Reviews for Playwriting--a complete guide to creating theater

The average rating for Playwriting--a complete guide to creating theater based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-03-13 00:00:00 Randy Wilcox Certainly not for beginners, as this is an academic survey through and through with constant passing references to (presumed known) facts about Elizabethan theatre and, naturally, minor characters from across the Complete Works - although written in a delightfully conversational style. If you're across the subject matter, though, it's a great contribution to Bardolatry. One of the areas in which Mahood excels is in defining the links between Shakespeare's mind at work, the realities of rehearsing and staging a show, and how that comes down to us in a text. So, where one version of a play has a character's headless body brought on, another version alters that to merely a mention; Mahood sensibly suggests that the former came first, but would have been discovered in rehearsal or the first run of the show to be a needlessly costly and cumbersome event, thus leading to the refined script. These kind of sensible decisions pepper every page, and make this worthwhile for those of us who get a strange amount of joy out of textual quibbles and decisions. Well put from start to finish, engaging, and hopefully influential for directors and lovers of the Bard. (One caveat though! The title may lead you to think this is some kind of acting manual. It's not. It's a text about the history of bit parts, their provenance, and role in the drama. Valuable perhaps for actors but not a guidebook.)

Review # 2 was written on 2014-01-30 00:00:00 Cathy Wiggins It's a great nuts and bolts guide to writing the ten-minute play and explaining how theatricality can (and should!) exist in it. It doesn't have specified lists and other charts so you'll have to just read the information. Still worth the read!