ABSTRACT
New Playwriting Strategies has become a canonical text in the study and teaching of playwriting, offering a fresh and dynamic insight into the subject. This thoroughly revised and expanded second edition explores and highlights the wide spread of new techniques that form contemporary theatre writing, as well as their influence on other dramatic forms.
Paul Castagno builds on the innovative plays of Len Jenkin, Mac Wellman, and the theories of Mikhail Bakhtin to investigate groundbreaking new techniques from a broad range of contemporary dramatists, including Sarah Ruhl, Suzan Lori-Parks and Young Jean Lee. New features in this edition include an in-depth study of the adaptation of classical texts in contemporary playwright and the utilizing new technologies, such as YouTube, Wikipedia and blogs to create alternative dramatic forms.
The author’s step-by-step approach offers the reader new models for:
- narrative
- dialogue
- character
- monologue
- hybrid plays
This is a working text for playwrights, presenting a range of illuminating new exercises suitable for everyone from the workshop student to the established writer. New Playwriting Strategies is an essential resource for anyone studying and writing drama today.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
chapter |18 pages
New Playwriting Strategies: Overview and Terms
part |116 pages
Strategies of Language and Character
chapter |22 pages
On Multivocality and Speech Genres
chapter |22 pages
Polyvocality and the Ascendancy of the Hybrid Play
chapter |24 pages
The Theatricality of Character
chapter |12 pages
The Transformation of Character
chapter |6 pages
Mac Wellman: Language-Based Character
chapter |20 pages
Crossover Poetics: Sarah Ruhl and Suzan-Lori Parks
part |98 pages
Strategies of Structure and Form