Intro to Drama

First of all I really enjoyed this quote that opened the chapter:

"A play in a book is only the shadow of a play and not even a clear shadow of it.... The printed script of a play is hardly more than an architect's blueprint of a house not yet built or [a house] built and destroyed. The color, the grace and levitation, the structural pattern in motion, the quick interplay of live beings, suspended like fitful lightning in a cloud, these things are the play, not words on paper nor thoughts and ideas of an author."
-Tennessee Williams

I would have to say that I totally agree with the quote; drama is better performed than read from a book. I have been in a few plays in my days and it is much better to actually see the play going on, even though sometimes when I read, or hear a drama read, I can see the pictures moving inside my head. I also thought it interesting what the book said about ritual performances proceeding the alphabet. I had never thought of this before and it really made me think. I mean we wouldn't have some of our stories unless our grandparents told them too us. That's how it used to go before we had an alphabet and a sensible way of writing down these stories; they were passed on from generation to generation through story-telling.

In fact as I think someone mentioned in class we wouldn't have drama unless we had stories. It all starts when a parent reads their child a story. They read it at first, and then change their voice to match each of the different characters, then they start acting parts out, until it becomes a play. I think that the transformation of the story to a play is a wonderful thing to have come from a simple child's bedtime story. Lots of things are like this; if we would only be as a child, with childlike faith we could do anything.