Genre: A Guide to Writing for Stage and Screen

by Andrew Tidmarsh

Overview

What makes tragedy tragic? What makes comedy comic? What does Much Ado About Nothing have in common with When Harry Met Sally? Seneca with Desperate Housewives? Goldoni with Frasier?

In Genre: A Guide to Writing for Stage and Screen Andrew Tidmarsh explores these questions and more. Investigating how the relationship between form and content brings endless discoveries and illuminations about how narrative works, this entertaining and accessible book looks at how storytelling in film and theatre has evolved and how an appreciation of form can bring the writer, director or actor a solid foundation and a sense of security, which ultimately assists the creative process.

Including genre-specific exercises in every chapter helping the reader to write and devise, Genre: A Guide to Writing for Stage and Screen is for all those with an interest in story and can be used by writers, actors and directors alike - whether students or experienced professionals - to make the blank page appear less terrifying.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781408185827
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	07/03/2014
Series:	RADA Guides
Pages:	112
Product dimensions:	7.30(w) x 9.60(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Andrew Tidmarsh is a writer, theatre director and awardwinning film-maker. He has worked with undergraduate and postgraduate writers for nearly 20 years for various institutions: Goldsmiths, University of London, Drama Centre, University of the Arts, and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. He has also worked in the Philippines, Germany and Canada. He currently teaches and directs at RADA.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Chapter 1 The Building Blocks of Narrative
Chapter 2 Will Versus Fate: Greek Tragedy and the Fundamentals
Chapter 3 Let's See Blood: Roman Tragedy and Quentin Tarantino
Chapter 4 Revenge is Sweet: Elizabethan Tragedy
Chapter 5 Mashing It Up: Desperate Housewives, Jacobean Tragedy and Buffy
Chapter 6 The Plate of Sardines: New Greek Comedy, Menander and Frasier
Chapter 7 Archetype or Stereotype? Plautus, Comedy of Contradictions and The Sketch Show
Chapter 8 Happily Ever After: Romantic Comedy from Shakespeare to Sleepless in Seattle
Chapter 9 Minding Our Manners: The Country Wife and Mean Girls
Chapter 10 Nothing Ever Happens: Chekhov and the Contemporary
Independent Comedy
Chapter 11 Arrivals and Departures: The Chivalric Romance and the Pastoral
A Final Thought
Appendix 1: Miscellaneous Genres and Hybrids
Appendix 2: Other Theories and Other Approaches
Notes