August 06, 2007

Drama

Are you working on the drama quest? You can look about in the 800s - but we have another idea you might try. Have you seen the magazine Plays? It contains plays for a variety of ages - for early grades right up through high school. Recently our copies have been used for teaching English to adults because some of the dramas are adaptations of famous plays, operas or stories, just shortened and with simplified language.

So for your quest you can:

  1. Go to the P section of the magazines to look for Plays (We'll help if you're lost).
  2. Browse through several issues by lifting the edge of the magazine shelf to find the pile behind. If you don't find anything you like in those six months of issues, ask us to bring out a stack of earlier ones
  3. After you find a short play you like, read it with your family or friends, everyone reading out their roles while eating pizza. Or read all the parts, and keep all the pizza, yourself. Or put on a puppet show. Many of the plays are quite short, just a few pages.

drama bus in library parking lot
If you would rather find a book, you have at least two places to go questing. As noted in an earlier post, how to put on a play and stories about actors are in 792 because acting and stagecraft are performance arts. The actual words of plays are considered  L i t e r a t u r e  and are in the 800s, arranged by language just like poetry.

American poetry in English is in 811, plays 812
English-English poetry 821, plays 822 (Shakespeare !)
German poetry 831, plays 832 (Brecht; Goethe)
French poetry 841, plays 842 (Moliere; Camus; Ionesco; etc.)
Italian poetry 851, plays 852 (Pirandello)
Spanish poetry 861, plays 862 (ever read La Celestina? or seen the movie?)
Latin poetry 871, plays 872 (Plautus; Terence; Seneca)
Greek poetry 881, plays 882 (Aristophanes; Aeschylus; Sophocles; Euripides)

Literature in other Languages, 89-, is divided up by language group, not form. So all of Russian literature - plays, poems, essays, stories - is in 891.7

What is in 813, 823, 833 etc.? stories, novels, chapter books
814, 824, 834 ... essays
815, 825, 835 ... speeches
816, 826, 836 ... letters
817, 827, 837 ... humor
818, 828, 838 ... miscellaneous

Please note "American Literature in English" includes writings from all the Americas - North, South, Central and the West Indies. English Literature from the Western Hemisphere.

And a reminder - we pull out most fiction onto separate shelves. Otherwise we would have thousands and thousands of books in just one dewey: 813.


Posted by library at August 6, 2007 04:13 PM