Play reading in the time of corona
June 3, 2020 7:43 AM   Subscribe

I'm looking for activities to keep me entertained while at home, and one of the things I came up with was doing a reading of a play. There is a group of 4 of us who are interested in this, and I'm looking for recommendations.

Ideally the play would have:
- Either 4 roles, or if more doubling up should be easy to do and not confusing.
- Either free or very low cost - as much as I would love to be able to spend money on a play I don't have a lot of it at the moment. If it's available online, even better.
- Any genre would be great, but I enjoy dramatic scenes.
- I would appreciate it if you could let me know if you've read the play and know that it contains violence against women. It doesn't rule it out but I'd like to know in advance.

For bonus points:
- Not very well known. One of the participants has a bit of experience with play reading, so something that he hasn't done before would be nice.
posted by Laura_J to Sports, Hobbies, & Recreation (6 answers total) 3 users marked this as a favorite
 
This doesn't exactly match your criteria, but it may be really, really fun -

Shel Silverstein did a gloriously raunchy poem series called The Devil and Billy Markham. Sometime in the late 80s or early 90s it got turned into a one-act play; it was staged as a double-feature along with a David Mamet one-act. Billy Markham is a sort of cross between Faust and the Robert Johnson "crossroads" fable, with the main character outsmarking the devil in the end. Technically there is "violence against women," but only in the sense that Billy Markham eventually sees his mom getting tortured by the devil and goes to rescue her, and there's also a whole sequence where they talk about the Devil marrying Billy's girlfriend and the wedding reception turns into a gloriously bawdy orgy with various historic characters.

It's staged as a monologue (and I've seen it performed thus and it was fantastic), but I first encountered it when a theater company I worked with was checking it out while they were trying to decide on their next piece. Someone brought it in to share with the others; one guy picked it up and started reading a portion out loud to see what we thought. But when that was done, another guy said "hang on, can I read more?" and picked up where he left off. And then a third guy took the next couple pages. And they just kept going, the three of them passing it around like that, and they had so much fun reading it and we had so much fun listening that we did the whole thing sitting right there. I think the multi-person reading, with everyone laughing along, gave the whole thing a feel of "this is a story three guys are telling over beers at a bar one night", which fits the story really well. That may be fun to try.

Another option: Tennessee Williams' The Case Of The Crushed Petunias is a bit of a fable, with a prim New England matron getting encouraged to live it up a little.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:58 AM on June 3, 2020


A group I'm in had a great time doing Caryl Churchill's Love & Information. It's 50+ short scenes, between a few pages and a few lines long. Each scene is between two people; no characters repeat, so it would be easy for four people to perform. Some scenes are funny, some are sad, some are intellectual, some are dark, some are dramatic. I don't recall any violence against women. It's experimental in form, but it doesn't feel abstract or intellectual; it's really quite lively and fun, and because all the scenes are so different, you get to play around with a huge range of emotions. We enjoyed it so much that my parents and a small group of their friends read it together as a New Year's celebration last year, and they really enjoyed it, too.
posted by attentionplease at 8:33 AM on June 3, 2020 [1 favorite]


I recall the Previously from 2020-04-04 and, looking for it in a Google search, I found Also Previously from 2013-02-13.
posted by k3ninho at 2:40 PM on June 3, 2020


I have actually had the most fun reading well-known plays aloud with a group. It's such a nice thing to do! I don't think your experienced friend will mind, as they are likely a theater lover!

I suggest The Importance of Being Earnest, an Ideal Husband, anything by Moliere or some Shakespeare-- maybe Romeo and Juliet, Midsummer, Much Ado, etc.
posted by athirstforsalt at 9:43 PM on June 3, 2020


Best answer: New Play Exchange is your place!
posted by parmanparman at 10:56 PM on June 3, 2020


Response by poster: Thank you - this is all fantastic.
posted by Laura_J at 3:59 AM on June 5, 2020


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