Henry V Director's Playbook Book

Authored by William Shakespeare
Designed by Sasha Newborn
Edited by Sasha Newborn

The Director's Playbook series, including Henry V, is a combination workbook/sketchbook for dealing with all the production elements that go into actually producing a Shakespeare play. The director has plenty of sketching, note-taking space for every scene, with a stage diagram (one per scene) for placement of sets or actors' marks, keylines for easy reference, a chart of entrances and exits to keep track of who's on stage when, space for auditioning notes, tips for inexperienced actors on how to memorize long speeches, and sections for the producer, responsible for the budget, for designing the playbill, the publicity strategy, booking space at a theater, etc. And Pre-production includes set design, space for notes on each scene, costuming or wardrobe, getting measurements for the actors and the extras, stage management for shuffling around the sets, cuing actors, the lights, sound, photography. And then, just add actors.
Henry V is a happy play in the sense that we are seeing a good king accomplishing great deeds; it is part of a series that Shakespeare did of English history. The very end of Falstaff, who is not actually seen in this play, though he is discussed several times, is a part of the back story of Henry V, who once was Prince Hal, Falstaff's buddy and participant in outrageous lowlife activities.