The use of Keith Johnstone's concepts of 'Circles of Expectation' and Vogler's generic story structure as directorial aids in comedy theatre

The area of research the author of this written submission has investigated is directing comedy theatre. The research problem dealt with in the research was the use of Keith Johnstone's concept of 'Circles of Expectation' and Vogler's generic story structure as directorial aids in comedy theatre. The method with which the research problem was explored was through writing and directing a comedy with UCT Drama Students entitled Image! The play opened at The Standard Bank National Arts Festival in Grahamstown on 1 June 2000 and later opened at The Arena Theatre in Cape Town on 18 June 2000. The following written submission contains two parts. The first part of the written submission is a theoretical explication of the creative method applied in directing Image! The second part contains the script of lmage! In the first chapter of the theoretical explication the author examines the theory of the creative method, which was applied in directing Image!, which views actor-director communication as improvisation. In the second chapter of the theoretical explication the author examines a theory of laughter, based on Arthur Koestler's The Act of Creation (1971) and explains how Koestler's theory of laughter informs the author's creative method of actor-director communication in comedy theatre. In the third chapter the author outlines the theories underlying Vogler's generic story structure and Johnstone's concept of 'Circles of Expectation' and how these were used as directorial aids in the process of directing Image! The author examines how these theories were used as methods of script development and how they were used to inform the comic specifics of the performance.

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

Department of Drama

Year dc:date.issued

2000

Author dc:creator

• McLeod, Cory

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/11427/13899

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/13899