ABSTRACT
This chapter will address a theatre phenomenon that seems to have occurred relatively recently, but which in fact goes back almost a hundred years – namely, the process of ‘cinefying’ theatre, whether in the use of cinematic technique, evocation and image projection, or the adaptation of an entire film screenplay for the live stage. Typical differences in style and layout between stage-play scripts and screenplays produced for the respective media over the previous century tended to obscure the fact that stage scripts could be episodic, with a natural proclivity for quasi-cinematic treatment in production. Examples of short, episodic ‘snapshot’ scenes are abundant in the dramatic writing of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. Similarly, early 19th-century German dramatist Georg Büchner is noted for the episodic style of his 1836 play Woyzeck, even if its fragmentary nature may have been the result of Büchner’s premature death as much as his rejection of the conventional expository fiveact or three-act structure of writing for the stage.
