Reading Plays

i asked a similar question once:

when was the last time you read a play?

um, just in case nobody shows up here. but you never know!

The last play I read was A Doll's House which I really liked but I only picked it up because I was going to see a performance of it. I read the rest of the collection and I well I enjoyed the other plays the haven't stuck with me as well as the one I saw performed.

I tried to read A Doll's House recently but the translation seemed awful and made me think of 19th-century Londoners trying to do Norwegian. So I didn't finish it.

The most recent stuff I've read is Orton, which I think maybe lost a certain more-here-than-carry-on quality on the page: but on the other hand could be produced to have even less than that.

Actually re Orton: I saw some photos of Loot after I read it, from the sort-of original production, and seeing the principal pair dressed nearly as Beatles suddenly put a whole different spin on it & on where it came from.

Ha! And of course I did post on that thread but forgot about it.

I really like 'A Doll's House', although its a bit like Schoenberg, in that its helped by the fact that a v conservative section ws upset by it (or at least that ws my impression gained from reading the intro). 'The lady from the Sea' was even better. 'The League of Youth' is obv outdated in theme.

Will be trying some Ionesco and Genet soon. I've disliked the bits of Pinter I've seen broadcast but I'll have to give him a go as its just a very irrational impression.

Any SF plays to read.

(btw, that Duras collection is terrific, just in case I put that into any doubt by my previous post)

I read a lot of plays. Partly because I can't afford to actually go and see them any more (at least not the ones I want to), and partly because the ones I want to see are never on where I live any way.

I really like reading them, but I suspect it's not a patch on seeing them performed. Although, generally speaking, the older/more archaic the English, the more I'm likely to get out of it by reading than by watching, just because it can be easier to work out with a bit of mental time before you're swept on by the plot.

I work in theater, so I read and work with a lot of scripts. Albee, Beckett, and O'Neill I find almost impossible to read because of the extended stage directions and instructions to the actors; I would much rather see them first and read them later. Williams and Shaw add a layer to the experience with their long digressions within the design and blocking instructions. Mamet and Shakespeare, who keep stage directions at a minimum, allow the reader to experience the play at the same pace as a viewer.

woops, sorry - i posted in the other thread by mistake, xyzzzz

I pretty much exclusively read plays. Can't remember what put me off going to see them now, but I've since seen televised versions of some Beckett stuff that reinforces the fact that theatre-going is just not as compelling for me. I think it might be that I read humour in a very dour way, whereas a lot of the time when performed it becomes broad comedy, almost (ugh) zany. Particularly something like Orton, who I adore on the page - the risk of me starting to dislike the farce when played out by actors is very high.

It appears I also posted in the other thread. Mostly gibberish, mind you, but there you go.

i have an instinctive "WHYYYYYYYYYYYYY GOD WHY??????" reaction to people who prefer reading plays to going to see them, emil.y; every actor knows the lines are really just the skeleton of the play, not the meat; the words themselves are tools to be used in various attempts to achieve certain things; i think of it as like saying you'd rather look at the blueprint for a building than stand inside the building itself!

but i guess on the page, you never have to deal with the possibiility of a BAD performance

you also don't have to deal with the FACT of the thing, that someone actually looks like THIS and says the line like THAT; on the page it's all idealized, out of focus

Also you don't have to deal with how actors really enjoy putting STRESS on WORDS every NOW and THEN.

But the thing is, when I read the words, they perform those tricks inside my mind... And no actor can make something as beautiful as the stark fact of this:

Estragon: Well, shall we go?
Vladimir: Yes, let's go. (They do not move.)

Those words are amazing, poignant, funny, devastating. Actors get to choose one, maybe two, of those effects (and all the others I didn't list). Maybe this *is* just bad performance, I don't know, but my limited experience with theatre has certainly never given me anything like the amount I can get with the printed word.

godot is meant to be a comedy - a black one definitely - but i guarantee - especially with godot - that there are all sorts of meanings and nuances and jokes that you won't think up or can't think up without either performing it yourself or seeing it performed.

most modern drama is like this. ever since chekhov, subtext has been the currency of theatre. prior to chekhov, the meaning - and the way actors played their parts - was pretty much all right there in the lines.

i agree that reading stuff on the page allows you a freedom of imagination and interpretation that a performance doesn't - a performance nails it down (somewhat) - but the beauty of a (good) performance is that the other human beings involved with its creation have probably thought of things you haven't.

casuistry - yes that's exactly what i mean, although for actors you can just substitute "living breathing people"

I've seen plenty of plays where a line that is simple on the page comes to live in performance. In the end, plays are action, and so where one character saying "um" or "I love you" is placed in the play is more important than the instrinsic beauty of the line. In that way, plays are more like song lyrics than novels -- "yeah, yeah, yeah" takes on added layers when those words are in a song, and more added layers when it's Kurt Cobain singing. Same with plays.

er, "comes to life" -- I'm full of typos today.

