Theater Since the 20th Century

[Heteronym]

Recently I started paying more attention to theater. I'm reading less novels and finding this medium, carried mostly by dialogue, fascinating. I love a play with intelligent, witty, subtle dialogue; I'm discovering the pleasure of reading about two strong personalities locked in a verbal conflict, or about a group of characters playing out a dramatic situation to its ultimate consequences. It's a very re-readable. I read Edward Albee's The Zoo Story twice in two days because it's a short play that moves quickly and is very addictive.

When people speak of theater, they think of the Greeks, Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, perhaps Ibsen. I preferred to start with modern theater. People tend to disparage what's modern, but I think they just don't bother to become familiar with it. I've always tried to live by Borges' words: "it's easy to know the classics, it's difficult to know the good contemporaries." So I'm trying to educate myself on good modern playwriting.

In the past months I've read Eugene Ionesco, Dario Fo, Wole Soyinka, and Edward Albee; I'm planning to start Eugene O'Neill next week. Next I'll tackle Harold Pinter, Vaclav Havel and perhaps Tom Stoppard. I've been compiling a list that will take me from the start of the last century to playwrights like Yasmina Reza, Tracy Letts, Sarah Ruhl and Martin McDonagh, working now.

[LitNetIsGreat]

Willy Russell is worth reading I think.

[Emil Miller]

. In the past months I've read Eugene Ionesco, Dario Fo, Wole Soyinka, and Edward Albee; I'm planning to start Eugene O'Neill next week. Next I'll tackle Harold Pinter, Vaclav Havel and perhaps Tom Stoppard.

If you get to Stoppard, check out his 'The Dog it was that Died', a stupendous send-up of the British secret service and all the funnier for being close to the truth. Written as radio play, it was later adapted for television.

[mortalterror]

I recently did something similar and compiled a list of famous plays. Skip down to the end for my 20th century suggestions.

