Stage Direction Function
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Stage Direction Function
""Stage Direction Function"" explores the crucial, often-underestimated role of stage directions in shaping theatrical performance. More than mere instructions, stage directions function as dynamic cues influencing mood, movement, and meaning. The book reveals how playwrights use these directions to control atmosphere, direct actors' blocking, and subtly guide audience interpretation. By examining both canonical and contemporary plays, performance theory, and historical accounts, the book highlights the interdisciplinary nature of theatre studies. The book progresses systematically, first establishing foundational concepts such as the historical evolution of stage directions and their relationship to subtext. It then delves into core functions, analyzing how stage directions manipulate mood through lighting and sound, orchestrate movement to convey character dynamics, and ultimately shape the audience's understanding of the play's themes. It challenges the traditional view of stage directions as rigid commands, positioning them instead as invitations for creative interpretation, thus offering valuable insights for playwrights, directors, and actors alike.
Functions of Medieval English Stage Directions
Author: Philip Butterworth
language: en
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Release Date: 2022-07-29
When we speak of theatre, we think we know what a stage direction is: we tend to think of it as an authorial requirement, devised to be complementary to the spoken text and directed at those who put on a play as to what, when, where, how or why a moment, action or its staging should be completed. This is the general understanding to condition a theatrical convention known as the 'stage direction'. As such, we recognise that the stage direction is directed towards actors, directors, designers, and any others who have a part to play in the practical realisation of the play. And perhaps we think that this has always been the case. However, the term 'stage direction' is not a medieval one, nor does an English medieval equivalent term exist to codify the functions contained in extraneous manuscript notes, requirements, directions or records. The medieval English stage direction does not generally function in this way: it mainly exists as an observed record of earlier performance. There are examples of other functions, but even they are not directed at players or those involved in creating performance. More than 2000 stage directions from 40 or so plays and cycles have been included in the catalogue of the volume, and over 400 of those have been selected for analysis throughout the work. The purpose of this research is to examine the theatrical functions of medieval English stage directions as records of earlier performance. Examples of such functions are largely taken from outdoor scriptural plays. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars in theatre, medieval history and literature.
Performing the Unstageable
Author: Karen Quigley
language: en
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Release Date: 2020-02-20
From the gouging out of eyes in Shakespeare's King Lear or Sarah Kane's Cleansed, to the adaptation of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, theatre has long been intrigued by the staging of challenging plays and impossible texts, images or ideas. Performing the Unstageable: Success, Imagination, Failure examines this phenomenon of what the theatre cannot do or has not been able to do at various points in its history. The book explores four principal areas to which unstageability most frequently pertains: stage directions, adaptations, violence and ghosts. Karen Quigley incorporates a wide range of case studies of both historical and contemporary theatrical productions including the Wooster Group's exploration of Hamlet via the structural frame of John Gielgud's 1964 filmed production, Elevator Repair Service's eight-hour staging of Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and a selection of impossible stage directions drawn from works by such playwrights as Eugene O'Neill, Philip Glass, Caryl Churchill, Sarah Kane and Alistair McDowall. Placing theatre history and performance analysis in such a context, Performing the Unstageable values what is not possible, and investigates the tricky underside of theatre's most fundamental function to bring things to the place of showing: the stage.