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Writing Game: A Comedy
by David LodgeDavid Lodge’s first full-length play examines that curious fixture in the writing game where the amateurs meet the professionals – on a course in creative writing. Maude, author of nine bestsellers, and Simon, with one sensational success to his name, are veterans of this particular course: Leo, a campus-based American novelist astounded by the dilettante approach of the English, is the odd man out.The idea is to put the students under pressure, but in the converted barn that houses the tutors, professional and sexual tensions, past slights and current rivalries rapidly build to a fierce head of steam. Out of these pressures, David Lodge distils a sharply observed comedy of the problems and preoccupations of the writer as the professionals, striving to explain to enthusiastic beginners how to do it, are forced to confront an altogether trickier question: why on earth do they themselves write in the first place? Delicately probing, nimbly parodic, uncomfortably on target, Lodge’s incisive study of writers at work and at odds will bring the pleasure of recognition to all readers of fiction – and to most of those in the game.
Writing Home
by Alan BennettAlready a bestseller, this is a wonderfully entertaining collection of Alan Bennett's prose writings. Writing Home brings together diaries, reminiscences and reviews to give us a unique and unforgettable portrait of one of England's leading playwrights. As a memoir it covers the production of his very first play, Forty Years On, which starred John Gieldgud. His television series 'Talking Heads' has become a modern-day classic; as part of the 1960s revue 'Beyond the Fringe' Bennett helped to kick-start the English satire revolution, and has since remained one of our leading dramatists, most recently with The History Boys at the National Theatre. At the heart of the book is The Lady in The Van, since adapted into a radio play featuring Dame Maggie Smith. It is the true account of Miss Mary Shepherd, a homeless tramp who took up residence in Bennett's garden and stayed for fifteen years. This new edition also includes Bennett's introduction to his Oscar-nominated screenplay for The Madness of King George and his more recent diaries.
Writing in Coffee Shops: Confessions of a Playwright
by Ryan CraigWhat makes someone a playwright?How do their identities and ideas interweave and co-exist?What permanent truths can we discern from examining existing texts?How can we write theatre that encapsulates the contemporary moment?How do we develop an idea from the embryonic impulse to a full and robust piece of theatre? In this fresh, lively and often very funny book, playwright Ryan Craig makes a case for the vitality of playwriting in our contemporary world and offers a way into writing those plays.From the very first moment of the process, as you sit in a coffee shop, staring at your 'laptop yawning open like some big, gormless mouth, the screen a flickering blank', to seeing your play staged and reviewed, the author takes you through the complete journey. Drawing on his own experience of writing for theatres such as the National, Hampstead and Tricycle and Menier Chocolate Factory, TV drama scripts for BBC, ITV and Channel Four, radio plays and adaptation, as well as commercial theatre, the author explores what practical tools the dramatist can use to write plays that build bridges between us. Full of practical advice for the aspiring - and practising - playwright, this book is also an important call-to-arms for playwrights everywhere, arguing for its necessity in the context of an increasingly fractured, distracted, disconnected world.
Writing in Coffee Shops: Confessions of a Playwright
by Ryan CraigWhat makes someone a playwright?How do their identities and ideas interweave and co-exist?What permanent truths can we discern from examining existing texts?How can we write theatre that encapsulates the contemporary moment?How do we develop an idea from the embryonic impulse to a full and robust piece of theatre? In this fresh, lively and often very funny book, playwright Ryan Craig makes a case for the vitality of playwriting in our contemporary world and offers a way into writing those plays.From the very first moment of the process, as you sit in a coffee shop, staring at your 'laptop yawning open like some big, gormless mouth, the screen a flickering blank', to seeing your play staged and reviewed, the author takes you through the complete journey. Drawing on his own experience of writing for theatres such as the National, Hampstead and Tricycle and Menier Chocolate Factory, TV drama scripts for BBC, ITV and Channel Four, radio plays and adaptation, as well as commercial theatre, the author explores what practical tools the dramatist can use to write plays that build bridges between us. Full of practical advice for the aspiring - and practising - playwright, this book is also an important call-to-arms for playwrights everywhere, arguing for its necessity in the context of an increasingly fractured, distracted, disconnected world.
