Plays Preparation and Production

Abstract

I shall try to make this lecture fairly general, and so I have taken examples from certain plays which, I hope, will be known to you. If they are not, I shall be giving you sufficient detail to make you recognise the explicit point of my reference. Now the first thing I want to say is that this is really an introductory talk on the art of the theatre. Someone has said that the television audience played no part in a play. I think this is wrong. Certainly as far as the stage is concerned the statement is utterly false. A play must always be judged in a performance, because it is not something which is readily studied and mulled over, but something which will change from one production to the next, since it is a creative effort brought about by the co-operation of the author, the play-wright (a man with intentions which are not always adequately expressed) the actor,(whose task is to express them), the producer (who is, of course, responsible for general oversight of the production - a good producer has a very tight hand on what goes on in the production) and, fourthly, the audience.