Words Into Action: Finding the Life of the Play

by William Gaskill

Drawing instances from his own work in theater and from teaching at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, William Gaskill looks at action and intention, stillness and movement, sentences and rhetoric, punctuation and pauses. He pays detailed attention to staging Shakespeare's plays, including chapters on masks and on language as character.

Genres: Theatre

224 pages, Paperback

First published September 15, 2010

Reviews

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gaskill focuses on the importance of words in the theatre, and the need to be true to the words the author has written (and that may mean the stage directions as well). As a well-respected stage director you might expect more about his work and the productions he's been involved in. These are largely missing, and the essays (rather than chapters) that this book consists of vary in interest and quality.
I found it rather disappointing, hoping as I was that he would speak more about his way of directing, especially given the subtitle.