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Page to Stage: The Craft of Adaptation

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Page to Stage: The Craft of Adaptation - Murphy, Vincent
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Theatre exists because of the human need to tell our stories. The process of literary adaptation allows a writer to take a beloved or intriguing story and make it life-sized on the stage, giving non theatrical texts a vivid voice: stories that speak to the moment and to the imagination. Page to Stage provides an essential guide for the many individuals and theatres who adapt literature into theatre pieces, a ""how-to"" book that leads them through a clear, workable process to create a stage-worthy play. Page to Stage's ...

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Page to Stage: The Craft of Adaptation 2013, The University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor

ISBN-13: 9780472051878

Paperback

 Page to Stage: The Craft of Adaptation 2013, The University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor

ISBN-13: 9780472071876

Hardcover

All Editions of Page to Stage: The Craft of Adaptation

Page to Stage: The Craft of Adaptation

2013, Paperback

ISBN-13:

9780472051878

Page to Stage: The Craft of Adaptation

2013, Hardcover

ISBN-13:

9780472071876

Books by Vincent Murphy

Customer Reviews

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Vincent M

Mar 13, 2015

testimonials

Testimonials for Page to The Stage

?Vincent Murphy's new book on adaptation from literary work for the theatre promises to be a very important contribution to the field. Mr. Murphy has been doing these adaptations for a number of years with great distinction, thus adding important new opportunities to those already available in the theatre. No one I know is more qualified to write about it. It has my warm endorsement.?

Robert Brustein
Founding Director
American Repertory Theatre
451 Upper Lamberts Cove Road
Vineyard Haven, MA 02568
508-693-9026
617-429-1021 (cell)
brustein@fas.harvard.edu


I knew Vincent Murphy as a professor at Emory University when I was there from 1994-96. He has been a constant and immensely generous contributor to and supporter of many of my artistic endeavours since, coming to Stratford-upon-Avon to act as an outside eye for my one-man show John Wayne, Mom, Apple Pie & Other Myths as well as offering invaluable advice on a number of other projects. His unique instincts and wisdom have never failed to shine light on the testing yet thrilling process of creating new work.

James Albrecht
Actor and playwright with the Royal Shakespeare Company
Bobby Jones Scholar at Emory


Prof. Murphy's adaptation of The Man Died by Wole Soyinka:
?Frankly, I was somewhat ambiguous in my feelings over the project itself, wasn't too sure that I wanted to see that experience enacted. Vinnie's approach however overcame the risk of what I feared - that it could turn out to be over emotionally charged. 'Detachment' is how I would summarize the methodology, a story-teller's approach without the narrative linkage, so that the director-narrator did not get in the way. I think the lines became even more sparse, leaner, and thus even more starkly truthful. They were delivered to project their own atmosphere.?

Wole Soyinka







Here's a quote for you, Vinnie, feel free to cut it however necessary if you want to use any of it, and please let me know if you need anymore (i didn't know how much to write):



Working on Crow with Vinnie was like performing a seance on Ted Hughes. It was as though he was in the room with us because Vinnie works in a way that gives a strong collaborative voice to the originating author; but of equal importance, Vinnie also knows exactly when to be slyly irreverent with the text. He has a keen eye for culling and sculpting the parts of a non-theatrical work that will play vibrantlly onstage.

love
raife

Vinnie gave me the text from Arabian Nights and said ?write.? I though to myself, ?but it's already written.? As we talked through the process of adapting literature to the stage, amazing revelations came out of what could be seen to a writer as the confinements of an already well-known text. The text was in fact liberating and made for dense, specific, and finely honed theatricality and character negotiation. That initial experience turned me on to various adaptation projects from history, science, and children's literature.

Thanks vinnie! This book looks so cool!

Lauren Gunderson
PR and Special Events Director
Callanwolde Fine Arts Center
(404) 872-5338 x 228

'll write a little blurb about why I chose to write the adaptation and what I got out of it.

I chose to make a theatrical adaption of The Things They Carried because I found the characters in it mesmerizing, despite the completely different histories we had. I wanted to see and hear them come alive, and not on the big screen, but right in front of me, in my world. That is the beautiful thing about theater, it exists inside of your reality, your "now" in a way that books and movies can't. When I'd finished and heard actors read it aloud, it was like the characters actually spoke. It was a feeling of being more in touch with the story than I ever was before, and a sense of pride that I was the one who brought them to life. Adapting is a way of finding what is true about a story for you, individually, and bringing it to life in the present.

Also, I've taken on a job adapting a group of children's books into several short films and one feature length film, which is what reminded me of your email. I'm really excited about the project and I hope it works out as well in the long run as it seems to be going right now.

I am up against some unfamiliar territory though. We're starting talks about monetary compensation for my work and I am basically clueless about what I should expect to receive. I think we've decided that I will get paid when the author of the stories gets paid, which is fine with me. I don't need the money right now and I have free time which I am setting aside for "artistic things" such as this. But we're going to set up some sort of contract in the next few days and I was wondering if you had any advice or knew someone I could talk to about this.

All the best!

Josh Wilcox
770-312-7483













Vinnie,

I hope this doesn't come too late. Feel free to cut edit and past at
will or to not use it at all. Thanks for asking me. We should catch
up. So much has recently happened. Most recently I was flown out to
LA to read with 80s-90s pop star Taylor Dane to play opposite her in
this new broadway-bound musical. What an experience. More to
come....
caw
xo
allen

It was seeing Vinnie's stage of Shakespeare's "The Tempest" that made
me want to dedicate myself to a life in the theater. There is a
fierce and unapologetic creative force alive in all of his work that
breathes life into new works as well as time-tested classics. His
production of Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman" was both at times
meticulously choreographed and then again light and breezy, freeing up
the artists working in collaboration with him to have a structure
within which to create freely and independently. The result was
revelatory. I had the great fortune of working on "The Cockfighter"
with Vinnie in 1998. Firstly, he approached this project with bravery
and incredible respect for Manley's (the author) text knowing that
everything couldn't be included in the stage version. Secondly he
smartly relyed on the collaboration with his cast and production team
to fill out the structure of the narrative he already had in place.
Again both masterfully organizing and freeing his artists to do their
best work in service of his and his in service to the author's.

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