How to Teach a Play

[T]here are scores of great ideas in this book for enlivening plays in the classroom. These include guidelines for using specific gestures, music, props, costumes, as well as creating physical settings and paying attention to punctuation and blocking alongside other elements of a play. * Eugene O’Neill Review *Acknowledging the gap between the sometimes dry approach to dramatic texts in English and Literature classes (that often hold to the sanctity of the text) and the performance-happy lens that can often be found in drama classes, this book exists to serve both rooms with equal amounts of critical thinking and vision. * Southern Theatre *Rarely is the probable answer for most instructors for many reasons. They go on to ask ‘Who wouldn’t love to a be fly on the wall in someone else’s classroom?’ In essence, How to Teach a Play: Essential Exercises for Popular Plays, is the teacher of drama’s opportunity to be the fly. Whether we teach drama courses, or drama in survey or literature courses, the activities and exercises in this book will open our eyes to new ways of approaching old materials and simple strategies for tackling complicated plays. * Teaching American Literature: A Journal of Theory and Practice *

Miriam M. Chirico is Professor of English at Eastern Connecticut State University, USA. She is a Board Member of the Comparative Drama Conference and its journal, Text and Presentation, and has written extensively on modern and contemporary drama.

Kelly Younger is Professor of English and Affiliate Professor of Theater 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.