Reaffirms the position of directors (Peter Brook, Tyrone Guthrie, Peter Hall, and others) concerning the "balance of power" between director and playwright in transforming a playscript into a theatrical performance. (PD)

The recent growth in popularity among college students of dramatic interpretation in forensic competition justifies an examination of textual considerations and resultant criteria important to the evaluation of dramatic literature. The first considerations of the student contemplating the dramatic interpretation event are the selection of material…

Noting that scholars have too willingly accepted Plato's assumption that one could not successfully be both an actor and a rhapsode (reciter or singer of epic poetry), this paper suggests that placing the "mixed style" of the rhapsode's performance art within the context of the Homeric sensibility and the cultural shift into literacy…

Presents a rhetorical perspective for examining Shakespearean dramatic texts and an instructional framework for translating that perspective into the teaching of solo performance of Shakespearean dramatic literature. Describes techniques for implementing classroom performance that will develop and demonstrate student understanding of the text.…

That a play has one central action which is its formal cause is the most influential interpretative idea to emerge among theatre writers since the old model of situation/incident/complication/climax/denouement. Unfortunately, the action concept has been insufficiently developed, excessive hopes have been pinned on it, and it has become a reductive…

Presents the text of an interview with John Hodgson, British proponent of educational theater. His use of improvisation as a teaching technique and contrasts between the American and British systems of educational theater are discussed. (JMF)

It is a surprising fact that a student of speech can compete in prose, poetry, drama, and program oral interpretation without ever needing to develop two characters, without ever needing to establish two separate focal points in the same piece, and without ever learning to adapt to a new style of writing. This can be done if the student simply…

Argues that by acting out, rather than only reading Shakespeare's plays, they can be better interpreted and appreciated. (SRT)

Describes the use of Bertolt Brecht's theories regarding literature and performance. Details the selected use of Reader's Theatre techniques in analyzing and staging literature in the secondary classroom environment. (JMF)

Teachers, researchers, and performers in the field of Performance Studies often find themselves defining what it is that they do. Boundaries are often hard to draw, however. Is the work they are doing "art?" The distinction is important to funding agencies, tenure committees, and university administration. One definition of art…

The (CBS Radio) Columbia Workshop, formed in 1936, encouraged the writing and production of creative, non-traditional radio drama such as Archibald MacLeish's verse play "The Fall of the City," which aired on April 11, 1937. MacLeish considered radio the ideal medium for poetry because it offers only aural stimuli without competition…

Most performer-writers accept the writing process simply as a means to an end: the shared performance event with a live audience. While writer-performers regard a script as more important than the performance, a solo performance is, however, a showcase of the artist's talent, and creating one's own text offers the performer artistic control. Some…

One of the rhetorical dimensions on which theatre exists is the rhetoric of production. This implies that the production, through examples, takes and urges an attitude toward the text. This argument provides a foundation for both the nature and the implications of interpreters theatre productions that advocate social issues. Theatrical…

The novel "The Women's Room," by Marilyn French, deserves an audience both because of the timely feminist issues it addresses and because of its formal experimentation with points of view. An interpretive theatre version of the story was performed twice in 1982-83, using a script adapted from the novel, and a modified chamber theatre…

Discusses the development of drama as a learning tool for children's language development. Applies James Britton's methods of language classification to the construction of functional categories of language that operate within the framework of drama and creative dramatics. (RL)