This directory is to be used with THR 413 Plascript Analysis : script.vtheatre.net/413 [ 400 level writing intensive course ] 2008 200X > 215 > 413 [ right order of reading ]

[ mini-notes for classes + calendar points ]

anatoly.vtheatre.net/dramaturgy [ to be the central point for DRAMATURGY ]

2009 stagematrix.com

...


2007 class -- theatre blog 2002: maybe I confused them (and myself) with the non-chronological approach -- Williams > Chekhov > Ibsen > Strindberg...

Who is next? Pirandello? O'Neill?

How to connect with the theme (topic) WOMAN (including "Mother Courage") -- the Age of Woman

Lorca "The House of Bernardo Alba" (all female cast, one man) + Fornes (The Conduct of Life)? and Mamet's Oleanna?

To save Miller, Pinter, Shepard for THR413?

How does Beckett enter? Big periodization: Shakespeare -- Chekhov -- Adsurd & POMO

timetable --


SHOWS: 12th Night
11.1.02. After O'Neill: Miller, Beckett, [ Lorca(?), Shepard, Pinter, Fornes, Mamet -- THR413 ]

Outline of the page-chapter (content) -- each?

Dionysis-Biomechanics
Dionysis -- Biomechanics

Apollo-Method
Method -- Apollo

* new online scripts (showcases) -- The Taming of the Shrew and Oedipus Rex (season 2004-2005)

Summary

My Main Sites (clicable new windows):

script.vtheatre.net

FilmPlus.org

FilmStudy

shows

film.vtheatre.net

direct.vtheatre.net

act.vtheatre.net

Biomechanics

Method

Questions

An Introduction to Dramatic Literature and Theater Art. Contributors: Charles W. Cooper - author. Publisher: Ronald Press Co.. Place of Publication: New York. Publication Year: 1955 (?)

Shrew04

mini-Chekhov05: Schiele-man

M. Chekhov -- Acting One: Fundamentals

* The Poetics
Aristotle:

Structure:
Idea
Plot
Character

Texture:
Language
Music
Spectacle (Show)

123 Composition:
Exposition
Climax
Resolution

Genre: Comedy, Tragedy, Drama

Chronotope: Space + Time

Some of my notes are my wishes, I have to try it in class, if it works... "Art and Craft" -- I am still trying this idea (the difference).

Drama: A Guide to the Study of Plays by J. L. Styan; Peter Lang, 2000 - Chapter 1: —the Nature of Drama— - Chapter 2: —the Elements of Speech—(King Lear, 4.6.153) - Chapter 3: (The Merchant of Venice, 2.5.1)—seeing and Perceiving— - Chapter 4: —the Shape of the Stage— - Chapter 5: —the Player and His Part— - Chapter 6: —story, Structure and Theme— - Chapter 7: —genre, Mood and Mode— - Chapter 8: —realism and Beyond—

2007 -- postmodern (Stoppard'08)

...


Notes

2007 : my notes to No Exit [ where? one class, when?] + 3 Gents [ shake + comedy ]

2004: Sophocles + Shakespeare + Chekhov + Beckett

2005: new DOC (documents) directory: handouts, forms and etc. To be used for THR413 Playscript Analysis.

Five subdirectories: Antiquity, Modern Age, High Modernism, 20 Century and Absurd, Postmodern.

"Writing Segment" (option): write your own scene (one act) * as in THR413

GRAMMAR of DRAMA:

THR215 Dramatic Literature --- THR413 Playscript Analysis

authors --- themes --- subjects (topics)

CRAFT ---- ART

plays --- periods --- showcases

[ vertical hierarchy ]

textbook website

...

[ archives ]

What a temptation to focus this (Fall 2002) Dramlit around woman v. man, gender wars, and etc. Themes

Dec. 9, last week. "How I learned to drive": incest -- full circle since Oedipus, including 3 choruses. One step from "Death of A Salesman" and we are at pomo extreme minimalism. PM Self (forgiving the Other in order to forgive yourself).

Child and childhood = American culture (relativistic values?). How low is low? "Man with no limitations"?

NB. Cultures are the technologies: another protestant revolution = electronic. Full alienation from oneself, I as Others (time as space of existence: past and present games in play).

"Meaning of Life"? Even the word "meaning" we understand differently.

Symbolism: Drive.

Comedy or tragedy?

Great harm from the people who love us. Or "great love from the people that harm us"? Love your enemy! "Jerry Show" kind of love. No to love?

"the gift of how to survive" (Vogel): what does it mean to survive? To survive yourself?

Memory Play: memory as punishment.