Writing Left-Handed: Collected Essays
by David HareThe leading British writer-director of his generation, David Hare is also one of the most productive. The last two years have seen the outstanding success of two stage plays, The Secret Rapture and Racing Demon, and the release of two films, Paris by Night and Strapless.The pieces collected here, written left-handed, form both a concealed professional autobiography and a lucid commentary on his work.
Writing 'Master Class'
by David PownallWriting Master Class is the biography of David Pownall’s play, Master Class (1983), from conception to coming of age. Threaded through the account of the inception and development of the piece are twists of authorial life-story necessary for the telling. Whereas a novel or poem can be kept a secret until it is properly finished, a play has to go out to meet the people early. On the day the script is put into the hands of actors, the soul of the thing passes out of the author’s control. It can be bent, battered, warped – or improved within its being far beyond expectations. As a drama of dictatorship in art and the cleverness needed to evade its worst manifestations, Master Class has been at large for thirty years, produced in twenty countries, in some several times. What has been done to it, how it has fared, is touched upon but the main story in this book is the making of the piece. This is a fascinating insight into the playwright’s craft.
Writing Musical Theater
by A. Cohen S. RosenhausThis guide to the modern musical covers the entire process of creating a show, from finding and working out the initial idea, through to the ways in which writers can market a finished show and get it produced. For the interested theatregoer and writers, it is written in a lively and user-friendly style and illustrated with numerous examples.
Writing Performances: The Stages of Dorothy L. Sayers
by C. DowningAfter Dorothy L. Sayers became famous for her fictional sleuth, Lord Peter Wimsey, she began investigating the mysteries of Anglo-Catholic Christianity, writing plays for both stage and radio. However, because her modernist contemporaries disdained both best-sellers and religious fiction, Sayers has been largely overlooked by the academy. Writing Performances is the first work to position Sayers' diverse writings within the critical climate of high modernism. Employing exuberant illustrations from Sayers' detective fiction to make theoretical issues accessible, the book employs insights from performance theory to argue that Sayers, though a popularizer, presciently anticipated the postmodern ironizing of Enlightenment rationality and scientific objectivity.
Writing Your First Play
by Roger HallWriting Your First Play provides the beginning playwright with the tools and motivation to tell a story through dramatic form. Based in a series of exercises which gradually grow more complex, the books helps the reader to understand the basic elements of drama, conflict, and action. The exercises help the reader to become increasingly sophisticated in the use of dramatic formats, turning simple ideas into a viable play. Topics include: the role of action in drama;developing action and conflict to reveal character;writing powerful and persuasive dialog;writing from personal experience:pros and cons;how to begin the story and develop the storyline. This new edition is thoroughly updated and contains new examples based on contemporary plays. The author has added additional writing exercises and a new student-written one act play. It also contains a new chapter on how to sell your play once it is written.With examples based on student work, this text both inspires and educates the student and fledgling playwright, providing solid tools and techniques for the craft of writing a drama. Roger A. Hall, a professor of theatre at James Madison University, had taught playwriting for nearly 20 years. Many of his students have gone on to write for theatre, television, and the screen. He has written numerous plays and articles and has acted and directed extensively in the theatre.
Writing Your First Play
by Roger HallWriting Your First Play provides the beginning playwright with the tools and motivation to tell a story through dramatic form. Based in a series of exercises which gradually grow more complex, the books helps the reader to understand the basic elements of drama, conflict, and action. The exercises help the reader to become increasingly sophisticated in the use of dramatic formats, turning simple ideas into a viable play. Topics include: the role of action in drama;developing action and conflict to reveal character;writing powerful and persuasive dialog;writing from personal experience:pros and cons;how to begin the story and develop the storyline. This new edition is thoroughly updated and contains new examples based on contemporary plays. The author has added additional writing exercises and a new student-written one act play. It also contains a new chapter on how to sell your play once it is written.With examples based on student work, this text both inspires and educates the student and fledgling playwright, providing solid tools and techniques for the craft of writing a drama. Roger A. Hall, a professor of theatre at James Madison University, had taught playwriting for nearly 20 years. Many of his students have gone on to write for theatre, television, and the screen. He has written numerous plays and articles and has acted and directed extensively in the theatre.
