Backwards & Forwards: A Technical Manual for Reading Plays

A great read. Simply yet interestingly written, and gives you a lot of learning material in such a short book.

David Ball's Backwards & Forwards is the single most important book you need to understand any dramatic work. While it is a 'must-read' for any student of theater and is widely taught, it really has immense value for anyone who enjoys any dramatic narrative and even has value for writers or readers of any sort. Like David himself with whom I had the great pleasure of studying, the text is straightforward and clever. He pads nothing, gets right to the point and boy, does he hit the mark.

Succinct, useful and full of examples. Although it's very much a directorial approach, it is essential for the actor. For students who are bored with plays as literature, this restores plays to playing. It's brief yet leaves out little. Seems expensive for its brevity, however.

I always wanted to get this book. I bought a copy from a second party seller at a great price. With shipping I still saved 50%. The copy I received was better than new. The description was very accurate it read very good clean copy with no markings. Perfect. As for the book itself, it's a classic worth every penny spent. All considered it's a steal.

I would highly recommend this book. I needed it for a class and borrowed it from the library, however, after reading it found it so helpful I bought it from Amazon. It's written like he's talking right to you. He uses lots of examples, some of them are very funny. It's short and sweet and very informative. A great little manual to have on hand, I think! Buy it! It's not expensive!

It came faster and also in great condition.

I've had this book for a few years and it's marked up from cover to cover! This is the only book you'll need on how to read plays. Ball teaches you how to completely deconstruct a text, find motivations you didn't even realize were there, and provides probably the definitive explanation for one of the most heavily debated plays of all time: Hamlet. If you're involved in the theater, want to be involved in the theater, or simply love reading and watching plays, there's no book I'd recommend more.

This book has some greta ideas, but has many dated references. I use it to teach my script analysis class, but some of the mentions (like collecting stamps) need to be updated for younger generations.

anyone into theatre should read this!

I wish I could give a review of the actual book, but the kindle edition is unreadable. I would ask for a refund but the window has already passed.

Arrived prompty and in the quality it was advertised as. No problems.

As someone who's done a masters in screenwriting and now in the middle of a PhD, I've read many of the screenwriting manuals out there and this is one of the best. It's a quick but pithy read. Much of what is recommended in this book (in 1983) is simply repeated by many others over the following two decades, but they do it less succinctly. Although targeted at playwrights, most of the content is equally applicable to screenwriting. The basic premise of the book, to work backwards rather than forwards through your script when rethinking/rewriting it, seems simple but is very powerful advice. No apprentice screenwriter sholud be without this in their library.

You will never see or read a play again without thinking about Backwards and Forwards.