Re-reading Drama

Staging

• How would you stage this play? Enlarge on "gaps" in settings, costumes, and stage directions. How do the ones given shape and limit the possible interpretive range?
• How would you cast and direct characters in the play? What hints are given for each character that you would most emphasize? What would you ask an actor to add to those hints?

Audience and Author

• Who do you think is the intended audience for the play? What seems to be the author's attitude toward his/her audience? What would the attitudes of the audience probably be toward the characters and the action? Are these attitudes challenged by the play in any way?
• How does the context of the time (and place) influence the play and its reception? How might the meaning of the play change in a later time?

Form and Genre

• Is there any recognizable shape to the play? Ordinarily dramatic plots are described as having a rising action, a climax, and a falling action, moving a protagonist through crises with some antagonist to the apex (or climax) and then unraveling in the denouement. In what ways is this true--or not true--of this play.
• What sort of play is this? Comedy? Tragedy? Tragi-comedy? Romantic Comedy? Melodrama? Explain how it does or does not fit the generic criteria most applicable to it.
• How does the play's shape work with the divisions of scenes and acts? Why are the breaks just where they are?
• Is there a subplot? If so, what is its relationship to the main plot?
• Are there any repetitions of scenes, action, images, or words in the play? If so, why are they repeated?