Week 3: Stage Directions

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Week 3: Stage Directions

Post by
Rachel_Osolen
»
Tue Mar 13, 2018 1:33 pm
Part of a written play is stage directions. These can include scene descriptions, costume and character description, as well as basic stage directions. A basic example of a stage direction is ‘Character exits chased by bear.’

There are three ways that these are separated in a NNELS book.

Using Emphasis Style

Example of Emphasis Style from the play Indian Arm:

Dark woods. A hard BC rain falling. Sparse, haunting music: a drum, a voice.
Onstage an old woman, native, sits on a stump or log, hunched inside a traditional bark cape and spruce rain hat. She is perhaps the source of the music, perhaps not.
Enter wolfie, a native youth in his mid-teens, breathing heavily, drenched to the skin in his modern clothes. He blinks and squints at his surroundings. He finds the old woman in the shadows of the forest.


Here is a link to the NNELS catalogue for Indian Arm there is DAISY, Epub, and E-text versions: https://nnels.ca/repository-search?sear ... Indian+Arm

Please Note: Indian Arm was produced by NNELS recently. For this book we followed the current NNELS Production tasks, and chose to use Emphasis for the Stage Directions. If you have time to go through the play please let us know how the navigation works, and if the Emphasis style was the correct choice. As always, we encourage you to share your suggestions with us.

Using both Strong and Emphasis style

Example from The Rez Sisters:

It is mut-morning of a beautiful late August day on the Wasaychigan Hill Indian Reserve, Manitoulin Island, Ontario. Pelajia Patchnose is alone on the roof of her house, nailing shingles on. She wears faded blue denim men's cover-alls and a baseball cap to shade her eyes from the sun. A brightly colored square cushion belonging to her sister, Philomena Moosetail, rests on the roof beside her. The ladder to the roof is off-stage.

Here is a link to the catalogue for The Rez Sisters is it an e-text: https://nnels.ca/items/rez-sisters-play-two-acts

Please Note: The Rez Sisters is not produced by NNELS. If you have the time to go through this play could you tell us how it works in terms of navigation. How usable is this version given that it does not have headings? The page numbers are identified in the file, does this interfere with the reading experience that way? How the use of italics and bold affects the reading/listening experience?

Using Sidebar

Another option is to use what we call a sidebar. As outlined in the wiki use this format you have to first, retain the content that is inside the sidebar. The sidebar text should be placed at an appropriate location in the reading order. The words “Sidebar Starts" and "Sidebar Ends" should be inserted at the start and end of the sidebar contents. If a sidebar contains a heading, it may be marked up as a heading if appropriate; otherwise leave it as normal paragraph text.

Here is a link to the wiki about sidebars: https://wiki.libraries.coop/doku.php?id ... d_sidebars

Below is an example of what is would look like:

Sidebar Starts
Dark woods. A hard BC rain falling. Sparse, haunting music: a drum, a voice.
Onstage an old woman, native, sits on a stump or log, hunched inside a traditional bark cape and spruce rain hat. She is perhaps the source of the music, perhaps not.
Enter wolfie, a native youth in his mid-teens, breathing heavily, drenched to the skin in his modern clothes. He blinks and squints at his surroundings. He finds the old woman in the shadows of the forest.
Sidebar Ends

Please Note: This style might be cumbersome for shorter stage directions, or in-line ones.

Example of shorter stage direction:

Sidebar Starts
Character exits chased by bear.
Sidebar Ends

Example of in-line stage direction:

old woman: Sidebar Starts (mocking) Sidebar Ends We're gonna . . . we're gonna . . .

Multiple Voices

There are many examples of plays in our catalogue that use multiple voices that have been produced by other organizations. There are three types of DAISY: DAISY audio only, DAISY text only, DAISY audio+text (synthetic or real voices.)

In the case of stage directions the main DAISY audio only, or audio+text (synthetic or real voices) the voice that reads the book information also reads the stage directions. The character dialogue is then read by different voices as a way to separate the two. For a recorded reading, there is one actor who reads all the book information and stage directions.

Please Note: Multiple voices are not something that we do through the current NNELS Production. But if you are interested it is possible to add multiple voices. As Farrah informed me, it just requires marking up the XML file to identify which text should use which voice, so pretty labour-intensive but definitely doable. Do any of you have experience with working with multiple voices in an accessible text? If so could you share your experience with us?

The Dolls House is an example of multiple voices in an MP3 Format:
https://nnels.ca/items/dolls-house

Questions:

Which style of stage direction do you prefer? Why?
Do you have any suggestions of other ways to format the Stage Directions?
As Always,

Rachel
Rachel_Osolen
Posts: 37
Joined: Wed Feb 07, 2018 4:15 pm
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Re: Week 3: Stage Directions

Post by
ryano
»
Sun Mar 18, 2018 1:10 pm
I have got a look into those epub and e-text as I have no problem download it on my laptop and able to read those, but I am not sure what you are looking for.

I am unclearly about sidebars.
ryano
Posts: 25
Joined: Sun Feb 04, 2018 10:17 am
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Re: Week 3: Stage Directions

Post by
Rachel_Osolen
»
Sun Mar 18, 2018 1:45 pm
Hey Ryan,

Sorry I was not more clear. We do not have an example in our catalogue about sidebars, so that is why I wrote the three examples in the post. If you were reading the book, before each stage direction it would read 'Sidebar Starts' then at the end of the stage direction it would read 'Sidebar Ends'.

Does that make sense?

Let me know if you need more clarification.
As Always,

Rachel
Rachel_Osolen
Posts: 37
Joined: Wed Feb 07, 2018 4:15 pm
Contact:

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