Speed-the-Plow has one exchange that goes:

FOX: You've ruined my life.
GOULD: Be that as it may.

Doesn't do much at all for me on the page, but the way Joe Mantegna (thanks to Gregory Mosher's direction) took that second line and turned it into five equally stressed syllables made it the funniest line in the whole show.

I'm just trying to get ILB to take me to the theatre.

Nah, I don't think anything will ever live up to that '(they do not move)', but I think it is quite possible that I've just never seen a really good performance. It's a fairly expensive thing to do, and after a couple of unsatisfactory efforts I gave up on the whole theatre-going thing. I also think I have more empathy towards imagined people than 'real' ones (tangible ones, I suppose), similar to preferring my own miserablist version of comedy.

Funnily enough, I've always quite liked the idea of directing a play.

I think there is quite a lot to be said for reading dialogue with instructions and trying imagine the workings of those elements in a theatrical performance. Although it gets limiting when reading the lines from a Greek chorus.

There must be some stuff on the cheap, maybe some student productions, there are quite a few contemporary classical type things I see that are really cheap or free. Just need to look harder.

I don't blame you for not going, Emily. The ticket prices and the inconsistency turn a lot of folks off, and the lows are so low, when you're five minutes into a show and you know it's not for you and you're just stuck there.

That said, any show without a star in it needs audiences at preview performances, so there are ways to see shows for cheap or free before they're reviewed. But, yeah, when it's bad it's bad.

If you can see a Martin McDonagh play, it's probably worth going. His plays are far more vivid on the stage than the page for me.

er that's one way to put it! the last thing i saw from him ended with the entire stage bathed in body parts and blood!!

but the beauty of a (good) performance is that the other human beings involved with its creation have probably thought of things you haven't.

Absolutely tue: this is why I wish I saw more plays rather than reading them, but they just aren't on and I just don't have the cash, alas.

That was just meant as a zing, although I swear to god it seems like most actors think the hallmark of a good actor is the ability to SUDDENLY RAISE ONE'S VOICE!?

I will say that I have enjoyed seeing a meh performances of, say, Gertrude Stein plays, even though I spent most of the evenings translating what I was hearing into text so I could reinterpret it for myself, because there is a certain quality of attention that a live situation can enforce, at least for me. But also, for me, most of the theatre experiences that I've enjoyed have been of things that are not quite plays. Though not all.

I agree that other people will think up things that you won't (although maybe that's what I want criticism for?), but I will also say that I read "Be that as it may" as said exactly the way Eazy describes it being said before I read his description of it. I mean, that's how I would say it. Especially if I were an actor. But I have made it perfectly clear to directors I've worked with that I am perfectly willing to be in their pieces but I am not willing to act.

But, as you all know, I'm weird.

going to see Gertrude Stein plays oh good lord

Vanya on 42nd Street is for me the best example you can get of what theater can be without actually going to the theater yourself -- that, and Swimming to Cambodia. One thing I love about that version of Vanya is that it's Mamet's translation but the actors basically ignore his italiacs and avoid the standard Mamet line readings. But that movie shows the kind of theater I love: where the actors may not even be onstage, and where they definitely are not larger than life.

I love production diaries as well, written as an actor or playwright or director is working on a show: Anthony Sher's Year of the King, Simon Gray's The Smoking Diaries, David Hare's Acting Up.

Bought a Penguin collection called 'Three Negro Plays' today. One of them is by LeRoi Jones, whom I really like.

i bought the complete prose of amiri baraka the other day! introduction by greg tate and everything. i can't remember if it calls him leroi j. on the cover anywhere.