Written Voices, Spoken Signs: Tradition, Performance, and the Epic Text (Center for Hellenic Studies Colloquia #1)
by Egbert Bakker and Ahuvia KahaneWritten Voices, Spoken Signs is a stimulating introduction to new perspectives on Homer and other traditional epics. Taking advantage of recent research on language and social exchange, the nine essays in this volume focus on performance and audience reception of oral poetry. These innovative essays by leading scholars of Homer, oral poetics, and epic invite us to rethink some key concepts for an understanding of traditional epic poetry. Egbert Bakker examines the epic performer's use of time and tense in recounting a past that is alive. Tackling the question of full-length performance of the monumental Iliad, Andrew Ford considers the extent to which the work was perceived as a coherent whole in the archaic age. John Miles Foley addresses questions about spoken signs and the process of reference in epic discourse, and Ahuvia Kahane studies rhythm as a semantic factor in the Homeric performance. Richard Martin suggests a new range of performance functions for the Homeric simile. And Gregory Nagy establishes the importance of one feature of epic language, the ellipsis. These six essays centered on Homer engage with fundamental issues that are addressed by three essays primarily concerned with medieval epic: those by Franz Bäuml on the concept of fact; by Wulf Oesterreicher on types of orality; and by Ursula Schaefer on written and spoken media. In their Introduction the editors highlight the underlying approach and viewpoints of this collaborative volume.
Wuthering Heights: Illustrations By Marjolein Bastin (Modern Plays)
by Emily BrontëI am Heathcliff! Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.The Yorkshire moors tell an epic story of love, revenge and redemption. Rescued from the Liverpool docks as a child, Heathcliff is adopted by the Earnshaws and taken to live at Wuthering Heights.He finds a kindred spirit in Catherine Earnshaw and a fierce love ignites. When forced apart, a brutal chain of events is unleashed.Shot through with music, dance, passion and hope, Emma Rice transforms Emily Brontë's masterpiece into a powerful and uniquely theatrical experience. This edition was published to coincide with the world premiere at Bristol Old Vic in October 2021.
Wuthering Heights: Illustrations By Marjolein Bastin (Modern Plays)
by Emily BrontëI am Heathcliff! Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.The Yorkshire moors tell an epic story of love, revenge and redemption. Rescued from the Liverpool docks as a child, Heathcliff is adopted by the Earnshaws and taken to live at Wuthering Heights.He finds a kindred spirit in Catherine Earnshaw and a fierce love ignites. When forced apart, a brutal chain of events is unleashed.Shot through with music, dance, passion and hope, Emma Rice transforms Emily Brontë's masterpiece into a powerful and uniquely theatrical experience. This edition was published to coincide with the world premiere at Bristol Old Vic in October 2021.
Wuthering Heights (Modern Plays)
by Emily BrontëI am Heathcliff! Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.The Yorkshire moors tell an epic story of love, revenge and redemption.Rescued from the Liverpool docks as a child, Heathcliff is adopted by the Earnshaws and taken to live at Wuthering Heights.He finds a kindred spirit in Catherine Earnshaw and a fierce love ignites. When forced apart, a brutal chain of events is unleashed.Shot through with music, dance, passion and hope, Emma Rice transforms Emily Brontë's masterpiece into a powerful and uniquely theatrical experience.This edition was published to coincide with the world premiere at Bristol Old Vic in October 2021.
