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Backwards and Forwards : A Technical Manual for Reading Plays

Michael Langham, David Ball

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Backwards and Forwards : A Technical Manual for Reading Plays

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Definitive guide to reading plays.

Recommendation: Backwards and Forwards is a must-read for theatre and literature students and practitioners. The book offers a unique and comprehensive approach to script analysis that complements traditional methods. David Ball's expertise shines through in this definitive guide that has been essential for over 35 years.

Note: While we do our best to ensure the accuracy of cover images, ISBNs may at times be reused for different editions of the same title which may hence appear as a different cover.

Backwards and Forwards : A Technical Manual for Reading Plays

Regular price
Unit price
per
Compare to estimated retail price: S$40.45  
Condition guide
ISBN: 9780809311101
Date of Publication: 1983-07-07
Format: Paperback
Related Collections: Art
Goodreads rating: 4.12
(rated by 1649 readers)

Description

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.Using Hamlet as 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 Forwards is also a fine playwriting manual because the structures it describes are the primary tools of the playwright.
 

Definitive guide to reading plays.

Recommendation: Backwards and Forwards is a must-read for theatre and literature students and practitioners. The book offers a unique and comprehensive approach to script analysis that complements traditional methods. David Ball's expertise shines through in this definitive guide that has been essential for over 35 years.

Note: While we do our best to ensure the accuracy of cover images, ISBNs may at times be reused for different editions of the same title which may hence appear as a different cover.

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