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Backwards & Forwards: A Technical Manual for Reading Plays | 
| Author: David Ball
Creator: Michael Langham
Publisher: Southern Illinois University Press
Category: Book
List Price: $17.95
Buy New: $14.54
You Save: $3.41 (19%)
Rating:  15 reviews
Sales Rank: 7439
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1st
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 104
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.4
ISBN: 0809311100
Dewey Decimal Number: 808.2
EAN: 9780809311101
Publication Date: July 7, 1983
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Product Description
This guide to playreading for students and practitioners of both theater and literature complements, rather then contradicts or repeats, traditional methods of literary analysis of scripts. Ball developed his method during his work as Literary Director at the Guthrie Theater, building his guide on the crafts playwrights of every period and style use to make their plays stageworthy. The text is full of tools for students and practitioners to use as they investigate plot, character, theme, exposition, imagery, motivation/obstacle/conflict, theatricality, and the other crucial parts of the superstructure of a play. He includes guides for discovering what the playwright considers the play’s most important elements, thus permitting interpretation based on the foundation of the play rather than its details. Using Hamlet as illustration, Ball assures a familiar base for illustrating script-reading techniques as well as examples of the kinds of misinterpretation readers can fall prey to by ignoring the craft of the playwright. Of immense utility to those who want to put plays on the stage (actors, directors, designers, production specialists) Backwards and Forwards is also a fine playwriting manual because the structures it describes are the primary tools of the playwright.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 10 more reviews...
A Must for Directors, New and Experienced February 22, 1998
18 out of 19 found this review helpful
David Ball's book on script analysis should be read and understood by anyone who directs plays. He explains how to read a play through the very simple technique of reading it from start to finish--and then backwards, from finish to start. By doing so, he points out, the reader learns how one scene leads logically and progressively to the next. While the concept is simple and straightforward, you have to read Ball's book to see how this process can be used to ferret out every important detail of plot and character development.
Demystifying the Playwriting Process March 5, 2000
12 out of 12 found this review helpful
David Ball's book is a must-have for all students and professors of theatre. It demystifies the playwriting process and presents a simple, down-to-earth explanation of why a playscript works the way it does. In a word, it explains how scripts work. I find the deceptively simple explanations help the novices in my Introduction to Theatre classes understand how playscripts are put together and make a fun game of script analysis for these students--a concept that is often hard to communicate to Intro students. At the same time, it make so much sense that it becomes the cornerstone for Beginning Directing, Playwriting, and Script Analysis students. Students whom I teach using Ball's ideas always come through the semester with a lot of self-esteem because having such a solid cornerstone allows their creativity to take off in unexpected directions.
An eye-opener for writers, readers, and play- & movie-goers December 26, 1998
11 out of 11 found this review helpful
A friend who teachs drama and directing at a local college recommended this book to me after he'd read a script I'd written. Not only is it a fast and interesting read, it offers simple and sometimes brilliant techniques for understanding and evaluating plays, movies, and even books. Even if you never plan to act or write, this well-written little book will enhance your appreciation of good story-telling. And if you ever had to endure discussions of "Hamlet" in high-school or college, you'll likely be surprised by Ball's unique take on the character as an example of dramatic writing.
 Valuable advice December 4, 2004
11 out of 13 found this review helpful
The scope of BACKWARDS AND FORWARDS is narrow, but its ambition is important. This is a book about how to read a play. More specifically, it's about how to read a play whose production you are planning. There are 96 pages in this book and many of them are only partially filled. Some of them are blank. So in very few pages, author David Ball gives some valuable and (I would say, essential) advice. So many bad productions are bad simply because of a basic misreading of the script. Ball tells prospective directors what's important and how to recognize what's important. His advice is very straightforward and concise. He does not pad the book by going off on tangents or use long anecdotes to illustrate a point. He makes a point and then moves on to the next one. I think this book should be compulsory reading for the director, but it is also valuable to the playwright, the actor and the designer. This book is basic. There is a great need to get back to basics. David Ball has done the theatre a great service by writing this valuable book.
A great book to teach the art of reading and writing a play April 6, 2001
10 out of 11 found this review helpful
I have used this book as the basis of several theatre and playwriting classes that I have taught. Ball's language is simple, though the words he creates to explain his theories, such as "trigger" and "heap" (a trigger is the moment when people's motivations are exposed, while a heap is the result of that action) make it it easy for any non-theatre person to grasp the clever concepts. By having a person read a play backwards, Ball shows how to grasp the playwright's intentions, and the character's movements. It's a basic theatrical literary theatre that is surprisingly effective, especially in trying to teach young writers how to create a play. I highly recommend this book to the theatre neophyte as well as the theatre professional.
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