How popular culture helped to create class in nineteenth-century America

Packed with ideas, insider tips, and a touch of Broadway gossip! - this practical guide shows you, step by step, how to transform simple script readings into breathtaking, memorable, theatrical experiences...and how to do it on a shoestring. Written for anyone who wants to produce a successful reading, including professional and community theaters, actors, directors, producers, fundraisers, and educators. "Staged Reading Magic" is that rare resource you'll return to again and again. Distilling lessons learned form over 100 productions by one of New England's most distinguished/premier theater programs, this idea-packed handbook is a theater production classic.

Play Readings: A Complete Guide for Theatre Practitioners demystifies the standards and protocols of a play reading, demonstrating how to create effective and evocative readings for those new to or inexperienced with the genre. It examines all of the essential considerations involved in readings, including the use of the venue, pre-reading preparations, playwright/director communication, editing/adapting stage directions, casting, using the limited rehearsal time effectively, simple "staging" suggestions, working with actors, handling complex stage directions, talkbacks, and limiting the use of props, costumes, and music. A variety of readings are covered, including readings of musicals, operas, and period plays, for comprehensive coverage of this increasingly prevalent production form.

Scrutinizing the critical tendency to label texts or writers as "postmodern", scholar Stephen Watt argues that "reading post modernly" merely implies reading culture more broadly. In contemporary drama, Watt considers postmodernity less a question of genre or media than a mode of subjectivity shared by both playwright and audience. 6 illustrations.

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Despite the popular myth that plays arrive at the theater fully formed and ready for production, the truth is that for centuries, most scripts have been developed through a collaborative process in rehearsal and in concert with other theater artists. David Kahn and Donna Breed provide the first codified approach to this time-honored method of play development, with a flexible methodology that takes into account differing environments and various stages of formation. Directors can use this unique guidebook for new play development from the beginning to the end of the process. Kahn and Breed explore ways of choosing new projects, talk about where to find new scripts, and explore the legal aspects of script development. They present a detailed system for theatrical analysis of the new script and show how to continue exploration and development of the script within the laboratory of the theater. Most importantly, they delineate the parameters of the relationship between the director and the playwright, offering proven methods to help the playwright and help facilitate the healthy development of the script. Breed and Kahn offer suggestions on casting, incorporating rewrites, and script handling plus how and when to use audience response and how to decide what step to take next. They also include extended interviews with developmental directors, dramaturgs, and playwrights, who give credence to the new script development process. In short, Kahn and Breed demystify a common, though often convoluted, theater process, providing a unique codification of ways to work on new plays.