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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Dramaturgica Barbelith?

18:13 / 29.03.02

Yeah, I know, I'm totally making up words. But anyway: is there any interest in perhaps having a weekly, semi-weekly read of a play and discussing the staging possibilities, etc.? Kinda like the film club, but since theater is such a regional thing, maybe reading plays and discussing them would be more viable than trying to view and discuss. Just trying to see if there's enough interest.

18:21 / 29.03.02

Sounds interesting. I'll admit I don't know all that much about theater, but figure I'd probably pick up some things from a discussion.

What kind of plays are we talking about though? Would they be plays that have scripts readily available online?

18:24 / 29.03.02

Given my workload at uni, can't really read more stuff specifically on that kind of level... but I'd be interested in discussing stuff I have read, which is quite wide. In the summer I could pick stuff up depending on what it is... have a fairly large library at home.

wembley can change in 28 days

18:51 / 29.03.02

I'm down for this one. Want suggestions for plays yet?

21:03 / 29.03.02

That's a good suggestion- you can actually find a pretty hefty quantity of scripts through the university sites, you know, plays by people who've been dead long enough.

And yes, totally down for suggestions.

I was kinda thinkin' something Shaw, like Major Barbara or something from that time period. Or Brecht maybe.

09:10 / 30.03.02

how about some Becket?

wembley can change in 28 days

18:46 / 05.04.02

This thread is so not dead yet!

I would suggest perhaps for our first play, we should choose something that most people have read or seen at least once in their travels. I guess there's ye olde standard Hamlet (or really any other Shakespeare - they're all available online), but I'd love to dig into something more contemporary. I'm not actually pushy enough to choose a play, so someone has to do it for me. And on top of everything, I've forgotten what the standard dramatic texts are. On the other hand, is the point of this mainly to discuss staging and thematic ideas, or is it to acquaint ourselves with material we otherwise wouldn't have read?

Okay, here are some suggestions, slightly in order of dramatic straightforwarditude:
Shaw - Heartbreak House / Major Babs
Chekhov - Cherry Orchard / Uncle Vanya
Stoppard - Rosencrantz and Guilenstern are Dead / Arcadia
Brecht - Threepenny Opera (I haven't read this one yet)
Shakespeare - anything
Pirandello - Six characters in search of an author
Büchner - Woyzeck (very short)
Euripides - Medea / Bacchae (or other Greeks)
Beckett - Endgame (or Godot)
Sarah Kane - Phaedra's Love (short and brutal)

I'm easy to please, as long as we're on about theatre.

19:03 / 05.04.02

What about M. Butterfly? Its short so it wouldn't require too much time to read and it seems perfect for discussion. Unless most of the discussion will be about staging, lighting, and all those technical details that I don't know the first thing about.

19:37 / 05.04.02

I'd also strongly pimp Conor McPherson's The Weir (not too long, not sure how much worth investigating but it's a great play). And on Stoppard lines, perhaps the less-studied plays... I'm a big fan of Hapgood. And, as it's an excuse to read the plays when my dissertation (mainly on the poetry) is done, Tony Harrison - The Common Chorus is quite good, and very easily discussable from a political/social/gender viewpoint.

22:34 / 05.04.02

I think the lines of which texts are considered standard these days are downright fuzzy at this point. I think, for the first play at least, we should go with something available online, since the quality of dramatic texts available in libraries has been known to vary from place to place. That would eliminate Beckett, Stoppard and possibly Büchner, Kane, and Harrison. But if people are willing to go look a bit for a play, then it doesn't really matter.

Anyway, are there any suggestions anyone would like to second?

23:51 / 05.04.02

Second Stoppard's Arcadia. I think its subject --in part, fractals and chaos theory-- would be attractive to a lot of 'lithers.

wembley can change in 28 days

23:51 / 05.04.02

Well I know Heiner Müller's Hamletmaschine is online in both English and German.

Bartleby.com houses Shaw's Man and Superman, and Pygmalion. Also there are Aeschylus, Aristophanes, Calderon (Life is a Dream), Corneille's Polyeucte, Euripides (Bacchae and Hippolytus), Goethe's Faust, Lessing, Moliere's Tartuffe, Racine's Phaedra, some Eugene O'Neill, Schiller's William Tell, the whole Shakespeare, Sophocles' Antigone and Oedipus, Synge Playboy of the Western World.

Mind you, The Online Books Page gave me links to the whole Chekhov, Shaw, Pirandello, and heaps others.

Godot and Endgame are online, too, as is Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. It would appear that if you know at least one full line from a play, you can probably find it online. So, I'd say pick away, and we'll see what we can find!

wembley can change in 28 days

23:55 / 05.04.02

Arcadia kicks ass. I can't seem to find it online, though.

02:21 / 06.04.02

Aristophanes.

08:15 / 06.04.02

Arcadia does indeed kick ass. I'd be very happy to do that... don't think it's available online, sadly, so it'll be eight or nine quid for the paperback if people don't have it.

It is worth it, though.