stage directions

Jelinek’s signature dramatic form is the theatrical monologue: lengthy paragraphs of discursive text without clearly indicated characters, stage directions or conventional plot.

“I showed it to him without telling him why, and he got it immediately. He said to me, ‘You finally found a way to make people read the stage directions.’

Thornton Wilder, whose “Our Town” is the most famous dramatic inheritor of Winesburg’s legacy, cautioned in his stage directions that the play “should be performed without sentimentality or ponderousness — simply, dryly and sincerely.”

Can I ask about the stage directions in the script?

In his stage directions, Beckett spent 195 words choreographing some horseplay involving hats.