| New or classic? | |
| Posted by: aleck 08:51 am EDT 06/21/22 | |
| In reply to: What plays should I read? - dooey 08:12 am EDT 06/21/22 | |
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| How refreshing to hear that someone still actually reads plays. It used to be a common reading experience. Remember The Fireside Theatre that offered a whole range of plays on a monthly basis as well as a featured play per month. Now, sadly, gone. Or remember when plays in book form would regularly get onto the Best Seller lists, especially during the '20s when people couldn't wait to read the newest George Bernard Shaw or Eugene O'Neill play. As reading tastes changed and the way plays were (and usually are) written, there seems to be less interest and reading the plays are not as much fun. I go into reading plays when I was in fifth grade. I told the librarian at my school that I liked reading the dialog in novels but not the descriptions. She told me that I should therefore read plays. I did and she created a monster. If you are looking for the most enjoyable play reading experience, I would suggest reading (or rereading) O'Neill. O'Neill didn't trust actors ("Actors! Did you ever eat with one?") and therefore provides a descriptive aid for how nearly every line should be delivered. Like, "briskly" or "drowsily" or "with simple surprise" or "blandly", etc., etc. Despite these descriptions, I think reading O'Neill is a better experience than seeing them in production. Beyond the Horizon, for example, would, I think, be laughable on stage today, but not as a reading experience. That could be because actors (and directors) are ignoring O'Neill's dictates or think they know better or just want to mess with O'Neill for attention -- like that atrocity of Long Day's Journey that appeared briefly at the Minetta. O'Neil reads like novels. Reading plays became less enjoyable, I think, beginning with Mamet and the onslaught of plays that are really a series of blackout sketches. Trying to image the context of these plays is very difficult. It needs the work of the interpretive artist (actor, director, designer) to bring cohesion from something that has been "written" but enigmatic -- which is too much work for the armchair theatre-goer, if not impossible. I think the most rewarding play-reading would be for plays -- especially musicals -- where you cannot grasp the language while viewing it in performance. For example, who could understand the dialog and lyrics of Hamilton? Or, in many cases, Sondheim. These are scholarly works that require study. In Sonheim's case, you sometimes see parenthetical lines in the lyrics that could not possibly make sense as an audience member. I once aske an actress who appeared in a B'Way production of Sondheim how she could possibly try to express those asides in lyrics in performance. She said that she couldn't; she just sang the lyrics as written and hoped to get from one note to another. With newer plays, I would also start with recent award winners -- Pulitzer, Tony, Drama Desk -- and work from there to see what all the fuss is about. That is also suggested if you have already seen the plays in production. With newer plays, it is interesting to see how the artists made the leap from what was written to what appeared on stage. LIke, for example, Existence of God. There's a play that benefited from direction, acting, and, most importantly, the lighting. I wouldn't want to see a lesser production of that. Reading it might also explain the massive plot holes in the script. |
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| Previous: | re: What plays should I read? - PlayWiz 05:00 pm EDT 06/21/22 |
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