In addition to the list of reading questions, it can be helpful to have some strategies in place to further develop your skills of close reading, imagination, and analysis. Below you will find five strategies with these goals in mind.

Strategy #1: Be the Director

People who prefer love reading plays often have a well-developed ability to imagine, and see, what the action of the play looks like by visualizing it in our heads as we are reading. We didn’t develop this skill overnight: it takes practice. This approach to reading plays is called the “Theatre of the Mind.”  It involves staging a performance of the play in your head, similarly to the way you might visualize the narrator’s description of the actions and scenery if you were reading a novel. However, when it comes to Theatre, instead of having a narrator’s voices and descriptive passages to guide you, as a novel would, reading a play allows you the freedom to be the director. To take this approach to interpreting plays, simply begin asking yourself as you read along: How would I stage this? or If this were a movie, what would it look like? Stop at the end of the first act, or scene, and replay the scene in your head. As you read, pay particular attention to any stage directions or character descriptions, including those that are presented literally by modern-day playwrights but also those that are implied through characters’ dialogue. At the same time, you want to also enjoy the freedom that plays give you to—well, play. Create your own narrative and descriptions and actions in the scenes as you stage them in your head, based upon what the dialogue indicates about the characters. Talk to your classmates and instructor to compare each of your stagings and interpretations—each of us has our own “Theatre of the Mind.”

Strategy #2: Connect with the Characters

Think about how you tell stories to your friends, or how you recap a movie or show when explaining it to a family member. If you are someone who says: “The movie is about what happens in high school and involves transferring to a new school and there are a series of incidents of peer pressure and bullying,” you are probably someone who, like Aristotle, believes that the plot is the most important element of a play. But if you are some who says: “The movie is about a girl named Cally, a high-school transfer student who is smart and wants to be liked for who she is but immediately feels pressure from Regina and the other cool girls,” then you are probably someone who reads by identifying with characters. Although plot and character are intertwined and both are undeniably crucial components of a play (and a movie—Mean Girls is both a movie and play), many of us tend to read by connecting with characters first in order to follow the plot.

If you are like Shakespeare, and believe that character is more important than plot, then use that self-knowledge to your advantage.

One technique—especially if you are reading a complex play—is to use your phone to take a photo of the “Dramatic Personae” or “Cast of Characters” page at the beginning of the play. You can refer to the photo as you read, to keep track of who’s who. This is especially useful if you’re reading a Shakespeare play.

Another technique is to begin what is called a “Character Map.” Start with either the central character or your favorite character in the center of your map, and then add the other characters’ names as satellites, as they appear in the play. Draw a line between your center character and each other character, and label their relationship.

A third technique is the one that comes by applying your knowledge of the elements of a play—specifically “character” as an element of a dramatic work. Think about who the heroes of the play are as you read. Who is the tragic hero as defined by Aristotle? as defined by Shakespeare? Who is the protagonist? Who is the antagonist?

Finally, think about your favorite character as an actor would when cast to play the role. The quintessential question an actor asks for every scene—and really for every line and movement—is: What’s my motivation? What is it that your character wants and feels in the scene that you are reading?

Strategy #3: Be the Casting Director

If you’re going to visualize the play inside your head, you’re going to need a company of actors. One fun approach to this is to imagine that you are a casting director and can choose any actors to perform in your production of the play. Who would you cast in each role, and why?

Strategy #4: Remember “The Play’s the Thing!”

One advantage that studying a play has over studying a novel is that plays were meant to be performed. If you’re having trouble getting through your reading assignment, do what an actor would do: enlist a friend or family member to “run lines” with you. Read the play aloud, together.

As another option to aid your understanding of the play, you might locate video performances and movie adaptations to watch. The older BBC versions of Shakespeare’s plays (performed in the 1970s and 1980s) were meant to be used by students. These videos of Shakespeare’s plays attempt to replicate most of the text rather than cutting and rearranging it, so that students can watch a performance while they have the play in front of them.

Keep in mind, though, that any single performance of a play is itself an adaptation or interpretation of the dramatic work. A performance is a kind of interpretive essay. Don’t rely, then, on one single video of a play as though it is a definitive interpretation. Instead, watch multiple movies or productions of the play—or watch several versions of a particular act or scene from the play.

Be careful, too, to make sure that the video you are watching was intended as a relatively faithful adaptation of the play. The movie version of Real Women Have Curves (2002) is incredibly different from the play. There are differences in storylines, time period, characters, and message. It’s always easy to see which students have actually read the play and which have only watched the movie.

Strategy #5: The Difference that Performance Makes

When watching multiple productions of the play, you will be able to see the difference that casting makes and the difference that a live audience makes. In some cases, watching a performance can make a character more appealing or sympathetic. For instance, if you read the play Fences, there may be some scenes that do not sound funny at all on the page. The character Troy may come off as sexist, violent, strict—and he is. But if we look at video of Denzel Washington’s stage performance of these scenes, we can see what a difference casting makes and what a difference a live audience makes when it comes to bringing out all of the complexities in a character and offering a more rounded, humanizing characterization.

Here is the culmination of the first set of scenes for comparison as it is written in Wilson’s play:

Cory:   Can I ask you a question? [….]. How come you ain’t never liked me?

[…..]

Rose:   He’s just trying to be like you with the sports.

Troy:   I don’t want him to be like me! I want him to move as far away from my life as he can get.

[…..]

Rose:   Troy, who don’t you admit you was too old to play in the major leagues? For once … why don’t you admit that?

Troy:   What do you mean too old? Don’t come telling me I was too old. I just wasn’t the right color. Hell, I’m fifty-three years old and can do better than Selkirk’s .269 right now!

Rose:   How’s was you gonna play ball when you were over forty? Sometimes I can’t get no sense out of you.

Troy:   I got good sense, woman. I got sense enough not to let my boy get hurt playing no sports. You been mothering that boy too much. Worried about if people like him.

Rose:   Everything that boy do … he do for you. He wants you to say “Good job, son.” That’s all.

(August Wilson, Fences, Penguin (1986), 37-40)

To watch the Broadway revival performance of this same scene, watch the video below from timemarker 4:40 to timemarker 9:34. Listen to how the audience reacts to the performance, finding humor and laughter in these scenes that might seem only sad and serious on the page. (“Show Clips: Fences.” YouTube, uploaded by Broadwaycom. 19 Feb. 2011.) [1]

Later in the same performance, once the audience realizes that Troy is a much more complicated character, they shift their loyalties from Troy to Rose. The turning point for the audience comes in the painful scene in which Troy tells her that he has a mistress and his mistress is pregnant with his baby:

Troy:   It’s not easy for me to admit that I been standing in the same place for eighteen years.

Rose:   I been standing with you! I been right here with you, Troy. […] Don’t you think I had dreams and hopes? What about my life? What about me?

(Wilson, 70-71)

In the video, you’ll want to watch time marker 9:37-12:02.

Viola Davis’s performance as Rose is not only amazing and beautiful; it is also interpretive: the actor herself is offering an interpretation of the complexities of Rose as a character. Watching her performance, then, might inspire an interpretive argument about the play for you as well. Could we, for instance, make the argument that it is actually Rose who is the tragic hero, or protagonist, of Fences rather than Troy?

This should be the goal of watching productions of the play you are assigned. Videos are not meant to replace your reading but, rather, to inspire your interpretation.

Notes