This post, when posted, will explore why those at the top do well to keep people away from the theatre when it doesn’t suit their purpose. The principle is divide and conquer, well described in depressing detail by Howard Zinn in A People’s History of the United States. Essentially, they divide the rabble into hostile factions, one a cut above the rest to keep the others out of sight and mind.
Underlying all the lame excuses for excluding plays from our post-modern lives is the intense love-hate relationship between most all religions and live theatre dating from the dawn of Western Civilization. Continue reading Thespis and Theocracy
These days few of us have time to read and ramble on a full length play.
You can get your feet wet with a ten-minute “short short.” Continue reading Short Shorts
It’s bad enough that only one American in twelve sees a single play a year. Much worse by far is our overwhelming ignorance of dramatic literature.
This article, by Colette Rouhier, appeared in the US edition of The Guardian on July 13, 2015
I’d never been tempted to join a book group. I’m a slow reader and it seems like I’ve always got too much on to plough through a different novel each month. I think of myself as someone with a fairly decent knowledge of English literature, with one exception – until a couple of years ago I knew next to nothing about plays. I could sometimes connect a title to a particular playwright, but had no idea of plots or themes, and wasn’t that familiar with the writers. Continue reading Book groups have had their day – it’s time to start a script-reading group
This article describes a study conducted in 2005. The full text of the study appears in Beneficial Effects of Reading Aloud, and referenced in the introduction to Nintendo’s Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day.
READING ALOUD FLUENTLY in native or foreign languages and doing mathematical calculations quickly are extremely important for the development of the brain, according to a university study on human brains.
Throughout history, the only valid reason people who could read didn’t cold-read plays— aside from the fact that they frequently saw them performed on stage instead—was the trouble and expense of providing scripts for all the readers.
Think about that.
All the other arguments are explored and debunked elsewhere on this site, but the bother of finding and paying for scripts made it an impractical pastime; otherwise, why wouldn’t families have read plays together of an evening—as they did poetry and prose (one reading to the others); as they played games, sang songs, told stories? Plays are all these things combined!
No argument is more persuasive for incorporating cold reads into popular culture than the Internet. For the first time in human history play scripts are instantaneously available and free.
Think about that.
This post needs further development.
Plays, like novels, tell stories about people interacting with the world. They’re just as rich in plot and character, language, moral theme; they’re just as entertaining, funny, sad, enlightening, emotional.
We real novels to ourselves, by ourselves, in silent solitude. Plays are written to be spoken.
Spending time with other people who read plays is in itself well worth the time. Reading a play is entertaining, learning line by line, scene by scene, sharing the plot and characters, the theme, the language, rhythm—all of Aristotle’s elements but spectacle (live on stage).
It’s like a book club, only we read plays aloud, together, stopping to discuss along the way, instead of reading silently alone and talking after. Continue reading Cold Reads & Book Clubs
The folllowing essay was contributed by long-time Charlotte reader David Watkins, now far off in Marietta, GA, leading a group of his own.
This question can lead us off in many directions. Perhaps a good place to start is a brief discussion of why attend plays.
I believe that George Gray said it in a way that cannot be improved upon.
“ Great plays well played engage the collective consciousness of an audience from the opening line and carry us beyond what we know to be actors on a stage to another dimension of time and place imagined in a playwright’s mind and played out in our own—a mystic duality that enthralls us, holds us captive to the final curtain, and sends us away transformed, enlightened, emotionally exhausted, spiritually transformed, completely satisfied.” Continue reading Why Read Plays Aloud with Others?
First things first. If it weren’t fun, I wouldn’t do it myself,
much less dedicate my life to preaching the Cold Reads gospel.
It takes no preparation, makes no mess, and it’s FREE.
What more could one ask?
A cold read is a game, like playing cards or Trivial Pursuit, charades,
(a jigsaw puzzle, treasure hunt, gallery crawl, softball, golf . . .)
We tell ourselves a story we don’t know and, as we read,
unravel it together, line by line,
taking time along the way to talk about whatever comes to mind.
What a great, relaxing way to socialize!
No Time at All
Read a 10-minute play over coffee or Hamlet in three hours.
Novels take all day and more.
All You Need Is a Digital Reader
Download plays for free.
It also exercises social and communication skills
(comprehensive reading, speaking, listening),
builds self-confidence.
Theatre, live on stage—while to my mind
more potent and humane than theism—
in actuality is no more than a playwright’s script
played out by actors in costume under a paper moon.
It’s Spectacle,
the last and least of Aristotle’s
Six Elements of Drama
Plot, Character, Meaning, Language, and Mood
are all in the writing.
All creative writing is
one of the Big Three: Poetry, Prose, and Drama.
If we don’t see plays, we’re dramatically illiterate.
Unless we read them.
Just as rich in plot and character, sad and funny,
entertaining, moving, stimulating, meaningful—
only plays consist exclusively of people talking to each other.
We read novels to ourselves, by and for ourselves, alone.
Plays are tailor-made for quality time with friends.
For the first 2000 years of Western Civilization—
from the Ancient Greeks to the Industrial Revolution—
most people learned about the world from plays and players.
(They couldn’t read.)
And, more profoundly,
Reading plays makes human beings more humane.
(Even if you’re only reading, you’re still
being someone else—walking in another person’s shoes.)
These are but a few of the reasons plays are just as good as
(and in some ways far, far better than)
not only poetry and prose, but anything else we do in our free time
from Sunday School to golf.
Cold Reads/International 