Reading Plays

[Karuna]

Hi guys,

Any advice on READING PLAYS? I have enrolled on a course to 'Start Writing Plays' which will obviously involves reading some. This sounds like a chore; HOW CAN I ENJOY IT?????????

[starrwriter]

Any advice on READING PLAYS? I have enrolled on a course to 'Start Writing Plays' which will obviously involves reading some. This sounds like a chore; HOW CAN I ENJOY IT?????????

To me, reading plays is easier than reading most novels. The format is so much simpler: very brief setting description and then all dialogue.

I can recommend my favorite plays to read:

Night of the Iguana by Tennessee Williams
Long Day's Journey Into Night by Eugene O'Neill
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
Anything by Harold Pinter (who just won the Nobel Prize in Literature)
Waiting For Godot by Samuel Beckett
Picnic by William Inge
The Physicists by Friedrich Durrenmatt

[Darlin]

Greetings and welcome, Karuna! I'm not a fan of plays so much but I think if you pick a subject you enjoy and perhaps start with shorter plays it might help you to get into them. Again welcome.

[Karuna]

To me, reading plays is easier than reading most novels. The format is so much simpler: very brief setting description and then all dialogue.

I can recommend my favorite plays to read:

Night of the Iguana by Tennessee Williams
Long Day's Journey Into Night by Eugene O'Neill
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee
[U]Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
Anything by Harold Pinter (who just won the Nobel Prize in Literature)
Waiting For Godot by Samuel Beckett[/U]
Picnic by William Inge
The Physicists by Friedrich Durrenmatt

Starrwriter,

Though I wasn't asking what to read, but how to enjoyably read it, I thank you for your list! I was so pleased that Pinter received his Nobel prize, even though I have never read or seen any of his work. I was very impressed by Godot when I saw it on TV some time ago; so much that I borrowed its script from a co-founder of the theatre company that I am a member of, I still haven't read it (or returned it)! I do intend to read it once it reappears from the rubble which I call my front room. I was not surprised when I descovered that Beckett wrote Godot in France (in French originally I believe). It seems strongly influenced by Existentialism, popularised in France - and elsewhere - by the writings of J. P. Sartre.*

As I've enrolled for an open University short course entitled 'Start Writing Plays' which involve reading @ least oner play script, I was really wanting to know HOW TO READ plays! The set book is Marie Jones' 'Stones in his Pockets'. I found this difficult, @ first, due to the lack of stage directions and the fact that the two main characters were playing all the other roles in the play. I have now both read and enjoyed reading the play. I think I would call it a tragio-comedy, but yet to embark on the course I speak with no real knowledge of the subject

*I have a copy of Sartre's play 'The Prostitute' somewhere, I should perhaps read that sometime.