"Catharsis purges the pity and the terror" (Vogel): "put behind us" 9/11. Debates on capital punishment. Limits of personal responsibility.

Understanding = Forgiveness
Godot06

Important and dangerous: the order of THR215 -- 2002 Fall central theme 'woman v. man'

Self and gender [ 10.21 ]

1. Strindberg

2. Pirandello

3. O'Neill

4. Lorca

5. Fornes

6. Miller

7. Pinter

8. Shepard

(how about 'Pygmalion' and Beckett -- without women)

[ Skip Wilde? ]

Connect back to Oedipus, Hamlet, Mother Courage, Lysistrata, Cherry Orchard, A Doll's House

Four Major Plays: A Doll House, the Wild Duck, Hedda Gabler, the Master Builder (Signet Classics (Paperback))

Among the greatest and best known of Ibsen's works, these four plays--A Doll's House, The Wild Duck, Hedda Gabler, The Master Builder--brilliantly embody his landmark contributions to the theater. Rich in symbolism and often autobiographical, each work deals convincingly with the human emotions of greed, fear, and sexual hostility, and confronts the external conflicts between reality and illusion. Reissue. Importance Of Being Earnest And Four Other Plays (Barnes & Noble Classics)

Summary

If I labeled both Dramlit and Playscript classes as "Dramatic Analysis for Actors and Directors" should I let "actor" and/or "director" to narrate?

Who?

Notes

Maybe in THR413 I could start with simple plays (or even movies) and go back to the masterpieces.

* Chekhov and 2005 Chekhov * Farces

Next: THR413 Playscript Analysis
The Cherry Orchard is Chekhov's last play, written in 1903 and 1904 when he was obviously dying of tuberculosis. Like The Seagull (1895), he labeled this work a "comedy in four acts." This accords with the ancient Greek conception, in which comedy is concerned with foibles in the day-to-day lives of ordinary people, while tragedy deals with great souls, elevated themes, and the workings of fate.

The uncertainty, irresolution, love, hope, idealism, pragmatism, moral weakness, yearning, self-deception, miscommunication, triumph, loss and suffering that characterize The Cherry Orchard certainly fit into this notion of comedy. What about the happy ending? Well, despite the fact that some of the characters seem destined for aborted dreams, Lopahin scores a financial coup, and a newly solvent Madame Ranevsky zips off to Paris (and to her profligate lover). Not bad for "real life."

The Cherry Orchard presents a microcosm of Chekhov's world. You have the ancient serf who yearns for the old regime (Firs);the profligate and ineffectual landowners (Madame Ranevsky, Gaev, Semyonov-Pishtchik) landowners, unable to cope with the changing world; the idealistic but brittle intellectual (Trofimov); and, finally, the New Man (Lopahin), whose pragmatism and energy allow him to influence events, rather than being crushed by them.

Among this cast of characters, Chekhov, the physician and public health worker, most closely resembles Lopahin, who observes, "I get up at five and work from morning to night. . . I see lots of people, see what they're like. And you just try to get anything accomplished: you'll see how few decent, honest people there really are." (p. 358)

Meanwhile, Trofimov represents the late 19th century Russian intellectuals who spout theories, but have no intention of accomplishing them, "We have to seek out the truth, you know. Most of the people in this country aren't working toward anything. . . They certainly don't do much." (p. 357) [This from a man who has just spent five years lolling around, sponging off the Ranevsky family.]

3-Sisters (THR413)
SAMPLE:

[dramlit] "Glass Menagerie" (200 words)

Although Tom has most of the lines and the play is a memory of his, I think that Laura is the main character. Tom must be somewhat obsessed with the life of his sister. She has a mostly easy life in his eyes. She sits around the house and dusts off her glass collection. But if this really is Tom's memory, why do we see so vividly Laura's feelings and struggles that I think Tom would not be in tune with. There are scenes that Tom was not present for, so how do you account for that being part of his memory? The scene with Amanda and Laura about her skipping school was one that Tom was not present for. I think we see the most of Laura's true character in scenes where Tom is not present because they are not memories of Tom's. In that scene and the scence when Jim and Laura are alone, we see that Laura isn't as "crippled" as she thinks she is. She makes a break through telling the truth to her mother and having an intimate moment with a man. I think that Tom and Amanda's character's purposefully hinder Laura in their scenes together. The only reason she is "crippled" is because they do not tell her otherwise. I think Williams is successful in making the audience feel sorry for Laura and mad at her family for making you feel sorry.

[ see HOMEWORK page ]

2007 notes (in sub-directories?)