st
  • Format: Paperback
  • Copyright: 1983-07-07
  • Publisher: UCP

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Looking to rent a book? Rent Backwards and Forwards: A Technical Manual for Reading Plays [ISBN: 9780809311101] for the semester, quarter, and short term or search our site for other textbooks by Ball, David. Renting a textbook can save you up to 90% from the cost of buying.

Summary

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 play's most important elements, thus permitting interpretation based on the foundation of the play rather than its details. UsingHamletas 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 Forwardsis also a fine playwriting manual because the structures it describes are the primary tools of the playwright.

Author Biography

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.

Table of Contents

Foreword vii
Introduction 3(4)
Part One: Shape 7(30)
1. What Happens That Makes Something Else Happen?
9(3)
2. And What Happens Next?
12(3)
3. But Do It Backwards
15(4)
4. Stasis and Intrusion
19(6)
5. Obstacle, Conflict
25(7)
6. Ignorance Is Bliss
32(3)
7. Things Theatrical
35(2)
Part Two: Methods 37(42)
8. Exposition
39(6)
9. Forwards: Hungry for Next
45(15)
10. Missing Persons (Character)
60(8)
11. Image
68(8)
12. Theme
76(3)
Part Three: Tricks of the Trade 79
13. Background Information
81(2)
14. Trusting the Playwright
83(2)
15. Families
85(1)
16. Generalities: Mood, Atmosphere
86(1)
17. The Unique Factor
87(2)
18. Changing Eras
89(3)
19. Climax
92(1)
20. Beginnings/Endings
93(1)
21. Rereading
94(1)
22. What Next?
95

Supplemental Materials

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