Play Guide [2.6MB PDF] - Arizona Theatre Company

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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
PENNY ALLUSIONS Working class boys who could not afford a penny a week often formed clubs that would share the cost, passing the fl imsy booklets from reader to reader. Other enterprising young people would collect a number of consecutive parts and then rent the volume out to friends. In 1866, Boys of England was introduced as a new type of publication, an eight-page magazine that featured serial stories as well as articles and shorts of interest. It was printed on the same cheap paper, though sporting a larger format than the penny parts. Numerous competitors quickly followed, with such titles as Boy’s Leisure Hour, Boys Standard, Young Men of Great Britain, etc. As the price and quality of the fi ction was the same, these also fell under the defi nition of penny dreadfuls. -from www.wikipedia.com The Mystery of Irma Vep ALLUSIONS IN THE MYSTERY OF IRMA VEP The Mystery of Irma Vep is littered with references (or allusions) to other well-known works. Three of them are listed below; see if you can spot others when you see the show! HAMLET (play) by William Shakespeare Background: Universally regarded as one of the most important works in literature in Western drama, deemed by T.S. Eliot an “artistic failure,” it received its fi rst performance sometime around 1602 by the Lord Chamberlain’s Men with Shakespeare starring as the Ghost. THE MYSTERY OF IRMA VEP Lord Edgar: From his fair and unpolluted fl esh May violets spring. Lord Edgar: Enid, there are more things on heaven and earth than are Arizona Theatre Company Play Guide 13
Page 1 and 2: Play Guide The Mystery of Irma Vep
Page 3 and 4: WHO WE ARE Arizona Theatre Company
Page 5 and 6: CHARACTERS SYNOPSIS Jane Twisden: T
Page 7 and 8: LUDLAM Costume rendering for The My
Page 9 and 10: IRMA VEP Costume rendering for The
Page 11: IRMA VEP MANIFESTO The Mystery of I
Page 15 and 16: ALLUSIONS THE MYSTERY OF IRMA VEP J
Page 17 and 18: REBECCA as Rebecca's in order to pr
Page 19 and 20: DESIGN DISCUSSION DB: For me, it wa

Play Guide [2.6MB PDF] - Arizona Theatre Company

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