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This Week

• 
  
• Primacy of the Playwright
  
• Triangle Time: Nathan reviews Jewtopia
  

Conventional wisdom tells us that a play…a stage performance, if you will…starts with a written script. Which means, in essence, that a play…a stage performance with actors as characters holding dialogue with one another under a director’s direction and surrounded by scenic, lighting, and sound environments…is really a playwright’s creation. And notice that this person is called a playwright, as opposed to a playwrite. Like a shipwright with water vessels, a playwright is charged with designing, constructing, and repairing a play. Under this model, theatre art is simply an extension of literary art, and plays are little more than story texts set in motion and dramatized. We might even go so far as to say that the playwright is the primary creative force within theatre arts. Everyone else involved in mounting a performance is, in some sense, just following instructions. Why does this model persist? What degree of agency should the other theatre artists have? Is this the way we want it? If not, what do we do about it?

Keep the conversation going! If you have thoughts about anything you hear on our program, you can contribute them to our online Theatre Forum at http://5uselessdegrees.org/forum/. You can also leave us a voicemail directly from our website. Just go to http://5uselessdegrees.org and click on the tab that says “Send us voicemailâ€.

Do you have an idea for a theatre-related segment? Maybe something you’d like to discuss or report on? We want to hear it! Get in touch with us and pitch us your idea.

Episode Index

0:00   –   Intro

0:45   –   Twitter adventures

6:10   –   Is THAT theatre?

9:24   –   James went to Action Adventure

14:12   –   PATA auditions

19:12   –   Triangle Time

29:24   –   BREAK

30:04   –   Discussion: Text as primacy?

57:40   –   Theatre around the world

1:04:20   –   Outro