A play script is incomplete in a productive way. “Enter Hamlet” does not tell us his speed, distance, clothing, focus, or relationship to the room. Performance fills those gaps and creates an interpretation.
Compare productions intelligently
Choose one short scene. Record differences in setting, pace, eye contact, proximity, cuts, silence, and audience address. Then ask what each production makes newly visible—and what it suppresses.
Adaptation is argument
Moving a history play to a modern political setting or changing casting conventions is not simply decoration. It proposes a relationship between Shakespeare’s structure and another social world.