*How to Read a Play* is an introductory guide to the art of translating the printed page of a play or screenplay into dramatic mental images. How should we read stage directions? How can we imagine the theatrical impact of a sound effect? And of silence? What about the effect of colors, groupings, or relative positions on stage? Are characters sometimes saying something different from what their words imply? In the course answering these and many more questions, Hayman talks about the use of space, momentum, and suspense, the silence under the words, identity and character, irony and ambiguity, meaning and experience.