Paragraph 1: Plot Summary -- Describe in one paragraph the storyline of the play (six or seven sentences).
Paragraph 2: Theme(s) (Meaning or premise) -- What is the playwright saying to us? What is the point of the story or plot? What comment is the writer making about society? Support your theme statement from an action, dialogue or scene from the play.
Paragraph 3: Form -- tragedy, comedy, melodrama, or tragicomedy? Why you believe it is a particular type of play by using examples from the play (refer to definitions in texts to justify your selections).
Paragraph 4: Conclusion -- Discuss the play's universality. Will it withstand time? 100, 1000 years? Why? Personal Opinion (Summary).
"Life is a moderately good play with a badly written third act" ~ Truman Capote
"Those who stand for nothing fall for anything" ~ Alexander Hamilton
Useful Questions to Ask Yourself about a Script Under Review 1. Is there anything special about the title? Does it focus on a character, the milieu, or a theme? Is it taken from a quotation or is an allusion? Does it contain a point of view or suggest a mood?
2. Make a note of unrealistic elements and consider their meaning. Does it include documentary material and, if so, to what effect?
3. Is there a main theme? Consider the tempo of the various sections?
4. How many acts and scenes are there? What motivates the divisions of the play and how are they marked (curtains, blackouts, etc.)?
5. What are the retrospective elements of the play and are they explicit or implicit?
6. Is there secondary action and what is its relationship with the main action?
7. Consider the characters entrances and exits and how they are motivated?
8. Is there any difference between playing time (the time it takes to perform the play) and illusory time (the time the action is supposed to take)? What is the relationship between the two, if any?
9. Where is the play enacted? Is the playwright vague or exact about the environment? Is this important?
10. How does the playwright economize with the number of roles? Could any be omitted or doubled? What function do the various secondary characters have?
11. Who is the protagonist? The antagonist?
12. What are the relationships among the characters and how do they change?
13. Is the play in verse, prose, or a mixture?
14. Is the play a translation? Can you compare it to the original? With other translations? Are there significant differences?
15. Is the playwright making significant points of interpretation with the use of punctuation? With breaks and overlaps? With silence?
My live students are no longer the prime users of Theatre w/Anatoly web-pages. The cyber-readers are. The websites are in transition to this new audience. In class I, myself, is a link between what I teach and what I direct. On the web I have to create the connection between theory and practice. Chekhov (left) is a part of the 2005 season and a writer we study in THR215 Dramatic Literature class in the Fall. Read "Chekhov's Pages" read the plays, the production notes, subscribe to open forums.
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Anatoly 7.4.05
bedfordstmartins.com/jacobus
write a scene at the end of THR215 Dramatic Literature (using the style of your favorite playwright)
bedfordstmartins.com/jacobus
