My Genre

The genres I'm going to narrow my band of research to are
Plays/dramas
Film

This way I can combine my Media Studies and Drama studies with English scholarship. The texts I already know a bit about are:
Othello - Shakespeare
Twelfth Night - Shakespeare
Pygmalion - George Bernard Shaw
Antigone - Sophocles
The Importance of Being Earnest - Oscar Wilde
Mother Courage and her Children - Bertold Brecht
The Pohutukawa Tree - Bruce Mason

More plays I should look at:
All for Love - John Dryden
The Crucible - Arthur Miller
Juno and the Paycock - Sean O'Casey
Antony and Cleopatra - Shakespeare
Children of the Poor - Mervyn Thompson (adapted from John A. Lee's novel of same title)

According to Greek Theatre, there were three types of plays: tragedy, comedy and satyr. These three types have become the base for defining many of today's plays in terms of content. In the Elizabethan era, Shakespeare also introduced the Historical play and arguably the Romantic play.

When looking at a play one must pay close attention to the original style of presentation, context of playwright, main messages and themes of play, language used, characters and settings. Also look at how these would be presented on stage.

To do (by 4 October... Billy's birthday!):

• Read all plays once
• Written notes about all of them
  
• Researched into theatre forms of the time - Greek, Elizabethan, Brechtian, Stanislavski, American Realism, New Zealand Theatre, Artaud
• Researched into lives and influences of playwrights.

After that, I'll be conducting studies of language, themes, characters, playwrights, theatre form, setting and context. These will be posted one at a time along with important quotes.