Script Analysis for Actors, Directors, and Designers, 4th Edition

A Final Word

This is the end of a long, close look at the wide-ranging subject of script analysis. Yet one of the difficulties with analytical principles when they are defined and explained in a textbook is that they can remain inactive on the printed page. Or worse, the intellectual frame of mind required for analytical study interposes itself between the actors, director, and designers on one hand and the human behavior and mise-en-scene that are the lifeblood of drama in performance on the other. When this happens readers will remain just as mystified about how plays work as they may have been before they read the book, despite the best efforts of author and teachers. One remedy is to consider that the principles might work better as questions ...