458BC Aeschylus- Oresteia
431BC Euripides- Medea
429BC Sophocles- Oedipus Rex
411BC Aristophanes- Lysistrata
317BC Menander- The Miser
195BC Plautus- The Pot of Gold
160BC Terence- The Brothers
150BC Sudraka- The Little Clay Cart
100BC Kalidasa- Sakuntala and the Ring of Recollection
65BC Seneca- Thyestes
1250 Zecheng- Romance of the Lute
1290 Zhiyuan- Autumn in Han Palace
1300 Hanqing- Injustice to Dou E
1300 Renfu- Rain on the Paulownia Tree
1330 Junxiang- The Orphan of Chao
1336 Shifu- Romance of the Western Chamber
1412 Zeami- The Wind in the Pines
1470 Anonymous- Everyman
1499 Rojas- Celestina
1518 Machiavelli- The Mandrake
1551 Ariosto- The Supposes
1573 Tasso- Aminta
1589 Marlowe- The Jew of Malta
1592 Kyd- The Spanish Tragedy
1598 Xianzu- The Peony Pavilion
1599 Dekker- The Shoemaker's Holiday
1599 William Shakespeare- Hamlet
1606 Jonson- Volpone
1606 Tourneur- The Revenger's Tragedy
1612 Webster- The Duchess of Malfi
1619 De Vega- Fuente Ovejuna
1619 Fletcher- The Maid's Tragedy
1622 Middleton- The Changeling
1625 Massinger- A New Way to Pay Old Debts
1630 Molina- The Trickster of Seville
1633 Ford- Tis Pity She's a Whore
1635 Calderon- Life is a Dream
1636 Corneille- The Cid
1654 Vondel- Lucifer
1664 Moliere- Tartuffe
1671 Milton- Samson Agonistes
1675 Wycherley- The Country Wife
1676 Etherege- The Man of Mode
1677 Behn- The Rover
1677 Racine- Phaedra
1678 Dryden- All For Love
1682 Otway- Venice Preserv'd
1684 Wilmot- The Farce of Sodom
1700 Congreve- The Way of the World
1707 Farquhar- The Beaux Stratagem
1709 Lesage- Turcaret
1712 Addison- Cato
1715 Chikamatsu- The Battles of Coxinga
1728 Gay- The Beggar's Opera
1730 Marivaux- Game of Love and Chance
1743 Goldoni- The Servant of Two Masters
1748 Izumo- Chushingura
1761 Gozzi- Love For Three Oranges
1767 Lessing- Minna Von Barnhelm
1773 Beaumarchais- The Barber of Seville
1773 Goldsmith- She Stoops to Conquer
1776 Voltaire- Merope
1777 Sheridan- The School For Scandal
1782 Alfieri- Saul
1804 Schiller- William Tell
1808 Kleist- Penthesilea
1817 Byron- Manfred
1820 Shelley- Prometheus Unbound
1830 Hugo- Hernani
1832 Goethe- Faust
1835 Buchner- Danton's Death
1842 Gogol- The Inspector General
1850 Beddoes- Death's Jest Book
1852 Dumas fils- Camille
1855 Turgenev- A Month in the Country
1859 Ostrovsky- The Storm
1879 Ibsen- A Doll's House
1885 Gilbert and Sullivan- The Mikado
1888 Strindberg- Miss Julie
1891 Wedekind- Spring Awakening
1892 Hauptmann- The Weavers
1895 Wilde- The Importance of Being Earnest
1896 Jarry- Ubu Roi
1897 Rostand- Cyrano de Bergerac
1897 Schnitzler- La Ronde
1901 Gorky- The Lower Depths
1903 Shaw- Man and Superman
1904 Chekhov- The Cherry Orchard
1907 Synge- The Playboy of the Western World
1921 Pirandello- Six Characters in Search of an Author
1932 Lorca- Blood Wedding
1935 Eliot- Murder in the Cathedral
1938 Wilder- Our Town
1943 Anouilh- Antigone
1944 Brecht- Caucasian Chalk Circle
1944 Sartre- No Exit
1947 Williams- A Streetcar Named Desire
1947 Genet- The Maids
1949 Beckett- Waiting For Godot
1949 Miller- Death of a Salesman
1950 Ionesco- The Bald Soprano
1956 O'Neill- Long Days Journey Into Night
1962 Albee- Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
1964 Pinter- The Homecoming
1966 Goldman- The Lion in Winter
1976 Soyinka- Death and the King's Horseman
1982 Mamet- Glengarry Glen Ross
1983 Wilson- Fences
1991 Kushner- Angels in America
2002 Stoppard- The Coast of Utopia

[Heteronym]

That's a fine list.

You've read Wole Soyinka? What do you think of him?

[OrphanPip]

I've only read Death and the King's Horseman, but I did enjoy it. Soyinka is a dense writer, he's drawing on traditional Yoruban theatre (in the parables and dancing scenes), and also heavily on Shakespeare. (I didn't quite get this play until I discussed it with someone who explained Yoruban religion and cosmology to me, then it made much more sense)

Another Nigerian/Yoruban playwright I've read is Femi Osofisan. His Women of Owu is a rewrite of Euripedes Trojan Women that is quite good.

You didn't mention Beckett, but I would advise tackling him and Sartre before Pinter, because Pinter is heavily indebted to their work (especially Beckett).

(Edit: A series of Beckett's short plays were produced for television in Ireland and some of them are quite good. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COZ0QXyDgYI This version of catastrophe stars Pinter in one of his last acting roles. His last acting role was in the HBO production of Wit I think, which is a pretty good play but tends to elicit mixed responses.)

[Heteronym]

I'm reasonably familiar with Beckett already. Sartre is also on my list, but I'm not reading in chronological order; I'm going by what my guts tell me, and right now I'm more interested in reading Pinter

[Venerable Bede]

I haven't read too many modern plays, but Harold Pinter's The Dumb Waiter was a good read. The ending was strangely befuddling but I enjoyed the dialogue and banter.

[Heteronym]

I've only read Death and the King's Horseman, but I did enjoy it. Soyinka is a dense writer, he's drawing on traditional Yoruban theatre (in the parables and dancing scenes), and also heavily on Shakespeare. (I didn't quite get this play until I discussed it with someone who explained Yoruban religion and cosmology to me, then it made much more sense)

I read a collection of his plays a few weeks ago.

