Why prompt book is important

Figure 5. The artwork occasionally included in prompts is usually of a higher order. Stephenson — , are several watercolours of the ornate sets: sumptuous interiors befitting a drama of international political intrigue. Although the designs depict the sets as largely unfurnished, the accompanying stage plans indicate the precise placing of the furniture. The French panelled Chamber Act I is comfortably appointed with sofas, easy chairs, a gilt table, an inlaid chair, a palm on a stand, with a triptych of orange trees visible in front of the stone balustrade with sea view of Monte Carlo.

A bamboo table and iron chair are specified beneath the red-striped awning. Diplomacy was first produced by the Bancrofts in - 9 at the Prince of Wales Theatre and revived in - 5 at the Theatre Royal Haymarket in their farewell season as managers , and again in at the Garrick Theatre. In the case of the costume and scenery plot for the production of The Lilac Domino at the Empire Theatre, London, not only are there watercolour set designs for each act, facing black and white photographs of the sets as realised onstage, but row upon row of cigarette-card-sized costume designs.

These are exquisite miniatures of the principals, chorus girls, pierrots, pierrettes and male dancers in the fashions of the period between the First World War and the flapper era. Lacking a text, this is not strictly-speaking a prompt book, but the detail it yields up about a lavish and spectacular production set in a transitional historical period earn it a place in this collection.

The production was an adaptation of Der Lila Domino , a three-act German operetta, with music by Charles Cuvillier — , rendered into English by librettist Harry B. Smith — , with lyrics by Robert B. For its arrival in London, it was revised with additional dialogue by S. Adair Fitzgerald b. The setting is a masquerade ball, with the domino a hooded cloak worn with an eye mask, hence the rainbow of domino-clad figures on its first pages, and the need for multiple intricate costumes, which reveal much about contemporary fashion as they do about the production.

In it was produced again at the Court in an expanded version. It is instructive to compare the two prompt books held for these differing versions and to compare them with the text published by Jonathan Cape in Between these three scripts, stage business is lost or reinvented, words pruned, embellished or moved in order to adapt to a full staging in which dialogue must accommodate the movement of actors across the performance space.

A published text has the authority of widely-disseminated copy, an imprimatur with the widest possible distribution, to be read, studied, anthologised, perhaps put on the curriculum, staged, revived and quoted from, but this is all it has.

During this period, a play may still be fluid in the rehearsal room. None of this can be corrected until another edition appears — if it appears at all. Relatively few people have access to the manuscript, but those that do will find the tiny but telling detail that fixes at what approximate point in the evolution of a script edits were made, reflecting what was effective and what presumably was not.

There are far fewer variants between the prompt and the Cape edition than there are between the Sunday-night version and the second prompt. The pencilled notes in the version are mostly incorporated into the published playtext.

All three versions show the evolution of ideas and practical solutions to staging problems that occur before a production opens to the public. Plays are the only literary genre requiring a reception other than a reader to complete them. While it is perfectly possible to read a play, the act of reading it does not fulfil the intention for which the text was written. Figure 6. An earlier, some would say definitive, Hamlet, in the person of David Warner b. Naturally this event captured the imagination of the press — more so than the production itself, which garnered tepid reviews.

The prompt book, prepared by Deputy Stage Manager Anna Hill, is an impeccably neat and full document of the production. While doing the work. You have to sit with your material. Really sit with it. Deeper, always deeper.

It can feel like a waste of time, particularly under a deadline, but deeper is where you find all the best stuff. For Coppola, the prompt book was a necessary reminder from his reading self to his directing self.

This is the same reason outlining is so crucial for writers. In the plain printed quarto, the setting is left out, both as a stage direction or something mentioned in dialogue A3 4.

We also learn that « [S]oft m :[usic] » is heard just before the « Angell Victor » and St. Patrick first arrive B1v. As for the snakes, there are no more clues as to how this was managed, only a warning, « serpents be read[y] » written two pages before they appear I2.

According to Edward A. Langhans, the Rhodes Company used the terminology « Ready » or « be ready » for actors in their prompt books, but more typically for a sound or special effect 6. The Paris St. Patrick uses the same practice of warnings for scene or act changes as those found in the Bodleian The Wittie Faire One , using the words « sceane » or « Act ».

However this prompt book hand bears no resemblance to that in the Paris St. Patrick 8. The best candidate for the hand could be, perhaps, one Smock Alley, Dublin, prompter, who can occasionally be seen to use the secretary « c » 9. No perceivable hand in the Blakemore Evans edited prompt books ever use the ornate capital that is noticed in the Paris copy, however. This is evident at the beginning of the words « Cornet », « Coribreaus » and « Conalus », for example.

Examples of use in the English literature, quotes and news about promptbook. William Shakespeare, Cynthia Marshall, Roberta Krensky Cooper, In this essay, my focus will be on the silences of Isabella and Claudio as enacted in five productions from to , including four performance editions from to and one early twentieth-century promptbook.

The four performance Peter Holland, Promptbook 1 56 , Folger Shakespeare William Shakespeare, Robert Hapgood, Promptbooks Adams, William. Second season promptbook for Hamlet []. Lincoln Center. Promptbook for the Sothern and Marlowe Hamlet,