| re: You are too kind | |
| Posted by: Singapore/Fling 02:10 am EST 01/11/18 | |
| In reply to: re: You are too kind - ryhog 11:53 pm EST 01/10/18 | |
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| You're right that there's no rule book to what a play is or isn't. There is, though, craft and technical elements, and it takes great skill to tell a story coherently, particularly when you're looking solely at what's on the page, and not what a production wills into being. I didn't say it wasn't technically a play. You're misquoting me. I said that technically it's barely,/i> a play. There is a crucial difference. Van Kampen does manage to string together a series of scenes with a modicum logical coherence. She doesn't quite find an overarching drama that tells a singular story (partly because she doesn't know the characters very well), but she does drop small dramas into her scenes in a way that give it a sense of movement and cause & effect. In this way, she has met the barest criteria for writing a play. Like a jukebox musical, the text mostly exists as a delivery method for production numbers, but it is still enough to be a play. It's just that it's the playwriting equivalent of a sand castle - the kind that are just hills built by hand - and it's being shown on Broadway, where one expects soaring glass and steel condos and the occasional Zaha Hadid masterwork. Fortunately, the play's physical production is sumptuous, which I think is why the set gets the most prominent pull quote outside of the theater. In the same way that your work in producing and commercial theater economics is built upon a great study and a great skill, so is my work in play development and play analysis. There are criteria by which the writing of a play can be assessed. Those critera can be finely calibrated, but they can also be quite broad - if you were to explain to someone the point at which a play stops being a play and starts being dance or performance art, you would be using many of the same concepts to describe what makes a play a play. My impression from some of your writing on this board is that you don't believe that these diagnostic tools and structures exist, but they do, and they are the tools used by everyone who tells a story on stage. As a play is just a text, many underwhelming texts can become great shows when other elements of theater making deliver a compelling experience. The showmanship of "Farinelli" is enough to elevate the piece into something that is satisfying for many, but that's a credit to scenic, music, and all of those candles, as well as Rylance, who does as well as anyone can when they don't have a character to play. Since you liked the play, can you share what story you took from it? What about the play felt complete to you? I welcome your disagreement, but hopefully we can disagree through the play itself. |
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