One giveaway: set designs in the appendix.
Samuel French scripts, in particular, like to give you all the design/tech info they think you'll need to do the show. Designs, prop lists, costume plots by scene, etc. I do wonder if anyone actually ever uses all that.
Older musical theatre scripts, especially the Rodgers and Hammerstein shows, come complete with all the original staging notes, mostly rather useless unless you're doing a true replica of the original set, and if your actors slavishly copy all the same acting beats so that the "she crosses stage left" indications, etc, makes some sort of sense lol. (Or you get things like the "choreography" at the end of "My Favorite Things" - "swinging their arms 8 times, they end with their hands above their heads.")
One has to be reasonable about what directions in the script might make sense in their own production, and what doesn't - and what might be intended as an integral part of the material and what is just a record of the original. |
