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34-673: The Changing Room is a 1971 play by David Storey , set in a men's changing room before, during and after a rugby league football game. It premiered at the Royal Court Theatre on 9 November 1971, directed by Lindsay Anderson . The 1973 Broadway production, directed by Michael Rudman , won several awards including the New York Drama Critics' Circle award for Best Play and the Tony Award for Best Featured Actor for John Lithgow . The technical director for

68-482: A murder mystery play which is the longest-running West End show , it has by far the longest run of any play in the world, with its 29,500th performance having taken place as of February 2024. Contemporary playwrights in the United States are affected by recent declines in theatre attendance. No longer the only outlet for serious drama or entertaining comedies, theatrical productions must use ticket sales as

102-475: A football game, the playwright's skill is such that we seem to get to know these football players and the society that produced them." The Broadway production of The Changing Room won the New York Drama Critics' Circle award for best play for the 1973 season. John Lithgow won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Performance. Tom Atkins won

136-512: A form of playwright. Outside of the Western world there is Indian classical drama , with one of the oldest known playwrights being Śudraka , whose attributed plays can be dated to the second century BC. The Nāṭya Shāstra , a text on the performing arts from between 500BC-500AD, categorizes playwrights as being among the members of a theatre company, although playwrights were generally the highest in social status, with some being kings. In

170-419: A person who has "wrought" words, themes, and other elements into a dramatic form—a play. (The homophone with "write" is coincidental.) The first recorded use of the term "playwright" is from 1605, 73 years before the first written record of the term "dramatist". It appears to have been first used in a pejorative sense by Ben Jonson to suggest a mere tradesman fashioning works for the theatre. Jonson uses

204-654: A playwright, winning awards for his play The Phoenix at both the New York International Fringe Festival in 1999 and the Route 66 American Playwriting Competition in 2000. Today, theatre companies have new play development programs meant to develop new American voices in playwriting. Many regional theatres have hired dramaturges and literary managers in an effort to showcase various festivals for new work, or bring in playwrights for residencies. Funding through national organizations, such as

238-525: A source of income, which has caused many of them to reduce the number of new works being produced. For example, Playwrights Horizons produced only six plays in the 2002–03 seasons, compared with thirty-one in 1973–74. Playwrights commonly encounter difficulties in getting their shows produced and often cannot earn a living through their plays alone, leading them to take up other jobs to supplement their incomes. Many playwrights are also film makers . For instance, filmmaker Morgan Spurlock began his career as

272-562: A stricter interpretation of Aristotle, as this long-lost work came to light in the late 15th century. The neoclassical ideal, which was to reach its apogee in France during the 17th century, dwelled upon the unities , of action, place, and time. This meant that the playwright had to construct the play so that its "virtual" time would not exceed 24 hours, that it would be restricted to a single setting, and that there would be no subplots. Other terms, such as verisimilitude and decorum, circumscribed

306-569: A timeless study of male bonding rites and a preservation in art of a fast-vanishing culture." David Storey David Malcolm Storey (13 July 1933 – 27 March 2017) was an English playwright , screenwriter , award-winning novelist and a professional rugby league player. He won the Booker Prize in 1976 for his novel Saville . He also won the MacMillan Fiction Award for This Sporting Life in 1960. Storey

340-632: Is Hans Sachs (1494–1576) who wrote 198 dramatic works. In England, The Second Shepherds' Play of the Wakefield Cycle is the best known early farce. However, farce did not appear independently in England until the 16th century with the work of John Heywood (1497–1580). Playwright William Shakespeare remains arguably the most influential writer in the English language, and his works continue to be studied and reinterpreted. Most playwrights of

374-542: Is still useful to playwrights today is the " French scene ", which is a scene in a play where the beginning and end are marked by a change in the makeup of the group of characters onstage rather than by the lights going up or down or the set being changed. Notable playwrights: Greek theater was alive and flourishing on the island of Crete. During the Cretan Renaissance two notable Greek playwrights Georgios Chortatzis and Vitsentzos Kornaros were present in

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408-494: The Ancient Greeks . William Shakespeare is amongst the most famous playwrights in literature, both in England and across the world. The word "play" is from Middle English pleye , from Old English plæġ, pleġa, plæġa ("play, exercise; sport, game; drama, applause"). The word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsperson or builder (as in a wheelwright or cartwright ). The words combine to indicate

