Dramatic Works

Dr.Strangefate

He Sees You When You're Sleeping. He Knows When Yo
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Oct 24, 2004
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Okay, am I the only person on these boards who reads plays, because if I am, that is ****ing stupid.

Drama has some of the best fiction to come out of the 20th Century.

What have you read?
 
I read tons of plays primarily because I do community theatre work, it really is the best way to read them too with a bunch of fellow actors around reading each part:

My most recent reads include: Pygmalion, Mr. Roberts, Oscar and Felix, Witness for the Prosecution, Relatively Speaking, I Ought to Be in Pictures, Author's Voice, The Mouse That Roared, and Harvey. Plus I adore Ibsen, The Master Builder is easily one of my fav plays. As well, I just got the script to "Angels in America".

These are wondrous plays to read but I heartily recommend going down to ye olde community theatre and just see what they have in store.
 
Well, I've read some Shakespeare, of course. About six years ago, when I lived in Oregon, I really got into plays and read a bunch of Mamet and Chekov, and I read Death of a Salesman and Waiting For Godot. . .
 
I love Beckett's Endgame and Waiting for Godot...

I suggest Tom Stoppard to everyone.
 
I am a fan of Death of a Salesman and a Christmas Carol. Pretty standard but still very enjoyable plays when you break it down. And I do like me some Shakespeare.
 
I'm *definitely* more partial to contemporary drama, rather than "the classics".

For the longest time, I've been dying to watch a performance of Kenneth Lonegran's This Is Our Youth. Is anybody else here familiar with it? Maybe one of you has actually seen a version of it. I'm so intrigued.

The summary, from Wikipedia:
This-is-Our-Youth-UK-cast.jpg
The play takes place in Dennis Ziegler's apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in March 1982. Dennis's friend Warren Straub, a dejected 19-year-old, has just been kicked out of his house and stolen $15,000 from his abusive lingerie-tycoon father. Dennis, the more wily and domineering of the two, spends some of the money on cocaine, hoping to sell it to a friend of his for much more. Jessica Goldman, an "anxiously insightful" fashion student, comes over and Warren hopes that he can use the money to entice her into bed.

The play explores timeless issues of adolescence and maturity, as well as the Reagan Era in which it takes place: the characters feel adrift in a country that now rejects the 1960s-style liberalism that they were brought up to believe in.​

It's been staged in both the UK and the US with a fairly high profile cast of actors, most of whom are better known for their movie work.

I'd happily pay regular price for a published copy of the script (meaning no import taxes, etc.) but I've never seen it available here.

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A recent favorite was a local college production of Bat Boy: The Musical, which is adapted from a series of tabloid articles(!) about a the eponymous protagonist terrorizing a rural town. It's a black comedy, satirizing bourgeois ideals and religious fundamentalism. Precisely the kind of drama that would appeal to fans of Mark Millar's Chosen, I guess, or Monty Python's The Life of Brian.

Even without the dramatic visuals and fun acting, the script alone is a funny, and genuinely thought provoking read.

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Of course, Rocky Horror Show remains an essential piece of modern drama. Sadly, one that I've never seen in play form before, though I've enjoyed the film several times.

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I'll post more in this thread, as other plays come to mind.
 
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Shakespeare is a given. But other then that. . .no, not really. I prefer to see the story play out as it was intended: on stage.

Which is really ironic since most of the writing I've ever done has been as a script.
 
Nope. Not really sure why. I've just never picked up any plays to read.

Excluding McBeth. McBeth ****ing rocked.
 
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead is an amazing play, especially (perhaps only) if you've read Hamlet, as is Waiting for Godot, and, my personal favorite Beckett, Endgame. Anything by Aeschylus is good, too, especially Agamemnon as translated by Robert ***les (Cassandra's blood imagery is stunning).


Oh, and let's not forget Ibsen. The Wild Duck is an amazing play as well, as is Doll House. I have a fondness for Trip to Bountiful as well.
 

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