Playwrights
October 25, 2016 6:58 PM Subscribe
Following my question seeking authors similar to Jane Rawson, Tom Robbins, Douglas Adams and Franz Kafka ...
Same question but replace authors with playwrights. From that question, I learned of Richard Brautigan and I really like his writing.
Same question but replace authors with playwrights. From that question, I learned of Richard Brautigan and I really like his writing.
David Ives
posted by BusyBusyBusy at 7:42 PM on October 25, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by BusyBusyBusy at 7:42 PM on October 25, 2016 [2 favorites]
+1 to Stoppard, Ives, and Ionesco.
Also try Christopher Durang (I worked on 'dentity Crisis, which is hilarious), and maybe David Lindsay-Abaire.
posted by ferret branca at 7:53 PM on October 25, 2016
Also try Christopher Durang (I worked on 'dentity Crisis, which is hilarious), and maybe David Lindsay-Abaire.
posted by ferret branca at 7:53 PM on October 25, 2016
Bertold Brecht. He took on some things. The Three Penny Opera, The Caucasian Chalk Circle.
Ionesco's Jack or The Submission, is an interesting play, theater of the absurd.
Sam Sheppard try True West. He has written a lot of stuff, directed a lot of films. Acted as well.
posted by Oyéah at 9:03 PM on October 25, 2016
Ionesco's Jack or The Submission, is an interesting play, theater of the absurd.
Sam Sheppard try True West. He has written a lot of stuff, directed a lot of films. Acted as well.
posted by Oyéah at 9:03 PM on October 25, 2016
What is it you like about those particular authors? For some reason (I guess because of things about The Pillowman) Martin McDonagh springs to mind for Kafka but it's terribly dark, which it sounds like you're not as much after. There's some smart absurdist humor in Christopher Durang that might work the Douglas Adams thing for you.
posted by Smearcase at 10:09 PM on October 25, 2016
posted by Smearcase at 10:09 PM on October 25, 2016
Another thought, if you're willing to do really dark and absurd: Reckless by Craig Lucas.
posted by BusyBusyBusy at 3:56 AM on October 26, 2016
posted by BusyBusyBusy at 3:56 AM on October 26, 2016
If you like Kafka, maybe try Samuel Beckett. Like Kafka, he tends to be categorised as Difficult and Serious by people who don't realise that he's actually very funny - his early radio play All That Fall, for example, is rooted in the same Irish rural comedy as Flann O'Brien and Father Ted, before taking a very dark turn. A lot of his shorter plays (such as Rough For Theatre II or Act Without Words I or the hypnotic Quad) are much more like comic sketches than serious theatre (albeit more Monty Python than Two Ronnies).
By the way, although Beckett does occasionally use music, nowhere in the stage directions could I find "Terrible music plays throughout", so most occurrences of that are something the director decided would be a good idea, and it generally isn't. The percussion in Quad is an exception.
There is a tendency to want to overthink him - his plays (IMO) are better experienced than analysed, a lot more like music than text. If you accept the apparently wacky aspects to his plays as being metaphors and then just experience them from there, they can be more powerful than more normal plays. For example, Happy Days is famous for being an almost one-woman play where the actress is buried up to her waist in sand for most of the play (and up to her neck for the rest of it). It could just as easily have been a realist play about a bed-ridden and increasingly paralysed old woman, but that would have had a strain of sentimentality to it that the absurdist setting strips from it, which ultimately makes it into something that can be emotionally devastating rather than quite sad.
The later plays - such as Not I or Rockaby - seem to me to be attempts to directly represent states of mind on the cusp of sleep or death, and his work is even more composed of meditations on human fragility, regret and loss, and I realise that that may not be a person's particular cup of tea. The videos are interesting, but live they are extraordinary - whereas the filmed Not I is right in your face, in the dimly-lit theatre one is straining to see and hear what's going on, which can create a very different and electric dynamic. I suspect Lisa Dwan has retired her performance (she has done Not I, Rockaby and Footfalls in one evening, and is currently touring a show based on Beckett's prose, which is a tremendous piece of work, if not quite the same thing), but if not, and she comes to your town, I'd recommend it very highly indeed. With the plays' stylisation and broad theatricality, there is a danger that performers will play up the wackiness and miss the essential nature of the play (and not just student or amateur performers, either - it was a fundamental problem with Robert Wilson's cartoonish version of Krapp's Last Tape and the McKellan/Stewart Waiting for Godot, neither of which need to be overplayed comedically to get the humour across. In both those cases the directors and performers succumbed to the temptation to ham it up rather too much), but that is a risk I'm willing to take. Beckett is an acquired taste, but if you do manage to acquire it, is probably the most addictive thing in theatre if not performance in general.
posted by Grangousier at 3:04 AM on October 27, 2016
By the way, although Beckett does occasionally use music, nowhere in the stage directions could I find "Terrible music plays throughout", so most occurrences of that are something the director decided would be a good idea, and it generally isn't. The percussion in Quad is an exception.
There is a tendency to want to overthink him - his plays (IMO) are better experienced than analysed, a lot more like music than text. If you accept the apparently wacky aspects to his plays as being metaphors and then just experience them from there, they can be more powerful than more normal plays. For example, Happy Days is famous for being an almost one-woman play where the actress is buried up to her waist in sand for most of the play (and up to her neck for the rest of it). It could just as easily have been a realist play about a bed-ridden and increasingly paralysed old woman, but that would have had a strain of sentimentality to it that the absurdist setting strips from it, which ultimately makes it into something that can be emotionally devastating rather than quite sad.
The later plays - such as Not I or Rockaby - seem to me to be attempts to directly represent states of mind on the cusp of sleep or death, and his work is even more composed of meditations on human fragility, regret and loss, and I realise that that may not be a person's particular cup of tea. The videos are interesting, but live they are extraordinary - whereas the filmed Not I is right in your face, in the dimly-lit theatre one is straining to see and hear what's going on, which can create a very different and electric dynamic. I suspect Lisa Dwan has retired her performance (she has done Not I, Rockaby and Footfalls in one evening, and is currently touring a show based on Beckett's prose, which is a tremendous piece of work, if not quite the same thing), but if not, and she comes to your town, I'd recommend it very highly indeed. With the plays' stylisation and broad theatricality, there is a danger that performers will play up the wackiness and miss the essential nature of the play (and not just student or amateur performers, either - it was a fundamental problem with Robert Wilson's cartoonish version of Krapp's Last Tape and the McKellan/Stewart Waiting for Godot, neither of which need to be overplayed comedically to get the humour across. In both those cases the directors and performers succumbed to the temptation to ham it up rather too much), but that is a risk I'm willing to take. Beckett is an acquired taste, but if you do manage to acquire it, is probably the most addictive thing in theatre if not performance in general.
posted by Grangousier at 3:04 AM on October 27, 2016
This thread is closed to new comments.
Tom Stoppard. He's my favorite modern playwright, but his work is really uneven. A lot of his early work is very experimental, a lot of his most recent work is kind of dull. His best stuff is somewhere in between those periods (although I have a soft spot for the early stuff). Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead is his most famous; Arcadia is probably his best. The Invention of Love and The Real Thing are also great.
Maybe Ionesco? I don't know, I actually don't know Ionesco that well. But your question made me think of Ionesco.
posted by phoenixy at 7:11 PM on October 25, 2016 [1 favorite]