Protected: The Shrike
Protected: The Teahouse of the August Moon
Protected: State of the Union
Protected: Of Thee I Sing
Protected: Picnic
Marietta Cold Reads: Year One
Plays Read in Our First Year
The Seagull, by Anton Chekhov
Uncle Vanya, by Anton Chekhov
Oleanna, by David Mamet
The Importance of Being Earnest, by Oscar Wilde
Hamlet, by William Shakespeare
Rosencrantz and Guildensterna are Dead, by Tom Stoppard
Tartuffe, by Moliere
Waiting for Godot, by Samuel Beckett
The Cocktail Party, by T. S. Eliot
The Sunset Limited, by Cormac McCarthy
A Life in the Theatre, by David Mamet
Hedda Gabler, by Henrik Ibsen
The Piano Lesson, by August Wilson
The Birthday Party, by Harold Pinter
By the Skin of Our Teeth, by Thornton Wilder
Mrs. Warren’s Profession, by George Bernard Shaw
Charlotte Schedule through October
Thanks to Gabrielle Johansen for hosting Thursday mornings while Sandra and I belatedly celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary, with Hallie, in Paris, Mont Saint Michel, and Amsterdam. Wonderful weather, fabulous time.
Now back to the business of reading plays.
Cold Reads & Book Clubs
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
Why Read Plays Aloud with Others?
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?
Cold Reads/International 