How to Teach a Play: Essential Exercises for Popular Plays

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.

Miriam Chirico is Professor of English at Eastern Connecticut State University, USA. She has published numerous articles on such playwrights as Eugene O'Neill, G. B. Shaw, Sophie Treadwell, Wendy Wasserstein, Beth Henley and John Leguizamo. She is a Board Member of the Comparative Drama Conference and on the editorial board of Text & Presentation.

Kelly Younger is Professor of English at 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.