I've also had to do research on Yoruba religion to understand some points in his plays. Strangely, the play I enjoyed the most was exactly the one that borrowed more heavily from those myths, A Dance of the Forests.

His plays have left me underwhelmed so far. There's one, The Road, that I found incomprehensible; finishing it was just a relief. His dialogue, his characters' behavior and motives, and the songs, are a bit strange to me. There are, however, moments when his dialogue shines with sarcastic wisdom. I'll have to read another collection.

[mk123]

I just completed a course this semester on Dramatic Imagination in the 20th Century. We read Albee, Brecht, O'Neill, etc. Of the writers, I was most intrigued by Susan Glaspell, someone that has faded since the early 20th century (which is a bit of a travesty). She was O'Neill's contemporary and helped him get his start in the Provincetown Players. I would highly recommend reading "Trifles" and "The Verge." At the time, she and not O'Neill was expected to be the next big thing ... history had other plans.

I also enjoyed Paula Vogel's "Desdemona" - a reinterpretation of "Othello" but from the female characters' perspective, turning it into a critique of feminism. We didn't read Ionesco, but I am very interested in exploring his works; as well as Brecht's other plays.

Oh, and Sam Shepard is a bit like Albee in the way he mixes realism and the absurd. Shepard's "Buried Child" and "Curse of the Starving Class" are interesting. I compared Albee's "American Dream" to "Buried Child" in my final paper with some interesting results. Lots of parallels between the two plays.

[JBI]

I recently did something similar and compiled a list of famous plays. Skip down to the end for my 20th century suggestions.

458BC Aeschylus- Oresteia
431BC Euripides- Medea
429BC Sophocles- Oedipus Rex
411BC Aristophanes- Lysistrata
317BC Menander- The Miser
195BC Plautus- The Pot of Gold
160BC Terence- The Brothers
150BC Sudraka- The Little Clay Cart
100BC Kalidasa- Sakuntala and the Ring of Recollection
65BC Seneca- Thyestes
1250 Zecheng- Romance of the Lute
1290 Zhiyuan- Autumn in Han Palace
1300 Hanqing- Injustice to Dou E
1300 Renfu- Rain on the Paulownia Tree
1330 Junxiang- The Orphan of Chao
1336 Shifu- Romance of the Western Chamber
1412 Zeami- The Wind in the Pines
1470 Anonymous- Everyman
1499 Rojas- Celestina
1518 Machiavelli- The Mandrake
1551 Ariosto- The Supposes
1573 Tasso- Aminta
1589 Marlowe- The Jew of Malta
1592 Kyd- The Spanish Tragedy
1598 Xianzu- The Peony Pavilion
1599 Dekker- The Shoemaker's Holiday
1599 William Shakespeare- Hamlet
1606 Jonson- Volpone
1606 Tourneur- The Revenger's Tragedy
1612 Webster- The Duchess of Malfi
1619 De Vega- Fuente Ovejuna
1619 Fletcher- The Maid's Tragedy
1622 Middleton- The Changeling
1625 Massinger- A New Way to Pay Old Debts
1630 Molina- The Trickster of Seville
1633 Ford- Tis Pity She's a Whore
1635 Calderon- Life is a Dream
1636 Corneille- The Cid
1654 Vondel- Lucifer
1664 Moliere- Tartuffe
1671 Milton- Samson Agonistes
1675 Wycherley- The Country Wife
1676 Etherege- The Man of Mode
1677 Behn- The Rover
1677 Racine- Phaedra
1678 Dryden- All For Love
1682 Otway- Venice Preserv'd
1684 Wilmot- The Farce of Sodom
1700 Congreve- The Way of the World
1707 Farquhar- The Beaux Stratagem
1709 Lesage- Turcaret
1712 Addison- Cato
1715 Chikamatsu- The Battles of Coxinga
1728 Gay- The Beggar's Opera
1730 Marivaux- Game of Love and Chance
1743 Goldoni- The Servant of Two Masters
1748 Izumo- Chushingura
1761 Gozzi- Love For Three Oranges
1767 Lessing- Minna Von Barnhelm
1773 Beaumarchais- The Barber of Seville
1773 Goldsmith- She Stoops to Conquer
1776 Voltaire- Merope
1777 Sheridan- The School For Scandal
1782 Alfieri- Saul
1804 Schiller- William Tell
1808 Kleist- Penthesilea
1817 Byron- Manfred
1820 Shelley- Prometheus Unbound
1830 Hugo- Hernani
1832 Goethe- Faust
1835 Buchner- Danton's Death
1842 Gogol- The Inspector General
1850 Beddoes- Death's Jest Book
1852 Dumas fils- Camille
1855 Turgenev- A Month in the Country
1859 Ostrovsky- The Storm
1879 Ibsen- A Doll's House
1885 Gilbert and Sullivan- The Mikado
1888 Strindberg- Miss Julie
1891 Wedekind- Spring Awakening
1892 Hauptmann- The Weavers
1895 Wilde- The Importance of Being Earnest
1896 Jarry- Ubu Roi
1897 Rostand- Cyrano de Bergerac
1897 Schnitzler- La Ronde
1901 Gorky- The Lower Depths
1903 Shaw- Man and Superman
1904 Chekhov- The Cherry Orchard
1907 Synge- The Playboy of the Western World
1921 Pirandello- Six Characters in Search of an Author
1932 Lorca- Blood Wedding
1935 Eliot- Murder in the Cathedral
1938 Wilder- Our Town
1943 Anouilh- Antigone
1944 Brecht- Caucasian Chalk Circle
1944 Sartre- No Exit
1947 Williams- A Streetcar Named Desire
1947 Genet- The Maids
1949 Beckett- Waiting For Godot
1949 Miller- Death of a Salesman
1950 Ionesco- The Bald Soprano
1956 O'Neill- Long Days Journey Into Night
1962 Albee- Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
1964 Pinter- The Homecoming
1966 Goldman- The Lion in Winter
1976 Soyinka- Death and the King's Horseman
1982 Mamet- Glengarry Glen Ross
1983 Wilson- Fences
1991 Kushner- Angels in America
2002 Stoppard- The Coast of Utopia

