Lines Between the Lines: How Stage Directions Affect Embodiment

Stage directions are vital to understanding a play's genre, mood, tone, visual setting, cast of characters, and more. They can be used to engage readers, production team members, and scholars in a process of embodied creation and provide playgrounds for individual readers or production teams to make sense of a given moment in a play based on their own cultural experience. Affective stage directions enable us to check our assumptions about what kinds of bodies are represented on stage, allowing for a greater multitude of voices and kinds of embodied identity to make their own interpretations of a play while still following the text exactly.

\n Format: Paperback / softback
\n Length: 272 pages
\n Publication date: 18 October 2021
\n Publisher: The University of Michigan Press
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The purpose of a stage direction is multifaceted and often misunderstood. These italicized lines written in between the lines of spoken dialogue provide valuable information about a play's genre, mood, tone, visual setting, cast of characters, and more. However, generations of actors have been taught to cross these words out as records of previous performances or signs of overly controlling playwrights. Scholars have approached these directions in various ways, treating them as problems to be solved or as silent lines of dialogue.

Stage directions can be all of these things and yet, there are examples from over one-hundred years of American playwriting that demonstrate that stage directions can be so much more. The Lines Between the Lines delves into how playwrights have written stage directions that engage readers, production team members, and scholars in a process of embodied creation to determine meaning. Author Bess Rowen refers to these directions as "affective stage directions" because they reach out from the page and affect the bodies of those who encounter them. Affective stage directions do not dictate a specific visual representation of a moment but rather convey how a moment feels. By doing so, they offer a playground for individual readers or production teams to interpret a given moment in a play based on their own cultural experiences, geographic location, and identity-markers.

Affective stage directions enable us to challenge our assumptions about the bodies represented on stage, allowing for a greater diversity of voices and embodied identities to make their own interpretations of a play while still adhering to the text exactly. This book provides valuable tools for both theater scholars and theater audience members, casting directors, and performers. By exploring the power of stage directions, we can gain a deeper understanding of the plays we read and see, and appreciate the rich and complex ways in which they can enhance our understanding and enjoyment of the theatrical experience.

\n Weight: 438g\n
Dimension: 228 x 153 x 21 (mm)\n
ISBN-13: 9780472054367\n \n