Blog Post 2: Typical Texts in Theatre

For this blog post, I chose to answer question number 2 about the types of texts that are used in Theatre. The first thought that many might have about texts in theatre are playscripts. This is our number 1 text!So much of our work comes from these small pages, so it is imperative that students understand them.However, there are other important texts that students must be able to glean information from. Research is a big part of theatre as well, so being able to read anything from internet articles, to history books, is also very important. Theatre also has documents that go in the "bible" or production notebook. These types of documents might include costume fitting notes, rehearsal reports, budget and spending reports, prop lists, etc. Being able to not only read and interpret these, but also fill them out properly is so important in theatre. Those documents help the show run smoothly!

I have had both good and bad examples of teachers explaining how these texts are to be interpreted. When I first came to college, I took a class called Playscript Analysis. A whole class about how to read this type of text! The teacher taught us the basic principles, and then guided us as we read plays together. I remember thinking "Hamlet! I've already read that!" But he showed us a whole new way to look at the text and analyze what was going on. As a class, I think we were much more engaged, and I understood the text so much better than the previous time I had read it. A bad example also comes from my experience at Utah State.

Unfortunately those important documents that I mentioned before, weren't explained as well as they could have been. Instead of instruction, we were left to figure them out for ourselves, and hope that we understood them well enough to get the show running on time! This was a horrible way to learn these texts, as I basically had no help along the way. 

Unfortunately, I think the 2nd example is something that happens quite often in theatre. This type of instruction is so minimal, I'm sure Buehl would not approve! However, the 1st example uses some of Buehl's principles, especially the Gradual Release of Responsibility model on page 31. The professor used this model in that we began each play with explicit instructions and teacher modeling of how to approach the text. Secondly, we used interactive reading guides, (worksheets) and structured note taking while reading the text on our own. Once we had finished the text, we were in the "student regulated" zone in which we were able to make important connections and inferences on our own. It was only then that we were ever tested on the subject.

I would definitely replicate the way I was taught how to interpret playscripts. The teacher was engaged in the text, and helped us learn along the way. We actively participated in the before, during, after principle, with instruction happening at all points along the way. I would want to change the way the important documents were taught, by actually having an active discussion about them. These texts are just as important to theatre as the playscripts, but unfortunately they don't receive that much credit.








Here is an example of a play script... and one of my favorite plays. :) Read it! It is absolutely fabulous!