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Backwards & Forwards: A Technical Manual for Reading Plays by [David Ball, Michael Langham ]

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David Ball

Backwards & Forwards: A Technical Manual for Reading Plays Kindle Edition

by David Ball (Author), Michael Langham (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

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The best-selling script analysis book for thirty-five years

Considered an essential text since its publication thirty-five years ago, this guide for students and practitioners of both theater and literature complements, rather than contradicts or repeats, traditional methods of literary analysis of scripts.

Ball developed his method during his work as literary director at the Guthrie Theater, building his guide on the crafts playwrights of every period and style use to make their plays stageworthy. The text is full of tools for students and practitioners to use as they investigate plot, character, theme, exposition, imagery, conflict, theatricality, and the other crucial parts of the superstructure of a play. Also included are guides for discovering what the playwright considers a play’ s most important elements, thus permitting interpretation based on the foundation of the play rather than its details.

Using Shakespeare’s Hamlet as illustration, Ball assures a familiar base for clarifying script-reading techniques as well as exemplifying the kinds of misinterpretation readers can fall prey to by ignoring the craft of the playwright. Of immense utility to those who want to put plays on the stage (actors, directors, designers, production specialists) Backwards & Forwards is also a fine playwriting manual because the structures it describes are the primary tools of the playwright.

Print length

145 pages
Language

English
Publication date

13 November 2022
File size

23982 KB
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“In fewer than one hundred pages, this marvelously instructive book shows how to unlock the secrets of plot, character, theme, exposition, imagery, motivation, conflict, theatricality and pacing….Our editor says he learned more about dramatic structure in the few hours he spent with this ninety-six-page book than he has in his twenty years of theater experience.” - Stage Directions --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

David Ball was one of the nation's first theater literary directors when he served under Michael Langham at Minneapolis's Guthrie Theater. He later taught acting, directing, and script analysis at Lawrence, Carnegie Mellon, and Duke Universities. He was the artistic director of Pittsburgh's renowned Metro Theater and the literary director of the Pittsburgh Public Theater. David Ball's plays and adaptations have been frequently staged at professional repertory theaters throughout the United States and in Europe, including most recently his landmark adaptations of Moliere's Tartuffe, The Miser, and The Imaginary Invalid. His former theater and film students hold Oscars, Obies, Tonys, and Emmys, and his own work has been supported by the Ford, McKnight, and Shubert Foundations, and the National Endowment for the Arts. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0BMB6V5VJ
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 23982 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 145 pages

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413 ratings

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David Ball

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David Ball is an award-winning North Carolina novelist and playwright. He was born deep in New York's Catskill Mountains in 1942. His daddy and granddaddy were Prohibition era bootleggers, his mother an antiques dealer. His plays have been staged off-Broadway and in America's leading professional theaters. He taught writing, acting, and directing at Lawrence, Carnegie-Mellon, and Duke universities. For 28 years his book BACKWARDS AND FORWARDS has been one of the theater and film world's standard and best-selling texts for writers, directors, designers, and actors. His theater students have won Oscars, Emmies, Obies, and Tony awards. He was on the directing and writing staffs of the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, the Pittsburgh Metropolitan Stage Company and the Pittsburgh Public Theater, and North Carolina's Duke Stage Company. He has traversed the widest areas of North Carolina's deep swamps and lived to write about it. Brought up in Stamford, Connecticut, where the only swamps were social ones, he studied science and engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and later attended Alfred University, the University of Maryland, Catholic University in D.C., and the University of Minnesota, from which he holds a Ph.D. in theater and communication. In the late 60s he served in the Peace Corps (Afghanistan). So far his favorite job has been taxi driver in Connecticut, 1960-62,in which his motto was "Tip high, complain low." His historical novel SWAMP OUTLAW is based on extensive personal interviews with the lead characters' direct descendants, and his forays into their swamps. He is currently one of America's leading trial consultants and jury experts, and a best-selling trial advocacy author.

Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5

413 global ratings

5 star		77%
4 star		11%
3 star		6%
2 star		3%
1 star		3%

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For screenwriters too...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 26 August 2007

Verified Purchase

As someone who's done a masters in screenwriting and now in the middle of a PhD, I've read many of the screenwriting manuals out there and this is one of the best. It's a quick but pithy read. Much of what is recommended in this book (in 1983) is simply repeated by many others over the following two decades, but they do it less succinctly. Although targeted at playwrights, most of the content is equally applicable to screenwriting. The basic premise of the book, to work backwards rather than forwards through your script when rethinking/rewriting it, seems simple but is very powerful advice. No apprentice screenwriter sholud be without this in their library.

2 people found this helpful

Kindle Customer

2nd BEST WRITING BOOK

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 5 January 2021

Verified Purchase

This is the second best book for playwrights (in conjunction with the latest Jeffries book)!

Frank

Indispensable aspects of dramatic structure.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 30 September 2017

Verified Purchase

A clear, useful reminder of what is indispensable in the structure of scenes and acts in a play.

Amazon Customer

Kindle edition is unreadable

Reviewed in Australia 🇦🇺 on 28 January 2023

Verified Purchase

I wish I could give a review of the actual book, but the kindle edition is unreadable. I would ask for a refund but the window has already passed.

T. R.

Well worth it.

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on 5 August 2018

Verified Purchase

You will never see or read a play again without thinking about Backwards and Forwards.

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Backwards & Forwards: A Technical Manual for Reading Plays Kindle Edition

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About the author

David Ball

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