when was the last time you read a play?

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it doesn't seem that common anymore, does it? or maybe it's just me. i picked up a pinter collection at a yard sale (an evergreen original, naturally. once upon a time, it was the height of hip to be seen with a grove press or evergreen ionesco collection in your back pocket. back pockets were bigger then. ah, those were the days.), and i read the first play in it, which was *a slight ache*. the ending gave me a bit of a throbbing pain, but overall i enjoyed it. And then it occurred to me that i probably haven't read a play since i was in my 20's. i'm 36 for those of you keeping track. maybe my tolerance is just lower when it comes to drama. i do so love great dialogue though. maybe i will follow each novel/short-story collection /non-fiction book i read with a lovely little play. as a palate-cleanser. or maybe not. maybe they just don't make them like they used to. but they must, right? they still make everything like they used to. there is just less fuss & muss. and dust. and broken bones.

anyway, do you, will you, why, why not? and do they, will they?

drama students need not apply.

― scott seward (scott seward), Sunday, 17 July 2005 01:44 (twenty years ago)

I haven't read a play since I left college, which is 12 years ago or thereabouts. I don't read much poetry any more either, which is a shame. I never really liked to read plays and scripts that much, always preferred to see them acted out, but I miss poetry.

― accentmonkey (accentmonkey), Sunday, 17 July 2005 11:51 (twenty years ago)

I love reading plays. The last one I read was De Nygifte (The Newly-Weds) by Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson.

Last week.

― SRH (Skrik), Sunday, 17 July 2005 15:47 (twenty years ago)

The last one I read was Raisin in the Sun, a little over a year ago.

― a respectable burgher, Sunday, 17 July 2005 18:23 (twenty years ago)

I was actually just thinking about starting a thread on ILE asking people when the last time they saw a play was. Reason being that my folks were nice enough to take me to a couple of plays at the Shaw Festival near Niagra Falls, and, in spite of being surrounded by retirees, I really enjoyed it, and realized I haven't seen any theater in a long time.

I still can't say I like reading plays anywhere near as much though.

― Hurting (Hurting), Monday, 18 July 2005 02:12 (twenty years ago)

I'm very fond of reading plays, but for some reason I abhor watching the damn things be performed.
It may have something to do with completely disliking the standard acting style in Norway, where everything's acted out as if it's British restoration comedy. Admittedly I may simply have attended the wrong performances, but living in a podunk town doesn't open for many opportunities anyways.

O well, last time I read a play was last week: a re-read of "All my sons". I like plays a change from novels, since by their nature you (hopefully) get a succinct presentation and exploration of the theme[s]. Plus, reading well-written dialogue is quick and fun.

Which is nice.

I'm a relatively ungregarious person though, so that may have something to do with my preference of the page over the stage.

― Øystein (Øystein), Monday, 18 July 2005 03:12 (twenty years ago)

A year ago, maybe two. Steve Martin's 'Picasso at the Lapin Agile'. It didn't make much impression, I'd rather see a play performed.

― Ray (Ray), Monday, 18 July 2005 07:29 (twenty years ago)

Me too. I can't follow the stage directions. I think it's the same thing that stops me from reading maps properly.

― accentmonkey (accentmonkey), Monday, 18 July 2005 14:28 (twenty years ago)

Not since I finished my degree two months ago. I'd like to see more plays, but only at big theatres where the actors can't make eye-contact with you, maybe the globe or somewhere.

Tennyson's plays are amazing, amazing.

― Gravel Puzzleworth (Gregory Henry), Tuesday, 19 July 2005 05:06 (twenty years ago)

I had a phase of reading British plays a couple of years ago... Hare and Ayckbourn and stuff. I think I was trying to write one at the time.

I usually see a few outdoor plays every summer, but haven't yet this year.

― Archel (Archel), Tuesday, 19 July 2005 08:42 (twenty years ago)

I went to the Globe a couple of years ago and saw Richard II. It was bloody great.

― accentmonkey (accentmonkey), Tuesday, 19 July 2005 10:18 (twenty years ago)

Ha, the first and only time I went to the Globe (Macbeth) I almost collapsed with heat exhaustion and because I had a standing ticket they wouldn't let me sit down. I had to go outside and missed most of the play. Probably an authentic 16th century experience.

― Archel (Archel), Tuesday, 19 July 2005 11:05 (twenty years ago)

i have an ionesco on my "to read" pile, tho this designation is getting more and more meaningless since this so-called pile (five stacks + some loose) broke fifty

not evergreen or the grove press tho. penguin modern classix.

are evergreen and t.g.p. american? i have never heard of them.