Wuthering Heights (Modern Plays)
by Emily BrontëI am Heathcliff! Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.The Yorkshire moors tell an epic story of love, revenge and redemption.Rescued from the Liverpool docks as a child, Heathcliff is adopted by the Earnshaws and taken to live at Wuthering Heights.He finds a kindred spirit in Catherine Earnshaw and a fierce love ignites. When forced apart, a brutal chain of events is unleashed.Shot through with music, dance, passion and hope, Emma Rice transforms Emily Brontë's masterpiece into a powerful and uniquely theatrical experience.This edition was published to coincide with the world premiere at Bristol Old Vic in October 2021.
Wuthering Heights (Modern Plays)
by Emily BrontëWe don't in general take to strangers here… unless they take to us first.Channelling Emily Brontë's piercing wit and fierce emotion, Inspector Sands bring their characteristic humour, passion and pathos to the infamous love story of Catherine and Heathcliff. Wuthering Heights contains violence, peril, social awkwardness, exhilarating music, high winds and mud.Wuthering Heights was developed with the support of Bristol Old Vic Ferment, UCL Culture, The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama and Jacksons Lane, and was co-produced by China Plate, Inspector Sands, Royal & Derngate, Northampton, and Oxford Playhouse. This edition was published to coincide with the world premiere and UK tour in May 2023.
Wuthering Heights (Modern Plays)
by Emily BrontëWe don't in general take to strangers here… unless they take to us first.Channelling Emily Brontë's piercing wit and fierce emotion, Inspector Sands bring their characteristic humour, passion and pathos to the infamous love story of Catherine and Heathcliff. Wuthering Heights contains violence, peril, social awkwardness, exhilarating music, high winds and mud.Wuthering Heights was developed with the support of Bristol Old Vic Ferment, UCL Culture, The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama and Jacksons Lane, and was co-produced by China Plate, Inspector Sands, Royal & Derngate, Northampton, and Oxford Playhouse. This edition was published to coincide with the world premiere and UK tour in May 2023.
Wyndham Lewis: Collected Poems and Plays
by Wyndham LewisAt the beginning of his career Wyndham Lewis (1882-1957) wrote vigorous poetry, and plays which in their form and vehement characterisation resemble the later work of Samuel Beckett. This volume includes major works: One-Way Song , and Enemy of the Stars in its two very different versions, as well as other writings that can now be seen as central to the formation of Lewis's work. The plays and poems crackle with ferocious energy, concentrated and brilliant, as Lewis creates a literary equivalent to the visual revolutions of Cubism and Vorticism. He explores how an artist should think and write in an oppressive world, the relationship between imagination and action. This edition, with Alan Munton's annotations, is a definitive text based on Lewis's own final corrections. An introduction by C.H. Sisson places these radical works in the context of Lewis's other writings.
Wyndham Lewis: Collected Poems and Plays
by Alan Munton C. H. SissonAt the beginning of his career Wyndham Lewis (1882-1957) wrote vigorous poetry, and plays which in their form and vehement characterisation resemble the later work of Samuel Beckett. This volume includes major works: One-Way Song , and Enemy of the Stars in its two very different versions, as well as other writings that can now be seen as central to the formation of Lewis's work. The plays and poems crackle with ferocious energy, concentrated and brilliant, as Lewis creates a literary equivalent to the visual revolutions of Cubism and Vorticism. He explores how an artist should think and write in an oppressive world, the relationship between imagination and action. This edition, with Alan Munton's annotations, is a definitive text based on Lewis's own final corrections. An introduction by C.H. Sisson places these radical works in the context of Lewis's other writings.
X (Modern Plays)
by Alistair McDowallIt's a tax write-off. This is where they send the new, the under-qualified, the old. And most of all the British. Mars is full of blonde Americans. It's like they're building the master race out there.Billions of miles from home, the lone research base on Pluto has lost contact with Earth. Unable to leave or send for help, the skeleton crew sit waiting.Waiting.Waiting long enough for time to start eating away at them.To lose all sense of it.To start seeing things in the dark outside.Alistair McDowall's play X premiered at the Royal Court on 30 March 2016 in the Jerwood Theatre Downstairs.
