Backwards & Forwards: A Technical Manual for Reading Plays

anyone into theatre should read this!

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

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

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.

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.