All the many lame excuses for not reading plays, from “Plays are written for the stage” to “I simply don’t have time,” “I don’t read well (I’m not an actor),” “Nobody I know does it,” “I’d rather do a thousand other things,” are posted and debunked in Category: Why Not?
There are many very good reasons people go to the theatre, and as may very bad ones why they don’t.
The best reason to go is to be drawn into another world from the opening line to the final curtain and walk out gratified, if not transformed, a better person. This sometimes happens when a good play is well-produced.
Good reasons not to go: it costs too much, and too often the plays are trite or trash (or trashy) or (more often still) poorly played, misinterpreted. At best we’re amused.Continue reading To Go or Not to Go→
This post begins a series of unfinished essays on theatre as a fundamental human experience, without which we become lesser creatures (inhumane).
They connect the decline in cultural values with the fact that only one in twelve Americans sees even one stage play in a year, and those few see an average of just three.
They recount the historical impact of theatre, its religious roots and tensions, its unique cathartic power (“the willing suspension of disbelief”), its ability to “hold the mirror up to nature.”
The (Jewish) Defendant in Mamet’s Romance is a chiropodist (no, a chiropractor!) who discovers and proclaims, at the end of Scene Two, in the middle of a vicious (and hilarious) bloodbath of religious bigotry with his (Catholic) Defense Attorney: “I KNOW HOW TO BRING PEACE TO THE MIDDLE EAST!” Continue reading Mamet’s Chiropractor→