CONFLICT [Director role]

Your first steps are to find and chart the conflict that creates the action of a play you are studying or directing.
1. Describe the play’s basic conflict in an abstract sense (for example, in Medea the abstract conflict is justice
versus revenge). Identify the opposing forces.
2. Identify the specific characters in conflict. What motivates each of them?
3. Quote some lines that indicate characters’ motivational drives.
4. Describe the play’s basic conflict in a concrete sense (in The Bacchae the concrete conflict is between
Pentheus’s demands for order in Thebes and Dionysus’s hypnotic power to inspire ecstatic worship).
5. At what precise point in the play does the conflict begin? Find the lines that signal the conflict’s beginning.
List the most important steps of the conflict. Describe how the steps accumulate, piling tension on tension
like building blocks. Are some scenes designed to allow the tension to relax?
6. At what point does the conflict reach its highest point?

EMOTION [Actor role]

1. What is the play’s overall emotional tone? Be as specific as possible. Identify the particular mood the entire
play will create in its audience.
2. What is the central character’s primary emotion in the play? Again, be precise.
3. Follow the central character throughout the play, describing each emotional change. What causes each one?
To trace the changes in detail you might want to create a chart of the character through the play’s scenes.
4. What is the primary emotion of each of the other major characters?

ENTERTAINMENT [Designer role]

1. What aspects of drama does the playwright use most to attract and grip the audience’s attention? Rank the
following in order of importance for this play:
○ Choice and arrangement of incidents or events
○ Attributes and peculiarities of the characters
○ Ideas or opinions that the play asserts
○ The kind(s) of language (poetic, regional, intellectual, etc.) that the characters use
○ Music or other sounds
○ Dance or other movement, settings, costumes, lighting, makeup, hairstyles, properties, or other
visual elements
2. List the aspects of storytelling that the playwright uses to entertain the audience. Consider such tactics as
suspense, humor, wordplay, intellectual provocation, sentimentality, surprise, variety, and so forth.
3. What attracts you to this play? What will audiences find most entertaining about the play? List the factors in
order of importance.