THE ELEMENTS OF DRAMALiterature-Based Research

WHAT IS DRAMA?

Drama is meant to be performed by actors on a stage for an audience.

Drama is literature with arms, legs, tears, laughs, whispers, shouts, and gestures that are alive and immediate (1364).

Drama is enhanced by what the audience brings to the performance.

When we read drama, a running script begins playing in our minds. The experience is similar to “seeing” a story rather than simply reading it.

As you read, you become the play’s director; you construct an interpretation based on the playwright’s use of language, development of character, arrangement of incidents, description of settings, and directions for staging.

WRITING ABOUT DRAMA

Writing about drama helps you explore, clarify, and discover dimensions of the play you may not have perceived by simply watching a performance.

It helps to read carefully, take notes, and annotate the text as you work through the play (1408).

Check out the “Questions for Responsive Reading and Writing” on pp. 1408-1409.

SUSAN GLASPELL

PLAYWRIGHT, SHORT STORY WRITER

JOURNALIST, NOVELIST

Born in Davenport, Iowa Graduated from Drake

University in 1899 Worked as a reporter for

the Des Moines News Published short stories in

Harper’s and Ladies Home Journal

Prolific writer – she published more than 20 plays, novels, and over 40 short stories.

TRIFLES (1916) The play’s focus is not on

the murder or who committed it, but rather on the “moral, social, and psychological aspects of the assumptions and perceptions of the men and women who search for the murderer’s motive” (1366).

Glaspell is more interested in the meaning of Mrs. Wright’s life than in the details of Mr. Wright’s death.

WORKS CITED

Meyer, Michael. The Bedford Introduction to Literature: Reading, Thinking, Writing, Ninth Ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2011. Print.