World Theatre Day

Get performing. It's World Theatre Day. It's Dramatic.

It's World Theatre Day. Is your day going to be Comedy, Satire, History or Tragedy? Most of us manage to fit a bit of it all in whether we want to or not.

IGP:FoundationXHML has comprehensive tagging patterns for Drama (of course) to produce both print and digital books and we decided to celebrate World Theatre Day with some sample drama made in IGP:Digital Publisher.

We went with Tradegy because it's the most fun. MacBeth or Hamlet? That is the question. We wanted the story that was the best metaphor for digital production agony and drama. That was difficult.

Hamlet or Macbeth? Dying by poison or descending into madness.  Choosing the best metaphor for digital production drama was difficult. We settled with Hamlet.

To celebrate we have published the Shakespeare all time best sell "The Tragedy of Hamlet Prince of Denmark" more commonly just called "Hamlet". in EPUB and printable PDF and donated them to the world. There are now only 4,739 versions of this play instantly available online. The difference is ours are exquisitely produced of course.

Hamlet. Download the EPUB3 (reflowable)

Hamlet. Download as an A4 Printable PDF.

The print PDF is only 108 pages and designed for easy desktop printing. The styling is classic and based on the Folger PDFs.   This is exciting presentation for those into drama book production dramatics. The great thing is if some other presentation is required with just a few CSS changes in IGP:Digital Publisher multiple editions can be created.

A bit of dramatic SVG in the wings

Any post about drama MUST have the classic Greek Comedy and Tragedy Masks. They were lovingly hand created as a live SVGPrin performance. It was spectacularly theatrical.

This SVG is a minimalist performance. Just two SVG <paths />. The <use /> and  <transform /> properties were then performance scripted so the paths could act their various roles. Finally the filter and gradient crew members bought the show to life with colour, light and shadow. It is a very real SVG drama performance. Check the SVG code here if you like the behind the Wings stuff!

<svg class="_graph-100-10-rw" viewBox="-100,-50,600,400" width="100%">
    <style type="text/css">}
#tragedy1 {filter: drop-shadow( 10px 10px 10px black);}</style>
    <defs>
        <filter height="130%" id="ds" width="130%">
            <feGaussianBlur in="SourceAlpha" stdDeviation="10"></feGaussianBlur>
            <feOffset dx="20" dy="20" result="offsetblur"></feOffset>
            <feComponentTransfer>
                <feFuncA slope="0.7" type="linear"></feFuncA>
            </feComponentTransfer>
            <feMerge>
                <feMergeNode></feMergeNode>
                <feMergeNode in="SourceGraphic"></feMergeNode>
            </feMerge>
        </filter>
        <linearGradient id="ArtGradient1" x1="0" x2="100%" y1="0">
            <stop offset="0%" stop-color="SteelBlue"></stop>
            <stop offset="30%" stop-color="rgb(255,255,255)"></stop>
            <stop offset="60%" stop-color="SteelBlue"></stop>
            <stop offset="100%" stop-color="midnightblue"></stop>
        </linearGradient>
        <linearGradient id="ArtGradient2" x1="0" x2="100%" y1="0">
            <stop offset="0%" stop-color="Gold"></stop>
            <stop offset="30%" stop-color="rgb(255,255,255)"></stop>
            <stop offset="60%" stop-color="DarkOrange"></stop>
            <stop offset="100%" stop-color="brown"></stop>
        </linearGradient>
        <path d="M0,150 L0,0 L200,0 L200,150 A100 140, 0, 0, 1, 0 150 " id="face"></path>
        <path d="M0,0 A150 150, 0, 0, 0, 125 0 A70 70, 0, 0, 1, 0 0 " id="mouth"></path>
    </defs>
    <rect fill="rgb(200, 0, 0)" height="375" width="600" x="-100" y="-50"></rect>
    <g id="comedy" stroke="saddlebrown" stroke-width="2" transform="rotate(-15,100,125)">
        <use fill="url(#ArtGradient2)" filter="url(#ds" href="#face" id="comedy1" x="0" y="0"></use>
        <use fill="rgb(200, 0,0)" href="#mouth" x="37" y="160"></use>
        <use fill="rgb(200, 0,0)" href="#mouth" transform="rotate(190,50,75) scale(0.5) " x="30" y="80"></use>
        <use fill="rgb(200,0,0)" href="#mouth" transform="rotate(170,150,75) scale(0.5) " x="250" y="80"></use>
    </g>
    <g id="tragedy" stroke="navy" stroke-width="2" transform="rotate(15,300,125) translate(200,0)">
        <use fill="url(#ArtGradient1)" filter="url(#ds)" href="#face" id="tragedy1" stroke="navy" x="0" y="0"></use>
        <use fill="rgb(200, 0,0)" href="#mouth" transform="rotate(180,100,175)" x="37" y="140"></use>
        <use fill="rgb(200, 0,0)" href="#mouth" 
             transform="rotate(-20,50,75) scale(0.5)" 
             x="40" y="210">
        </use>
        <use fill="firebrick" href="#mouth" 
            transform="rotate(20,150,75) scale(0.5)" 
            x="240" y="210">
        </use>
    </g>
</svg>

Drama production is simple and ugly and complicated

Drama has three main genres: Stage, Radio and Screen (Movies and Television). They all require scripts which have substantially different presentation designs. However as this article is about Theatre/Stage Drama. We will leave the others for another performance.

Stage Drama

Semantic tagging of stage drama script is relatively simple. It's pretty much set, direction and speaker.

However the section structure of stage drama can get dramatic and be any combination of:

• A single Act
• A single Scene
• Acts only
• Scenes only
• Acts containing scenes
• Content in the script  but is neither part of an act or scene.

Add to that original scripts may start Acts/Scenes as different sections or flowing after each other. IGP:FoundationXHTML has the tagging properties for all requirements.

The dramatic final scene

Get out and watch a theatrical performance.

Download the files and read the memorable question in Act III, Scene 1. Line 1749.

If you are having a bad day check out Act 1, Scene 2. Line 333. Hopefully it will brighten you up a little knowing Hamlet had a spinning head.

IGP:Digital Publisher is the best way to produce all types of publisher content. We have handled the trickier genres such as poetry and drama and their complexities. You need to see how good, easy and wonderful digital publishing can be.

Have a dramatically dramatic World Theatre day. And remember there are those behind the scenes labouring away to make sure the script is ready for stage action at any time.

Article by Govind Satpute and Richard Pipe