X (Modern Classics)
by Alistair McDowall“McDowall masterfully plants ideas that grow until they explode into extraordinary shapes. Filthy humour breaks down into a cracked algorithm of letters and loss … a play that will gnaw away at you. It's sci-fi – and theatre – at its best.” The StageBillions of miles from home, the lone research base on Pluto has lost contact with Earth. Unable to leave or send for help, the skeleton crew sit waiting.Waiting.Waiting long enough for time to start eating away at them.To lose all sense of it.To start seeing things in the dark outside.X premiered at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in 2016. This new Modern Classics edition features an introduction by Dr Cristina Delgado-García.
X (Modern Classics)
by Alistair McDowall“McDowall masterfully plants ideas that grow until they explode into extraordinary shapes. Filthy humour breaks down into a cracked algorithm of letters and loss … a play that will gnaw away at you. It's sci-fi – and theatre – at its best.” The StageBillions of miles from home, the lone research base on Pluto has lost contact with Earth. Unable to leave or send for help, the skeleton crew sit waiting.Waiting.Waiting long enough for time to start eating away at them.To lose all sense of it.To start seeing things in the dark outside.X premiered at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in 2016. This new Modern Classics edition features an introduction by Dr Cristina Delgado-García.
X’ntigone: after Sophocles (Modern Plays)
by Darren MurphySometimes a person needs to create an act that destroys the world because the world is broken.The virus has ravaged Thebes. Millions are dead and the economy has tanked. Vaccinations have been administered and the Festival of Liberty is imminent. Things are finally about to change. The countdown is on but leader Creon and his quarantined niece, the self-identifying X'ntigone, have unfinished business before the celebrations can commence. What happens when old-world order meets a radical new world vision? In this thrilling meditation on Sophocles' timeless Greek tragedy, political expediency meets the voice of a generation who want to tear down the power structures that have ill-served a crumbling state.Darren Murphy's X'ntigone is a fresh and vital discourse for our times, when even truth has been sacrificed at the altar of political gain and avarice.
X’ntigone: after Sophocles (Modern Plays)
by Darren MurphySometimes a person needs to create an act that destroys the world because the world is broken.The virus has ravaged Thebes. Millions are dead and the economy has tanked. Vaccinations have been administered and the Festival of Liberty is imminent. Things are finally about to change. The countdown is on but leader Creon and his quarantined niece, the self-identifying X'ntigone, have unfinished business before the celebrations can commence. What happens when old-world order meets a radical new world vision? In this thrilling meditation on Sophocles' timeless Greek tragedy, political expediency meets the voice of a generation who want to tear down the power structures that have ill-served a crumbling state.Darren Murphy's X'ntigone is a fresh and vital discourse for our times, when even truth has been sacrificed at the altar of political gain and avarice.
Xueqin and Xakespeare: Reading The Story of the Stone through Hamlet (Routledge Studies in Comparative Literature)
by Judith ForsythThis monograph offers a detailed consideration of the five-volume novel written by Cao Xueqin and translated into English as The Story of the Stone, when read through William Shakespeare’s drama Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, A Tragedy in Five Acts. The book builds on the superlative David Hawkes/John Minford English language translation, which is inspired by resonances between the English Shakespearean literary heritage and the dynasties-old Chinese literary tradition inherited by Cao Xueqin. The Introduction sets out the potential for the significant cultural exchange between these two great literary works, each an inexhaustible inspiration of artistic and scholarly re-interpretation. Two chapters bring into consideration two universal literary themes: patriarchy – filial obedience and family honour, and tragic romantic love. These chapters are structured so that a key episode in Hamlet provides the initial perspective, which is then carried through to an episode in The Story of the Stone which offers points of complementarity: in-depth interpretation draws on inter-textual, historical and contemporary contexts referenced from the immense body of scholarly research which has accumulated around these iconic works. The third chapter proposes a new reading of the problematic ‘shrew’ character in the novel, Wang Xi-feng, through tracing the similarities of the structure of the narration of her life and death with a Shakespearean five-act tragedy.