Actually, I was speaking to ATDrake just then and then getting back to you, but so much for sequence. Active threads tend to be filled with disjunction.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Harmon
In my view, to read a play is not to read a text. It is to read a script. It takes a performance to make a script come to life. I've watched actors sit around a table and discuss a scene from a Shakespeare play, and have been astounded at how malleable the script is in the hands of someone who knows what he or she is doing with what's written down. It's not a matter of parsing the script. It's a matter of taking the thing & running with it.
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Yes, that is where we disagree strenuously. I could reiterate what I've said about scripts versus plays; you may go back a few posts and read that bit, if you feel inclined. Where a script is collaborative on the level of execution, a play is interpreted. Even if it is written by one person, which it is frequently not, a script for a film functions as an outline which is routinely violated and is usually a mere placeholder for what the cameras, editors, director and the rest will do with the medium and the group (sometimes including the producers) will do with the lines. A theatrical presentation was not as fluid as that even then no matter how expressive and rich with possibilities a play might have proved.
Again, to emphasize the text is not to inhibit, discourage or diminish the actor who plays a part. It is a matter of inhabiting the plays oneself first in order to contextualize the language, the poetry, the structure and what others might do with it.
Here's hoping I get the chance to respond to your previous post before it gets buried by later responses.