442-406: The Ancient Greeks . These early plays were for annual Athenian competitions among play writers held around the 5th century BC. Such notables as Aeschylus , Sophocles , Euripides , and Aristophanes established forms still relied on by their modern counterparts. We have complete texts extant by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides . The origins of Athenian tragedy remain obscure, though by

476-789: The Globe in the West End on 14 December. It was directed by Lindsay Anderson and the cast included Jim Norton , David Daker , Warren Clarke , Brian Glover , Alun Armstrong and John Barrett . The U.S. premiere was at New Haven 's Long Wharf Theatre on 17 November 1972. After three previews, the Broadway production, directed by Michael Rudman , opened on 6 March 1973 at the Morosco Theatre , where it ran for 192 performances. The cast included George Hearn , John Lithgow , Richard Masur , John Tillinger , and Tom Atkins . The play

510-624: The National Endowment for the Arts and the Theatre Communications Group , encouraged the partnerships of professional theatre companies and emerging playwrights. Playwrights will often have a cold reading of a script in an informal sitdown setting, which allows them to evaluate their own plays and the actors performing them. Cold reading means that the actors haven't rehearsed the work, or may be seeing it for

544-476: The 1961 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and the 1963 Somerset Maugham Award ; and Saville , which won the 1976 Booker Prize . He wrote the screenplay for This Sporting Life (1963), directed by Lindsay Anderson , adapted from his first novel of the same name , originally published in 1960, which won the 1960 Macmillan Fiction Award. The film was the beginning of a long professional association with Anderson, whose film version of Storey's play In Celebration

578-449: The 4th century BCE, Aristotle wrote his Poetics , in which he analyzed the principle of action or praxis as the basis for tragedy. He then considered elements of drama: plot ( μύθος mythos ), character ( ἔθος ethos ), thought ( dianoia ), diction ( lexis ), music ( melodia ), and spectacle ( opsis ). Since the myths on which Greek tragedy were based were widely known, plot had to do with

612-543: The 5th century it was institutionalised in competitions ( agon ) held as part of festivities celebrating Dionysos (the god of wine and fertility ). As contestants in the City Dionysia's competition (the most prestigious of the festivals to stage drama), playwrights were required to present a tetralogy of plays (though the individual works were not necessarily connected by story or theme), which usually consisted of three tragedies and one satyr play. For

646-740: The British Library. In 1956, Storey married Barbara Rudd Hamilton, with whom he had four children. Barbara Storey died in 2015. Storey died on 27 March 2017 in London at the age of 83 and was buried on the eastern side of Highgate Cemetery . The cause was Parkinson's disease and dementia . Survivors include his two sons, Jake and Sean; two daughters, Helen and Kate ; a brother, Anthony; and six grandchildren. Novels Plays Poetry Non-Fiction Playwright The earliest playwrights in Western literature with surviving works are

680-567: The Drama Desk Award for Most Promising Performer, and Michael Rudman won for Outstanding Director. During the 1996 revival, critical reception was more mixed. Some critics commented on how the play had aged; both rugby league and the global politics mentioned in the play had moved on a long way in the intervening two decades. Many women's publications criticised the macho nature of the play. In contrast, Paul Taylor of The Independent wrote, "... The Changing Room seems, in 1996, at once

714-561: The Middle Ages, the earliest of which is The Play of the Greenwood by Adam de la Halle in 1276. It contains satirical scenes and folk material such as faeries and other supernatural occurrences. Farces also rose dramatically in popularity after the 13th century. The majority of these plays come from France and Germany and are similar in tone and form, emphasizing sex and bodily excretions. The best known playwright of farces

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748-611: The Restoration of the monarchy in 1660 and the end of the 17th century, classical ideas were in vogue. As a result, critics of the time mostly rated Shakespeare below John Fletcher and Ben Jonson. This period saw the first professional woman playwright, Aphra Behn . As a reaction to the decadence of Charles II era productions, sentimental comedy grew in popularity. Playwrights like Colley Cibber and Richard Steele believed that humans were inherently good but capable of being led astray. The Italian Renaissance brought about

