WONDROUS STRANGE by dramaturg, director, and long-lime literary manager Chris Mead is a high-wire musing on what makes great plays. For anyone who is into theatre of any kind, read on …
From Aristotle’s Poetics to Suzan-Lori Parks’ ‘bad math’ to the neurochemistry of storytelling, WONDROUS STRANGE takes the reader on a satisfyingly meandering journey through seven ‘thoughts’ on theatrical storytelling. Combining autobiography, practice and theory, Chris Mead has written a wondrous book for anyone who has ever grappled with what it means to tell a story on stage, one that both comprehensively elucidates the key schools of dramaturgical thought while celebrating their disruption and transformation.—ANCHULI FELICIA KING
Mead’s wide-ranging, deeply researched and erudite book makes it clear that there are no simple formulas to follow if you want to write a great play. It takes talent and great perceptive power, but finally the process is so mysteriously complex as to make it ‘wondrous strange’.—DAVID WILLIAMSON
Chris Mead—theatre-geek extraordinaire—shines a magnifying glass on this wondrous and strange medium of ours with this deep exploration of theatre at a cellular level throughout the ages. More than a brain dump, this is a carefully considered and finely crafted love poem to theatre that practitioners and theatre lovers from all walks of life can dive into and swim around in.—ANDREA JAMES
Chris Mead promises ‘… vertigo, whiplash, forking paths and some thin ice ahead: but there is also insight and wonder’. He delivers each element superbly. His seven thoughts are provocative, insightful, wondrous, yes, and at times I felt the ice crack beneath me. This is not a manual, a how-to book to write plays … I’ve been writing plays for a long lime and I learned heaps but most importantly, I was reminded of how marvellous a play can be: full of wonder and as strange as can be.—PATRICIA CORNELIUS