― tom west (thomp), Tuesday, 19 July 2005 21:39 (twenty years ago)

I can read maps well but can't handle stage directions. If the stage directions were maps I'd probably be fine. Anyway: I generally hate reading plays and would rather see them performed but I also don't see many plays performed. I did recently accept an award for a -- well, not quite play, but a performance piece that I was part of. I didn't really win the award but I accepted it. here's the photo -- I'm in the brown shirt holding the award.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Wednesday, 20 July 2005 04:19 (twenty years ago)

"are evergreen and t.g.p. american? i have never heard of them."

wow, really, you've never heard of grove press!! grove press is how generations of american malcontents learned how to be hardbitten hipsters and punx.

― scott seward (scott seward), Wednesday, 20 July 2005 09:48 (twenty years ago)

grove press had the greatest covers too. all thanks to one man. this only added to their cool factor:

http://designforum.aiga.org/content.cfm?ContentAlias=_getfullarticle&aid=890615

― scott seward (scott seward), Wednesday, 20 July 2005 09:52 (twenty years ago)

Last month: the terrific Improbable Frequencies, which features a singing Myles na gC and was first recommended to me by a typing Dirty na gV.

― the finefox, Wednesday, 20 July 2005 10:22 (twenty years ago)

Ha, the first and only time I went to the Globe (Macbeth) I almost collapsed with heat exhaustion and because I had a standing ticket they wouldn't let me sit down.

When we were there there were loads of people in the groundlings pit falling over and having to be brought to seats to sit down. So either they've relented, or they've become wise to those who pay a fiver and pretend to faint so they can sit in the twenty quid seats. I don't know which way round it goes.

― accentmonkey (accentmonkey), Wednesday, 20 July 2005 10:58 (twenty years ago)

I once read "R.U.R." by Karl Capek, but that was because nobody ever performs it and I wanted to know the story that gave us the word "robot." I keep meaning to read more Shakespeare, but then is drama meant to be read or just performed (which I guess is what this thread is really about)? I must confess I'd rather watch a play than read it.

― Mark Klobas, Friday, 22 July 2005 01:54 (twenty years ago)

I'm with the people who prefer to read plays than to watch them - it's the same kind of thing as film adaptations of novels, my imagination brings a visualisation of the action/emotion/setting that I prefer to someone else's. Plays are theoretically worse to me than films, because I find them stilted and they bring to the fore the fact that it is all pretend, although I have a possibly snobbish affection for the fact that there seems to often be more love of the text involved in a play than a big-budget film (the idea that it is just a product of consumption to make money, rather than an artistic labour - yes, I guess that is a romantic snobbery).

The last time I read a play was a Sartre collection, No Exit and some others, about three weeks ago.

― emil.y (emil.y), Friday, 22 July 2005 17:26 (twenty years ago)

A few years ago I read "The Caretaker" by Pinter. I think that was the most recent one.

― o. nate (onate), Friday, 22 July 2005 17:34 (twenty years ago)

I read Oedipus Rex about a month ago.

― Aimless (Aimless), Saturday, 23 July 2005 00:16 (twenty years ago)

Today I read Antigone.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Saturday, 23 July 2005 07:14 (twenty years ago)

I think probably "Picasso at the Lapin Agile" and other short plays by Steve Martin. At least a year ago, if memory serves.

― jaymc (jaymc), Saturday, 23 July 2005 07:34 (twenty years ago)

I re-read Sarah Kane's Blasted and 4.48 Psychosis a short while back, largely because one of my customers (a man whose conversation normally extends to casual insults and speculation on footy transfers) went to see his daughter in 4.48 (Her school play, oddly) and borrowed the texts off me after raving about it.

― Matt (Matt), Saturday, 23 July 2005 23:01 (twenty years ago)

I've been reading leroi jones collection of one/two act plays.

As a result I wz going to start a thread abt plays with an SF/fantasy dimension but maybe we could do it now: any recommendations on that front?

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Sunday, 24 July 2005 12:44 (twenty years ago)

ten months pass...

Two recommendations for good fantasy plays that I've read in the last few years: The Blue Bird by Maurice Maeterlinck (charming fairy tale and still very easily readable in the 1911 translation, the most recent one out there) and Berkeley Square by John Balderston

― Ryanbread, Friday, 2 June 2006 01:25 (nineteen years ago)

i wonder if i could count platonic dialogs.

― Josh (Josh), Friday, 2 June 2006 02:45 (nineteen years ago)

Symposium, yes. Republic, no.

The last one I read was Euripedes, Electra, a week or two ago.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Friday, 2 June 2006 03:11 (nineteen years ago)

one year passes...

the last play i read was "the women of trachis" by sophocles, and it was great! i would have been lost without all the footnotes though.

― Tracer Hand, Wednesday, 23 April 2008 01:27 (seventeen years ago)

C.K. Williams did a translation of that one.

― Eazy, Wednesday, 23 April 2008 20:01 (seventeen years ago)

If Platonic dialogs count, then Ion, which my friend and I acted out, even. We were at a bar drinking and it seemed like a thing to do. This was a few weeks ago.

― Casuistry, Thursday, 24 April 2008 04:58 (seventeen years ago)

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