Staging Herman Melville's long story Bartleby, the Scrivener

This study examines the staging of Herman Melville's 1853 novella "Bartleby, the Scrivener." Rather than merely mounting a play, the project's starting point is to create varied action and dialogue with minimal budget, scant resources, and a single performer. While employing the traditional languages of theatre and narrative, new modes of storytelling are also explored so that a contemporary audience can connect with a classic text written some 170 years ago. By creatively deploying affordable, readily available technologies, the disadvantages of limited personnel and funding are overcome. The story's extraordinary atmosphere further allows the conventional narrative form to be disrupted and diversified. The intellectual foundations of this two phase application gamification followed by staging are grounded in the concepts of Modernism/Postmodernism and the Apollonian/Dionysian dichotomy. In the Findings section, after presenting background on Melville's "Bartleby, the Scrivener," these theoretical concepts are examined in detail. The study then moves to the practical phase, in which the narrative is adapted and rehearsed under the guidance of these theoretical insights.