has a great book that I highly recommend. Art of Dramatic Writing begins with an introduction to a concept Egri calls "The Premise." This portion of the book alone is worth reading to provide some clarity to a topic many students find elusive: Theme. My only warning is that he uses several of Shakespeare's plays as examples. If you want your students to discover the theme to Romeo and Juliet,
King Lear, Macbeth, or Othello, there are some other examples provided.With high school Shakespearean adaptations (here)
(here) , (and here) being so popular I doubt that many of them will be completely unfamiliar with the basic plot.
Theme, however,is an elusive beast. Egri presents it more than just a blanket statement such as "Crime does not pay." Rather than floundering around among abstractions Egri demonstrates how a theme drives action. His template "______ leads to _____" is a great format for introducing students to a framework for clearly expressing the theme while giving theme the tools to articulate how the story present this theme through the actions of the characters.
