Studying Plays - 4th Edition by Mick Wallis & Simon Shepherd (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Now in its 4th edition, this is an accessible and comprehensive introduction to the critical study of drama. Using familiar examples of classic and contemporary works such as Shakespeare's King Lear, Ibsen's A Doll's House and Timberlake Wertenbaker's Our Country's Good, the book explores the essential elements of play texts, from character, dialogue and plot to theatrical space.

With more in depth guidance on how to study plays in and as performance, both live and in recordings available online, the 4th edition of Studying Plays now includes:

- new examples throughout the book drawn from a range of 21st-century plays by established and emergent writers for diverse theatres and companies
- new explorations of how plays structure and engage audience response
- a complete new section on the analysis of theatre of witness and testimony; monodrama; and postdramatic texts.

Review Quotes

"A highly usable resource for text analysis and addressing plays. However, it is so much more than this and I suggest that it be considered as a seminal textbook ... As well as the detailed attention to play extracts and the highly useable frameworks within which to address the scripted play, this seminal text skilfully locates the understanding of the dramatic script within socio-political historical contexts ... A trusted text given a welcome spruce up." --Drama Magazine

"This newly revised classic, now with a much-needed section on the postdramatic, will grace the studio as much as the seminar room, empowering the next generation of students to talk about plays with genuine precision and insight." --Jonathan Pitches, Professor of Theatre and Performance, University of Leeds, UK

"Studying Plays attends to the diverse critical practices essential to the multidisciplinary study of drama. Ranging across formal elements of drama to bodies, space, and the cultures of performance, it suggestively engages undergraduates, instructors, and a wider audience." --W. B. Worthen, Alice Brady Pels Professor in the Arts, Barnard College, Columbia University, USA

"The durability of this excellent book confirms the importance of comprehensive and detailed methodical explanations of how drama works and becomes theatre. Essential reading for all young practitioners and students." --Peta Tait, Professor of Theatre and Drama, La Trobe University, Australia

"Studying Plays offers a model of diversity in terms of the examples it draws on from a range of periods and genres, but also in terms of the race, gender and sexuality of those who made the work discussed. That it does so without compromising the depth and rigour of the analysis is a testament to the skill and commitment of the authors. The combination of breadth, depth and rigour makes it a book that students and their tutors can return to again and again." --Kate Dorney, Lecturer in Drama, University of Manchester, UK

About the Author

Mick Wallis is Professor Emeritus of Performance and Culture at the University of Leeds, UK. He is co-author (with Simon Shepherd) of Drama/Theatre/Performance (2004).

Simon Shepherd is Professor Emeritus of Theatre at Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London, UK. He is the author of The Cambridge Introduction to Performance Theory (2016) and Modern British Theatre (2010) and co-author with Mick Wallis of Drama/Theatre/Performance (2004).