Questions tagged [theater]
For general questions about plays and theatrical performances as works of literature. If your question is about a specific play, use the title and author tags instead.
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Why did Boy Willie refer to toast as "grilled bread"?
In Act 1, Scene 1 of The Piano Lesson, Boy Willie asks Doaker for some "grilled bread" he was holding. The stage directions identify the "grilled bread" as toast. Why did he refer ...
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What is the English word for "tableau" in the context of the theatre?
This question was initially posted on ell.stackexchange.com but was poorly received, perhaps I'll have better luck here.
In French theater (at least in the 19th century, I'm not talking about ...
user22153
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Why would Goldoni have wanted to allude to a treatise on thermal waters in "La bottega del caffè"?
I managed to find a copy of the critical edition edited by Roberta Turchi of Goldoni's La bottega del caffè. In this book, I found a note that caught my attention. It is a commentary regarding this ...
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Was The Glass Menagerie the first memory play, or merely the first instance of the phrase?
There seems little dispute that Tennessee Williams coined the phrase "memory play" to describe his play The Glass Menagerie, in which one of the characters is also the narrator of events ...
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Is the fact that "La bottega del caffè" is an ensemble comedy an innovation by Goldoni?
Reading La bottega del caffè, one striking fact is that if you ask who the main characters are, the answer is that there are none. It is truly what we would call today an ensemble piece: there are ...
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Why are songs no longer performed as part of Shakespeare's plays?
Having studied Macbeth extensively during a course I took as a younger man, I was astonished to learn recently that it is thought to have contained two songs, which are also present in a related play ...
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Did Goldoni decide to set the action of "La bottega del caffè" during a Venetian carnival for the sake of verisimilitude?
I know that Goldoni is the great reformer of Italian theater, who transformed the 'commedia dell'arte' into
true and ‘modern’ theatre texts, entirely scripted, with the various roles defined and ...
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Meaning of "See you at the A and P" in Speed-the-Plow by David Mamet
In Mamet's Speed-the-Plow, what does Fox mean by "See you at A and P
"? Here:
KAREN: I don't belong here.
FOX: Well, I can help you out on that. You
ever come on the lot again, I'm going to ...
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Identification of play about fictionalizing an in-universe murder
During the 2010s I saw a 2-act play in Birmingham's Alexandra, with a three-character plot along these lines:
Two people in a house try to kill a third, and think they've succeeded. They wrap him up ...
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Stage whisper-dominated plays
Among plays that have been written and performed before an audience, what is the largest proportion of any play script that is directed to be performed in stage whispers?
I'm interested to know if ...
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Theatre practitioners book
I'm looking for a book that I used to own and can not find. I think it was American, I had a hardback copy, it was blue and I think it had a black and white photo of actors/directors on the cover. It ...
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Name of a play about the morality of prostitution (kind of)
I saw a play a few years ago told from the perspective of a woman maybe about 30, who was having her mother and some of her mother's friends over for a time. She didn't much get along with them, ...
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Was it so unusual for the time for Journey's End to have no leading lady?
When R.C. Sherriff first wrote his play Journey's End, set in the trenches of the First World War, he had difficulty getting it produced, as theatre managers in the West End didn't want to show a play ...
- 74.4k
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Has there ever been a stage production of Chapter 15 of Ulysses?
Chapter 15 of Ulysses, "Circe" is written in the form of a play script, complete with stage directions. When I first read it, I idly wondered whether or not anyone had ever attempted to ...
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Identification of Theatrical Play about Vietnam War
(I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask about works of theater, so let me know if this question is better posed elsewhere.)
I'm interested in identifying a play about a man's experience as a ...
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What play are these lines a reference to?
I am reading about an upcoming play that reimagines a meeting between Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter on the cricket field. The play has references to their works. For instance, they both wait for a ...
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Would the chorus leader typically speak/sing along with the chorus in classical Greek plays?
I had assumed that the chorus leader would speak along with the chorus. He is a part of it, after all. However, when I asked my literature professor on a whim he wasn't completely sure. Doing my own ...
