Course Description

Course Description

We will spend most of our time reading plays to find out whatever we can about them, particularly what they say and how they say it. But we will not only be concerned with the words on the page: the task is to read theatrically, to understand elements in the script that the words might only indicate but that nonetheless shape the play in performance (given circumstances, style, technical elements).

“A play in a book is only the shadow of a play and not even a clear shadow of it… The printed script of a play is hardly more than an architect’s blueprint of a house not yet built or [a house] built and destroyed. The color, the grace and levitation, the structural pattern in motion, the quick interplay of live beings, suspended like fitful lightning in a cloud, these things are the play, not the words on paper nor the thoughts and ideas of an author.” –Tennessee Williams

Our our goal is to be able to make sense of a script, to gain a comprehensive theatrical understanding of it. We need to use our imaginations to render theatrical that which is written! There is not just one way to read a play, not just one correct interpretation of a given script, but no interpretation is valid unless it makes sense of the script.

You will not be shown one method for script analysis. What we are after is making complete enough sense of a play to mount a coherent production. But that goal can be achieved from several directions, and that is why we will attack the plays we read in different ways.

Assignments

Students will select two scripts that they wish to perform as a script-in-hand public reading. Students will also each be assigned a script that they will present to the class. In a class where so much depends on class discussion, attendance and participation are also major obligations. There will be outside reading of theory as we look to understand how various theater makers look at approaching scripts.

Grading Policy