How to Teach a Play - by Miriam Chirico & Kelly Younger (Paperback)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

Most students encounter drama as they do poetry and fiction - as literature to be read - but never experience the performative nature of theater. How to Teach a Play provides new strategies for teaching dramatic literature and offers practical, play-specific exercises that demonstrate how performance illuminates close reading of the text. This practical guide provides a new generation of teachers and theatre professionals the tools to develop their students' performative imagination.

Featuring more than 80 exercises, How to Teach a Play provides teaching strategies for the most commonly taught plays, ranging from classical through contemporary drama. Developed by contributors from a range of disciplines, these exercises reveal the variety of practitioners that make up the theatrical arts; they are written by playwrights, theater directors, and artistic directors, as well as by dramaturgs and drama scholars. In bringing together so many different perspectives, this book highlights the distinctive qualities that makes theater such a dynamic genre.

This collection offers an array of proven approaches for anyone teaching drama: literature and theater professors; high school teachers; dramaturgs and directors. Written in an accessible and jargon-free style, both instructors and directors can immediately apply the activity to the classroom or rehearsal. Whether you specialize in drama or only teach a play every now and again, these exercises will inspire you to modify, transform, and reinvent your own role in the dramatic arts.

Review Quotes

"[T]here are scores of great ideas in this book for enlivening plays in the classroom. These include guidelines for using specific gestures, music, props, costumes, as well as creating physical settings and paying attention to punctuation and blocking alongside other elements of a play." --Eugene O'Neill Review

"Acknowledging the gap between the sometimes dry approach to dramatic texts in English and Literature classes (that often hold to the sanctity of the text) and the performance-happy lens that can often be found in drama classes, this book exists to serve both rooms with equal amounts of critical thinking and vision." --Southern Theatre

"Rarely is the probable answer for most instructors for many reasons. They go on to ask 'Who wouldn't love to a be fly on the wall in someone else's classroom?' In essence, How to Teach a Play: Essential Exercises for Popular Plays, is the teacher of drama's opportunity to be the fly. Whether we teach drama courses, or drama in survey or literature courses, the activities and exercises in this book will open our eyes to new ways of approaching old materials and simple strategies for tackling complicated plays." --Teaching American Literature: A Journal of Theory and Practice

About the Author

Miriam M. Chirico is Professor of English at Eastern Connecticut State University, USA. She is a Board Member of the Comparative Drama Conference and its journal, Text and Presentation, and has written extensively on modern and contemporary drama.

Kelly Younger is Professor of English and Affiliate Professor of Theater Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, USA. He is the recipient of numerous teaching awards, including the Fritz B. Burns Professor of the Year. As a playwright, his work has been staged Off-Broadway and internationally. He is a Board Member of the Comparative Drama Conference and its journal, Text and Presentation.