Theatrical Philosophy

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dcho787

Active member
Recently, I've come across Aristotle's Poetics, writings by Bertold Brecht, and certain "constitutive elements of drama" and devices. I'm very interested in dramatic devices such as repetition, changes in soundscape, dynamics of the speaker, and the practice of limiting the viewer in what he sees (e.g. Ibsen's "The Wild Duck", Chekhov's "The Three Sisters").

Do you guys know of any other books on theatrical philosophy?
 
While on the the topic of "theatrical philosophy" you might be interested in the work and ideas of Jerzy Grotowski who challenged the purpose of theater in contemporary culture with the idea of "poor" theatre in which the focus was on the work of the actor with the audience, not stuff like costumes, sets, lighting, etc. I see this as an intellectual forefather of the Dogma95 movement in cinema.
 
Aristotles "poetics," Horace's "Art of Poetry", Brecht's various essays, Read essays and plays by Pirandello, Strindberg, Ibsen, O'Neill... "theater of cruelty" by Jean Anouilh, "The Empty Space" by Peter Brooke "Towards a Poor Theater" by Grotowski (tho you can skip the excercises at the end of the book, they wer later proven to be quite unhealthy to the body!) If you like Grotowski, you shoul dig up Andre Gregory's book, or just rent "My Dinner with Andre." Also, the works of T. Kantor (Dead Class), Mrozek, and Gombrowicz in the Polish theater. And in film terms, check out Andszej Wajda, the director.

I'de have to disagree about Poor Theater in relation to Dogma95. Poor Theater really came out of a Post War Poland where everything was destroyed and they had virtually nothing. His basic idea was that all you need for a performance is an Audience to watch and Performers to perform. Often times skewing the line between the two. If anything, his works were very unreal, often times leading the performance out into the audience and breaking down the 4th wall.

Dogma95's aim is to capture everything as "real" as possible, with a set standard of rules to leave things unaltered. I think this is kinda lame, actually, as the camera doesn't see like the eye, and we don't edit in our heads (except for blinking, thank you Walter Murch!). But, to the point, I would equate the Naturalist Movement with Dogma95 more than anything Polish (Trust me, I'm a Polak!). The Works of Zola or Ibsen being closer. Kitchen-Sink American realism would be a close contender as well... my 2 cents.


In film, read William Goldmans "Adventures in the Screen Trade"

Probably should toss in Stanislawski's "An Actor Prepares" and other books. You could dig up some other method stuff, Uta Hagen, etc. Every one of 'em has a book.

I am a big fan of William Ball's book. Name is slipping my mind.

Anyway, the list goes on and on. When I was in theater school, we had a class that studied the Poetics, then compared genres throughout history to it. Comparing and contrasting the Unity of Action. Aristotle's six elements of performance, etc. Very interesting stuff!
 
zoostory said:
[...] I'de have to disagree about Poor Theater in relation to Dogma95 [...]
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When I wrote that I see "Poor Theater as an intellectual forefather of Dogma95," I'm talking about a relationship that I see, that I impose, ex post facto. Did Von Trier and his colleagues read about Poor Theater and draw inspiration from it? I have no evidence one way or another, I like to trace lines that may or may not be there.
 
Not directly related to theater, but of interest in terms of "writing for the visual medium" is a relatively new book by Jennifer Van Sijll titled “Cinematic Storytelling" that brings together in one volume 100 of the most used cinematic stortelling conventions with lots of references to moves and excerpts from scripts. She challenges the notion of writing as limited to the Aristotelian staples of character, structure, and plot. The book builds upon classic approaches to screenwriting adding the language of the image and the process of visualization that traditionaly has been excluded from most writing classes, but writing with an awareness of the visualizaton process is becoming an essential components of our evolving language of cinema, think of it as a new form of literacy, as important as reading and writing with words.
 
zoostory - does this knowledge help you at all - e.g. does it give you more structure in your work, give you an ability to make things more complex. Do you experiment with these techniques in your work, to see with method suits you best?
 
you know those sound like good books, i'll read them sometime soon.
however, i've looked through some REALLY bad screenwriting books - I've tried to stay away from them since then but these look interesting.
 
dcho787 said:
you know those sound like good books [...] i've looked through some REALLY bad screenwriting books - I've tried to stay away from them since then but these look interesting.
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well, it's true, most screenwriting books are dreadfully formulaic, however, there are exceptions to the rule, I think the newest addition to my list, "Cinematic Storytelling: The 100 Most Powerful Film Conventions Every Filmmaker Must Know" by Jennifer Van Sijll stands out because she moves beyond the literary fundamentals of writing in terms of character, structure, and plot, and helps you develop an understanding of cinematic literacy as distict from what we traditionally think of literacy. Writers play a more important role in the visualization of cinematic stories than the “Auteur Theory” has given them credit for, and there is a trend towards greater appreciation of the role of the writer not just in the crafting the story, but in how the story is visualized. This is a book about writing for cinema as a truly distict medium that breaks from the tradition of writing books, it's got more square inches devoted to images than any other writing book I've seen.
 
zoostory said:
Probably should toss in Stanislawski's "An Actor Prepares" and other books. You could dig up some other method stuff, Uta Hagen, etc. Every one of 'em has a book.
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I've read Stanislaswski, Meisner, Hagan, Adler, and a number of other books on acting, theatre and film. Many years later I came across Mamet's, True or False, and now I share Anthony Hopkin's opinion that Mamet has it mostly right.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0679772642
 
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