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What is the oldest preserved stage direction?
A recent answer from Gareth Rees mentioned that:
If Classical Greek drama ever had stage directions, our manuscript sources do not preserve them
Which made me wonder: what is the oldest stage ...
- 74.4k
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Play involving a writer being questioned by the police after children start dying in a way matching his stories
When I was in grad school at Carnegie Mellon University, around 2007-2009, I went to a play audition where the piece they had me reading involved a writer (Russian?) being interrogated by the police ...
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Terminology for the category including all of dialogues, monologues, asides and soliloquies
As far as I can understand, a play's script might include not only conventional dialogue but also monologues, asides and soliloquies along with stage directions. I'm unable to find a single term ...
user15658
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Literary term for the stagehands on "The Masked Singer"
On the American television singing contest "The Masked Singer", there is a cast of stagehands who play an essential role. They are silent, anonymous, and wear identical dark suits and ...
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In musical theatre, what does "book by" mean?
In musical theatre, what does "book by" mean? For example, the Bonnie and Clyde 2012 musical has a book by Ivan Menchell.
Bonnie & Clyde is a musical with music by Frank Wildhorn, ...
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What is the evidence for the width of the trap in the stage of Elizabethan playhouses?
Scholars of Elizabethan theatre agree that the stage in Elizabethan playhouses could have a trap door, for example in the Globe Theatre (built in 1699) and the Red Lion. In his study Shakespeare: The ...
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Which publication first defined the theatre convention of the fourth wall?
One of the questions on this site asks Do a lot of Shakespeare characters break the fourth wall?
However, assuming a "fourth wall" in English Renaissance theatre appears to be anachronistic since
...
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How can we reconcile the bareness of Shakespearean stages with the complex stage directions of The Tempest?
I learned recently that in Shakespeare's day, stage dressing was often minimal. This makes sense given that there was a wide variety of theatre styles, the stages were often uncovered and surrounded ...
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Secondary literature on "The Warden of the Tomb"
The Warden of the Tomb is an expressionist play fragment by Kafka. Although incomplete, possibly extremely so, it's still decently long - about fourteen pages. Sadly (to me at least), as far as I can ...
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What was the play 5-10 years ago where all the dialogue consisted of generic words describing what might be said
This might have been a short piece rather than a full-length play; I heard about it in a news story. I don't remember any details, but the idea was that instead of actually speaking content words, the ...
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Larry Csonka and the Chocolate Factory: confirmation of existence
(Note: Not sure if this is the right place to ask this question, but this link: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/300800/where-can-i-ask-questions-about-a-broadway-show brought me here.)
My ...
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First English Renaissance play where women disguise as men?
In several of Shakespeare's plays, women disguise as men (for a variety of reasons). For example,
In The Merchant of Venice, Portia disguises as a lawyer; Jessica disguises as a man when eloping with ...
- 48.4k
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Tudor or Jacobean plays that are sequels to a Shakespeare play?
William Shakespeare wrote around 40 plays (depending on how the Shakespeare canon is defined). Except for some of his history plays (Henry IV, Henry VI) and possibly The Merry Wives of Windsor (not a ...
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Why is there so much emphasis on snack foods in the plays of Martin McDonagh?
Snack foods tend to be highly emphasized in McDonagh's plays, touched on in this article: "The Lord-Lieutenant’s Biscuit and the Irishman’s Spud: Ireland’s Iconic Snacks Blasphemed in Martin McDonagh’...
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When did men dressed as women stop being the norm in English theatre?
This excellent answer by Joshua Engel draws a comparison between men dressed as women in Shakespeare-era plays and perspective jumps in modern cinema:
The audience would, of course, have been aware ...
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What's the difference between a five-act play and a three-act play?
Many stage plays - including all thirty-seven/thirty-nine of Shakespeare's - consist of five acts, while others consist of only three acts. (Are there any other common numbers of acts?)
What's the ...
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