Play Guide [2.6MB PDF] - Arizona Theatre Company

PENNY
5. Bathos is that which is intended to be sorrowful but because of the extremity
of its expression becomes comic. Pathos is that which is meant to be comic but
because of the extremity of the expression becomes sorrowful. Some things
which seem to be opposites are actually different degrees of the same thing.
6. The comic hero thrives by his vices. The tragic hero is destroyed by his virtue.
Moral paradox is the crux of drama.
7. The theater is a humble materialist enterprise which seeks to produce riches of
the imagination, not the other way around. The theater is an event and not an
object. Theater workers need not blush and conceal their desperate struggle to
pay the landlords their rents.
THE PENNY DREADFUL
A “penny dreadful” was a type of British fi ction publication in
the nineteenth century that usually featured lurid serial stories
appearing in parts over a number of weeks, each part costing
a penny. The term, however, soon came to encompass a
variety of publications that featured cheap sensational fi ction,
such as story papers and booklet “libraries.” The penny
dreadful was printed on cheap pulp paper and was aimed
primarily at working class adolescents.
These serials started in the 1830s, originally as a cheaper
alternative to mainstream fi ctional works, such as those by
Charles Dickens (which cost a shilling, or twelve pennies),
for working class adults, but by the 1850s the serial stories
were aimed exclusively at teenagers. The stories themselves
were reprints or sometimes rewrites of Gothic thrillers such
as The Monk or The Castle of Otranto, as well as new stories
about famous criminals. Some of the most famous of these
penny stories were The String of Peals: A Romance (which
introduced Sweeney Todd), The Mysteries of London (inspired
by the French serial, The Mysteries of Paris) and Varney the
Vampire.
The Mystery of Irma Vep
An example of a Penny Dreadful
Arizona Theatre Company Play Guide 12