How not to write a play

Description

Livro sem a sobrecapa. “How Not to Write a Play examines negative trends that Kerr perceived in playwriting. Kerr offers insights both into the practice and finances of contemporary theatre, blaming the declining audience on the poor and un-entertaining fare being put before the public by both commercial and institutional producers. In particular, he blames decades of slavish imitation of Henrik Ibsen and Anton Chekhov, not only because their styles had become hackneyed and arthritic (Ibsen, himself, had abandoned "Ibsenism" after only a decade), but because they were created by and for an intelligentsia, and no thriving theatrical culture has ever been built that way, citing the case of William Shakespeare vs. the school of John Lyly, among others. He asserts that plays will always be more successful if they are highly entertaining, and argues that that entertainment can be at once enjoyable and artistically sophisticated. He also calls for a return to verse, pointing out Christopher Fry as an example of a new and supple 20th-century theatrical verse style”.