Script Analysis for Actors, Directors, and Designers, 3rd Edition

A Final Word about Dramatic Form

This is the end of a long, close look at the wide-ranging subject of play script analysis. Yet one of the difficulties with analytical principles when they are defined and explained in a textbook is that they can remain inactive on the printed page. Or worse, the intellectual frame of mind required for analytical study interposes itself between the actors, director, and designer on one hand and the concrete human behavior that is the lifeblood of drama in performance on the other. When this happens readers will remain just as mystified about how plays work as they may have been before they read the book, despite the best efforts of author and teachers. One remedy is to consider that the principles might work better ...