ACTUALLY NOW I THINK ABOUT IT i saw baraka's 'slave ship' in a bristol council-funded performance during black history month

IT WAS REALLY BAD: here is the bit where they throw around the severed head of the overseer, and NOW HERE IS SOME DANCING

they wheeled baraka on afterwards to answer questions: he was asked what he thought of that night's production, and said he thought it was terrible

Ha!

When I was young I read Beckett's Endgame and it terrified me. I used to pick books out of our library based on their cover and the edition my parents have has this really creepy picture of Hamm on the cover in what looked to me like an electric chair. I was thouroughly unprepared for the play, in fact I didn't even know it was a play or what to make of the stage directions. But the story left me sad and scared and thrilled: I didn't quite know what to make of it but the ideas in the story seemed wise and immense and true.

A few years later my mother took me to see Endgame performed during the Beckett Festival and I was completely disappointed. Seeing the play performed robbed the words of their immensity and left them cramped and small. So while I do love seeing plays performed live my favourite plays are always better in my head.

That story is hilarious thomp.

"i bought the complete prose of amiri baraka the other day! introduction by greg tate and everything. i can't remember if it calls him leroi j. on the cover anywhere."

I think Leroi J. is his literary name. Baraka is the black militant/free jazz name and also a character from Mortal Kombat.

Well, close. He was born LJ and changed to AB in the [late 60s/early 70s?].

wasn't he actually born 'everett'?

with the book to refer to:

i) the cover says 'leroi jones/amiri baraka'
ii) 'born everett leroy jones ... 1934, in newark, new jersey ... by 1967 had taken the name imamu amiri baraka (swahili for "spiritual leader, blessed prince")'

I read most of Sam Shepard's 30 or so plays when I was in high school, and I've probably seen one or two dozen productions since, but I have yet to see one that is as visually effective as the one I get in my head from reading his very precise directions. (The Altman film of Fool for Love and Paris, Texas come closer to achieving his visual vision than any production of his plays that I've seen.)

I don't really hold with reading plays (unless you are planning to stage them or something like that). They are written to be performed, and should be seen, not read. Reading plays is like reading film scripts.

An exception - plays primarily written to be read, like those of Ibsen.

that said, I have been known to read plays that no one ever performs.

sometimes when u see a play everything they say suddenly seems so functional i prefer it when things r abstract and wierd and mean nothing

Shakespeare's a special case, but I've always felt at odds with the 20C orthodoxy that to get the "real" Shakespeare you have to see the plays performed. I do enjoy the buzz of live performance but most of what I've got out of the plays I've got reading them. The plays as plays often seem to me creaky and unsastisfactory. What's great is the poetry, and I get more out of that reading it at my own pace.

Middling-fair plays are usually unreadable, but with good acting and production watching them can be both pleasant and moving. Really great plays rarely get the production they deserve and are usually more rewarding when read. Actors who can make Shakespeare's characters not just eloquent (a given) but also convincing as human beings (in the context of the stage, at least) are very rare indeed.

I kinda feel completely the opposite. I don't read plays but once or twice have gone back to the text after seeing a performance, and the dialogue on the page seems so flat compared to the actor's interpretation.

Dialogue that reads as flat is mediocre dialogue. Well-written dialogue practically speaks itself, with all the correct emphases in plain view and begging to be sung out high and clear.

Well like I said I don't read plays so perhaps I don't have a feel for them, but I think you're underestimating what an actor (and director) can bring to the text. E.g. in The Cherry Orchard, when I saw it with Simon Russell Beale as Lopakhin, the simple line right at the beginning, "I've been reading this book, but I didn't understand a word of it", was given such a sense of carefree despair, it really set up the character wonderfully; and I'm sure I'd never have read it in the same way or got a similar sense of the character myself.

yah im tryna think of examples of that that ive had but none spring to mind. I do feel like it sucks ass usually to see beckett for ex. because u miss out on the hilarious/mental stage dir.

NB: The Cherry Orchard was written in Russian, so its translated dialogue is going to fall much flatter than the original, unless the translator is a miracle worker (and a natural actor).

I prob didn't make my point well enough, but I do think that actors are constantly adding value and depth to dialogue that would otherwise seem flat and inert. It is one of the charms and mysteries of theater that this is so. And it has saved many a playwright's bacon.

What a timely revive! Since then I've been going to plays a bit more...well, I've seen The Misanthrope so far this year and I am REALLY looking out for things I might want to see.