782-420: The ancient Greeks, playwriting involved poïesis , "the act of making". This is the source of the English word poet . Despite Chinese Theatre having performers dated back to the 6th century BC with You Meng , their perspective of theatre was such that plays had no other role than "performer" or "actor", but given that the performers were also the ones who invented their performances, they could be considered

816-404: The arrangement and selection of existing material. Character was determined by choice and by action. Tragedy is mimesis —"the imitation of an action that is serious". He developed his notion of hamartia , or tragic flaw, an error in judgment by the main character or protagonist , which provides the basis for the "conflict-driven" play. There were also a number of secular performances staged in

850-490: The latter part of the 16th century. The plays of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing , Johann Wolfgang von Goethe , Friedrich Schiller , and other Sturm und Drang playwrights inspired a growing faith in feeling and instinct as guides to moral behavior and were part of the German romanticism movement. Aleksandr Ostrovsky was Russia's first professional playwright). Author and playwright Agatha Christie wrote The Moustrap ,

884-420: The match they return, often broken, muddy, and bloody, regretting their loss or giddy with victory in the communal shower. There is little in the way of plot, but Storey engages his audience with his ability to dissect his characters' hurts, hopes, desires, and fighting instincts. Premiering on 9 November 1971 at London's Royal Court Theatre , The Changing Room had a limited, sold-out run before transferring to

918-407: The period typically collaborated with others at some point, as critics agree Shakespeare did, mostly early and late in his career. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. In England, after the interregnum , and Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, there was a move toward neoclassical dramaturgy. Between

952-561: The play was the former Great Britain Rugby League captain Bev Risman . At the play's core is a semi-pro Northern England rugby league team. During the week, its members are peaceable men toiling away at mindless, working class jobs. On Saturday, they prepare for gory combat on the playing field. The changing room is where they perform their pre-game initiation rites, strip down, loosen muscles, and get into their uniforms. After

986-557: The subject matter significantly. For example, verisimilitude limits of the unities. Decorum fitted proper protocols for behavior and language on stage. In France, contained too many events and actions, thus, violating the 24-hour restriction of the unity of time. Neoclassicism never had as much traction in England, and Shakespeare 's plays are directly opposed to these models, while in Italy, improvised and bawdy commedia dell'arte and opera were more popular forms. One structural unit that

1020-433: The theatre: "15 acorns are hardly worth the price of admission," referring to the male nudity. American critics were more glowing in their praise, with the production hailed by Walter Kerr of The New York Times as "mysterious and ultimately mesmerizing." Clive Barnes, also of The New York Times , wrote: "It is a remarkable play because while it only purports to document what goes on in a locker room before, during and after

1054-441: The word in his Epigram 49, which is thought to refer to John Marston or Thomas Dekker : Jonson described himself as a poet, not a playwright, since plays during that time were written in meter and so were regarded as the province of poets. This view was held as late as the early 19th century. The term "playwright" later again lost this negative connotation. The earliest playwrights in Western literature with surviving works are

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1088-636: Was born on 13 July 1933 in Wakefield , West Riding of Yorkshire , the son of a coal miner, Frank Richmond Story, and Lily (née Cartwright) Story. He was educated at QEGS Wakefield . He continued his education at London's Slade School of Fine Art , and supported himself there by playing rugby league for Leeds RLFC as a halfback for the "A" team, with occasional appearances in the first. His plays include The Restoration of Arnold Middleton , The Changing Room , Cromwell , Home , and Stages . His novels include Flight into Camden , which won

1122-505: Was released as part of the American Film Theatre series in 1975. Home and Early Days (both starred Sir Ralph Richardson ; Home also starred Sir John Gielgud ) were made into television films. Storey's novel Pasmore was shortlisted for the Booker Prize . National Life Stories conducted an oral history interview (C464/67) with David Storey in 2008-2009 for its National Life Stories General collection held by

1156-566: Was revived in 1996 by the Royal Court, in their 'Classics' season, premiering on 1 February and running for two months at the Duke of York's Theatre . Despite extensive male nudity, there was very little controversy associated with the play in 1971. Critical reception was favourable, with the treatment of male relationships praised particularly. Most criticism focused upon the lack of character development and plot. Noël Coward commented, leaving

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