How to Teach a Play

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.
Online resources to accompany this book are available at:https://www.bloomsbury.com/how-to-teach-a-play-9781350017528/.

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.

Acknowledgments
Introduction The ExercisesHubris and Hamartia based on Aristotle's Poetics
Agamemnon by Aeschylus
The Eumenides by Aeschylus
Antigone by Sophocles
Oedipus the King by Sophocles
Medea by Euripides
Lysistrata by Aristophanes
The Twin Menaechmi by Plautus
The Second Shepherd's Play by The Wakefield Master
Atsumori by Zeami Motokiyo
Everyman by Anonymous
A Midsummer Night's Dream (I) by William Shakespeare
A Midsummer Night's Dream (II) by William Shakespeare
Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare
The Tragedy of Hamlet (I) by William Shakespeare
The Tragedy of Hamlet (II) by William Shakespeare
The Tragedy of Othello by William Shakespeare
Measure for Measure by William Shakespeare
The Tragedy of King Lear by William Shakespeare
The Tempest by William Shakespeare
Life is a Dream by Pedro Calderón de la Barca
Tartuffe by Moliere
The Misanthrope by Molière
Restoration Theater Audiences
The Country Wife by William Wycherley
The Rover by Aphra Behn
The Way of the World by William Congreve
The School for Scandal by Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Woyzeck by Georg Büchner
A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen
Miss Julie by August Strindberg
Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen
The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde
Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov
The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov
Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw
Trifles by Susan Glaspell
Six Characters in Search of an Author by Luigi Pirandello
Juno and the Paycock by Sean O'Casey
Machinal by Sophie Treadwell
The House of Bernarda Alba by Federico García Lorca
Our Town by Thorton Wilder
Mother Courage and Her Children by Bertolt Brecht
Long Day's Journey Into Night by Eugene O'Neill
The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
Waiting for Godot (I) by Samuel Beckett
Waiting for Godot (II) by Samuel Beckett
The Crucible by Arthur Miller
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams
Endgame by Samuel Beckett
The Birthday Party by Harold Pinter
Rhinoceros by Eugene Ionesco
A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry
The Zoo Story by Edward Albee
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? By Edward Albee
Dutchman by Amiri Baraka
The Homecoming by Harold Pinter
The House of Blue Leaves by John Guare
Death and the King's Horseman by Wole Soyinka
Fefu and Her Friends by María Irene Fornés
And the Soul Shall Dance by Wakako Yamauchi
Zoot Suit by Luis Valdez
True West by Sam Shepard
Top Girls by Caryl Churchill
Cloud Nine by Caryl Churchill
"Master Harold" ... and the boys by Athol Fugard
Glengarry Glen Ross by David Mamet
Fences by August Wilson
The Other Shore by Gao Xingjian
The Piano Lesson by August Wilson
M. Butterfly by David Henry Hwang
Fires in the Mirror by Anna Deavere Smith
Angels in America, Part One by Tony Kushner
Information for Foreigners by Griselda Gambaro
Oleanna by David Mamet
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard
Blasted by Sarah Kane
'Art' by Yasmina Reza
How I Learned to Drive by Paula Vogel
Topdog/Underdog by Suzan-Lori Parks
Doubt: A Parable by John Patrick Shanley
Dead Man's Cell Phone by Sarah Ruhl
Water by the Spoonful by Quiara Alegría Hudes
Sweat by Lynn Nottage
Vietgone by Qui Nguyen