You listed the Chinese ones all by their given names, just so you know. IT's quite dizzying.

[mortalterror]

You listed the Chinese ones all by their given names, just so you know. IT's quite dizzying.

You're right. In the future, I'll just leave them out. That's what I get for trying to be multi-cultural.

[JBI]

You're right. In the future, I'll just leave them out. That's what I get for trying to be multi-cultural.

Well, as a future reference, names are generally given for Chinese authors in full name, with surname first, since surnames are too common to distinguish individuals, and first names are common as well, in addition to not representative.

[OrphanPip]

I read a collection of his plays a few weeks ago.

I've also had to do research on Yoruba religion to understand some points in his plays. Strangely, the play I enjoyed the most was exactly the one that borrowed more heavily from those myths, A Dance of the Forests.

His plays have left me underwhelmed so far. There's one, The Road, that I found incomprehensible; finishing it was just a relief. His dialogue, his characters' behavior and motives, and the songs, are a bit strange to me. There are, however, moments when his dialogue shines with sarcastic wisdom. I'll have to read another collection.

There's certainly something in Soyinka that seems to require the audience to come prepared with a massive amount of information to appreciate the plays. He expects you to be familiar with both the religious and artistic traditions of Yoruba, and then he also displays no lack of knowledge about Western theatre.

One thing I find quite interesting about him, for a contemporary playwright, is that his plays, at least for Death and the King's Horseman, are fairly formalistic. There's a tight structure to his plays that doesn't wander, which probably helps us grasp onto something in the swirl of incomprehensible monologues.

I'm not sure Soyinka is underwhelming, but he's jarring and not an easy read. I've been told his plays benefit greatly from performance because of the use of dance, song, and music.

[Heteronym]

Yes, jarring is a better word to describe my initial impressions of his plays.

And I agree with you about his concern for form. One of the things that struck me when I read A Dance of the Forests was his attention to the structure of the play. There was a very ingenious moment when he inserts a sort of flashback, only it's being seen by the characters in the initial timeline, that impressed me very much. It's little things like this that haven't made me give up on him yet.