At last, for those who adapt literature into scripts, a how-to book that illuminates the process of creating a stageworthy play. Page to Stage describes the essential steps for constructing adaptations for any theatrical venue, from the college classroom to a professionally produced production. Acclaimed director Vincent Murphy offers students in theater, literary studies, and creative writing a clear and easy-to-use guidebook on adaptation. Its step-by-step process will be valuable to professional theater artists as well, and for script writers in any medium. Murphy defines six essential building blocks and strategies for a successful adaptation, including theme, dialogue, character, imagery, storyline, and action. Exercises at the end of each chapter lead readers through the transformation process, from choosing their material to creating their own adaptations. The book provides case studies of successful adaptations, including The Grapes of Wrath (adaptation by Frank Galati) and the author's own adaptations of stories by Samuel Beckett and John Barth. Also included is practical information on building collaborative relationships, acquiring rights, and getting your adaptation produced.

Our knowledge of the ancient theatre is limited by the textual and iconographic character of the evidence available to us: we cannot watch or otherwise experience an Athenian tragedy or comedy. These essays, by a distinguished group of international scholars, bridge the gap between the surviving literary and iconographic evidence and the realities of performance on the ancient Greek stage. This ambitious goal is reached by means of a detailed examination of several case-studies: the construction of dramatic space in Sophocles’ Antigone; the significance of the use of deictic pronouns in Sophocles’ Trachiniae; the theatrical and religious dynamics of the appearance of divine figures on stage; the relationship between the victory celebrations at the end of Aristophanic comedies and their counterparts in the after-performance real world; the investigation of nude or semi-nude female characters in Aristophanes; the staging of Clouds and the opening scene of Acharnians; the meditation on the metapoetics of the use of props in 5th-century comedy; the relationship between performance context and text through a close reading of a number of Aristophanic fragments; the way the scholia vetera on Frogs imagine and use questions of staging practice; and the potential Aeschylean authorship of some of stage-direction traceable in Aeschylus’ Eumenides and Diktoulkoi.

An exciting and creative approaches that links literacy and oracy in a way that children will enjoy. Performing poetry is also proven to boost self-esteem. Includes: * Audio downloadable resources with recordings of published poets and children performing their own work * Activities to develop speaking and listening skills * Model poems from which to work * Guidelines for progressing through the writing and performance process * A three stage model: preparation -- writing -- performing

Page and Stage narrows the gulf between printed page and performance to make script analysis for production or academic study more effective, efficient, and insightful. This text discusses a method for script analysis based on the idea that plays consist of "organized tension" that involves the audience and organizes their response. It examines the many forms of tension in plays--between actor and character, between the stage and the world of the play, between the present and the past, and between characters--by looking at stage space and time and a wide range of plays from Greek times to the present. Page and Stage addresses the paradox that play scripts are not complete works of dramatic art, and yet contain implicitly, if not explicitly, the intended performance.

One of the best-known practitioners of the ethnotheatre research tradition outlines its key principles and practices in this clear, concise volume, which covers the preparation of a dramatic presentation from the research and writing stages to the elements of stage production.