Talk:Twelve Angry Men (stage play): Difference between revisions

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer’s talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: page moved. wbm1058 (talk) 00:35, 21 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Twelve Angry Men (play) → Twelve Angry Men (stage play) – Twelve Angry Men (Westinghouse Studio One) was also a play, and preceded this one. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 23:23, 22 December 2025 (UTC) — Relisting. HurricaneZeta^C 16:01, 3 January 2026 (UTC) — Relisting. TarnishedPath^talk 23:50, 10 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

• Support per nom. — Necrothesp (talk) 11:30, 23 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Support the Westinghouse Studio One has 2,069 views compared with only 1,775 for the stage one. Crouch, Swale (talk) 18:00, 23 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose per WP:CONCISE. “Play” is widely understood to refer to stage plays, not teleplays, and Twelve Angry Men (Westinghouse Studio One) was a teleplay, not a stage play. Note significant overlap between Twelve Angry Men (play) and Twelve Angry Men regarding recent stage productions. BrechtBro (talk) 21:42, 23 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  rephrasing this for clarity: the subject of this article is the play version of Twelve Angry Men (Westinghouse Studio One) BrechtBro (talk) 02:27, 28 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Not true at all. A television play is still a play. — Necrothesp (talk) 16:55, 6 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  That’s a bit disingenuous. By that logic a screenplay for a film is also a play, but no one would refer to a film as a play (just as no one would refer to an episode of television as a play). Rcarter555 (talk) 17:53, 6 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  No, it’s a film. Self-contained TV dramas are very frequently referred to as TV plays (probably more in the past than now, but the fact remains). Cinema films are not. Just one of those vagaries of the English language. — Necrothesp (talk) 13:54, 16 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  This may be so in British English, but is not the case in American English. BrechtBro (talk) 17:41, 16 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Relisting comment: Relisting per unanimous consensus that the original close was improper at Wikipedia:Move review/Log/2026 January. HurricaneZeta^C 16:01, 3 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment: it a standard convention that only (play) or (musical) is needed to disambiguate from source material in other media, unless additional disambiguation is needed, see: Category:Plays based on television series and Category:Plays based on films, even then, “stage” is only used in unusual circumstances like such as in “Burlesque (stage musical)”, where “Burlesque (musical)” has been there as a redirect to “Victorian burlesque” (and I’m starting a move discussion there). As the subject of this article has also been adapted into audio plays, and successive play adaptations and a musical, (stage play) introduces additional ambiguity. Cleanup that parses out the differences between the various stage versions, eliminating overlap where possible with the primary Twelve Angry Men page, with a new page for Twelve Angry Jurors, and when that’s done it may be appropriate to move this to (1955 play).BrechtBro (talk) 21:15, 3 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Note: WikiProject Theatre has been notified of this discussion. HurricaneZeta^C 22:30, 3 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: This is an unusual circumstance, as additional disambiguation is needed in this case, since there seems to have been at least three notable closely related plays with this name – a play drafted in 1954 by Rose for a television performance, a play adapted from that one in 1955 by Sherman L. Sergel for stage performances, and a third variant by Rose that did not involve Sergel and used for other stage performances 50 years later. Moreover, there seem to be other substantial variations, including 12 Angry Men and Women, Twelve Angry Jurors, and Twelve Angry Women. Wikipedia has three distinct articles to cover the various plays (including the Twelve Angry Men article). —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 00:35, 4 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Commenting to parse this out bc I started fixing the article: it currently covers the Rose and Sergel plays, while also mentioning two foreign language versions adapted from the teleplay. It had previously claimed to only be about a “1955 play by Rose”, a huge factual error, describing the Sergel version without naming him as author and conflating it with Rose’s later play (see below). Both of these are notable plays and widely performed today (both appear to be performed with multiple titles, but improved sourcing may be needed to confirm that). If this article is split, additional disambiguation will be necessary between these two plays, which should follow the standard convention of (YEAR play) (a detail which additional sourcing is needed to unearth about the Rose play) and render this discussion moot.

However, it remains inaccurate to say “a play by Rose for TV,” because teleplay and play are not interchangeable terms. To the extent they are understood that way it is both historical and jargon, and the disambiguator (Studio One) and the presence of the hatnote on this page are adequate to direct people to the teleplay. BrechtBro (talk) 04:11, 4 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

FWIW, I do not have an objection to splitting the content of this article so that the Sergel variation has its own article separate from the Rose-only variations. Nor do I currently have an opinion about whether the Rose-only variations should be covered in one article or two. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 17:53, 6 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.