But also I am going to put Fassbinder's collection of plays on my reading list this year. Doubt I'll ever see any production over here any time soon.

translated dialogue is going to fall much flatter than the original, unless the translator is a miracle worker

really? i can see translation being a problem for poetry, where the choice of every single word, syllable even, is crucial for the whole, but for prose and dialogue, what's the issue? sure you're not going to get an exact copy but that doesn't mean the translation won't have a life of its own. some of my favourite novels are translations!

I think Aimless might be making a distinction between dialogue written for a play and dialogue written for a novel?

Ok well I'm not sure what such a distinction would be based on...

Erm, maybe written for a performance by an actor...just guessing really. Because I've no time for all this 'translations are worthless' mumbo jumbo!

Maybe its just me, but I write poetry and am pretty sensitive to prose style and to verbal cadences. When any writer excels at dialogue, it will show a nuanced ear for emphasis; iow, there will be one clear and obvious way to speak it aloud, which will mirror the emotional state of the speaker.

Playwrights who pepper their stage directions with instructions on how to speak their lines don't trust themselves or their actors or their dialogue. In which case, you get crap similar to this:

Charlotte: (speaking in hushed tones, as if she might arrouse the ghosts of their dead marriage if she raised her voice) Can that be true, Charlie? Have we really grown that far apart?"

A good actor might rescue this piece of shit sufficiently to put it across to an audience convincingly, but they will have to work their butt off to do it.

Otoh, well written dialogue is a piece of cake to deliver. You can find it in good novels, too. I'm reading Evelyn Waugh's trilogy Sword of Honour, and he handles the dialogue smoothly and with a minimum of fuss. When I read it I can hear it, and it flows naturally.

Re: reading plays vs. watching them: most stage acting I've seen seems like over-acting to me, which probably means I just don't get the art form, but it annoys me. It's like being at a party full of Leos.

I find Albee tough to read because of the perscriptive line readings Aimless describes. Tennessee Williams, on the other hand, writes in a way that makes reading his stage directions a parallel pleasurable experience to reading the play itself.

And Beckett - golden in performance, no fun to read.

is this a challop or

there will be one clear and obvious way to speak it aloud

Been reading this, and I'm not sure what I think. I know what I feel - I struggle going to see plays. Very often I find what I consider the actorish delivery of the dialogue ludicrously at odds with how I wd read it in my head.

However, I'm saying things like 'I feel' and 'I find' because I'm not sure this isn't just representative of a lack of familiarity with the traditions of the theatre - in other words that a regular theatre goer wouldn't get a great deal of pleasure from performances that I find... well, what do I find?

It's something to do with feeling the actor or actress is an imposition between the writing and listener. I reckon this is both a novelistic curse (you want to mainline the sounds/aesthetic) and a cinema curse (I tend not to read film scripts, therefore don't have expectations of characters and dialogue.

That's not to say I haven't seen theatre performances that I haven't enjoyed a lot, or, perhaps more crucially for the discussion, theatre performances where I've felt one actor alone has delivered things naturally, and the rest have just sounded like, well, performing actors.

What I would say is that it seems frequently clear to me that although I would by and large agree with what you say, Aimless, about there being one way to say well written dialogue (whether for novels or plays, or poetry possibly), I find frequently that way is not the way I hear spoken in the theatre.

This, on the whole, I think is my problem - I wish I was a Dickens type person, I just liked the smell of facepaint and the glow of the lights, and the whole aura of performance. But I'm not that type, and very often I find the whole thing quite awkward, and wd prefer to read the play (esp Shakespeare) rather than see it.

I do force myself to go from time to time, and force myself to enjoy it as much as possible, but it doesn't feel natural. My loss I reckon.

Kind of wish I was like the person who was in a performance of King Lear, who when Gloucester (SPOILER!) was having his eyes put out, screamed 'STOP IT STOP IT MAKE IT STOP!' before being dragged away by helpful security guards.

does anyone recommend any
i read osage august county
maybe something w/two leads
like all those novels by that guy who doesn't punctuate & talks rita hayworth

http://www.amazon.com/The-Sunset-Limited-Acting-Edition/dp/0822222108

http://www.amazon.com/T-Bone-Weasel-Jon-Klein/dp/0822211122/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1354732820&sr=1-

ty!