Walking on Fire: The Shaping Force of Emotion in Writing Drama

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Cover illustration: Joyce Neimanas Walking onFire The Shaping Force   of   Emotion in   Writing Drama Jim Linnell Linnell Walking on Fire: The Shaping Force of Emotion in Writing Drama Southern Illinois University Press THEATER “This is a deeply important book for playwrights grappling with craft, dramaturgs hoping to unlock the secrets of dramatic structure, and audience members emotionally engaged in the experience of live performance.” —Suzan Zeder, head of playwriting and directing, University of Texas at Austin In Walking on Fire: The Shaping Force of Emotion in Writing Drama, Jim Linnell establishes the central role of emotional experience in the conception, execution, and reception of plays. Effectively building on philosophy, psychology, and critical theory in ways useful to both scholars and practitioners, Linnell unfolds the concept of emotional form as the key to understanding the central shaping force of drama. Walking on Fire contains writing exercises to open up playwrights to the emotional realities and challenges of their work. Additionally, each chapter offers case studies of traditional and nonlinear plays in the known canon that allow readers to evaluate the construction of these works and the authors’ practices and intentions through an examination of the emotional form embedded in the central characters’ language, thoughts, and behaviors. The plays discussed include William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Athol Fugard’s “master harold” . . . and the boys, Donald Margulies’s The Loman Family Picnic, Harold Pinter’s The Birthday Party, Bertolt Brecht’s Mr. Puntila and His Man Matti, and Tony Kushner’s Angels in America. Linnell opens up conversations about content and emotion for writers and offers exciting answers to the questions of why we make drama and why we connect to it. His user-friendly theory and passionate approach create a framework for understanding the links between the writer’s work in creating the text, the text itself, and the audience’s engagement. Jim Linnell is a professor of theater at the University of New Mexico and the founding artistic director of Words Afire Festival, a festival of new plays from the writing program at the university. southern illinois university press 1915 university press drive mail code 6806 carbondale, il 62901 www.siupress.com isbn 0-8093-3047-4 isbn 978-0-8093-3047-8 Printed in the United States of America Linnell cvr mech.indd 1 8/11/11 2:24 PM ...