What Is a Positvie About Reading Plays Instead of Watching
Dreaming Awake: Reading a play versus seeing information technology performed
March 27, 2015 by Colleen Murphy
Reading the play was manner different than reading the books and novels I'd read up to that point considering on the page nothing came between me and the characters – their words, their spit, the way they're feeling – there was no 'he said and then she said', no descriptions of seashores or buildings or which way the lord's day was shining or what happened xxx years ago, everything was At present and everything the characters did – kicking, standing, walking away from each other – fabricated me want to follow them.
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I never read a play until my course 10 English language teacher said he wanted to start a drama club – a WHAT lodge?
No 1 e'er talked about DRAMA in the Northern Ontario mining town where I lived so when he asked if anyone in the class was interested only three of the states timidly raised our easily. Peradventure one of the states had read almost Shakespeare or heard of LIVE THEATRE earlier simply I hadn't so my encephalon got scrambled when I started reading a mashed up photocopy of the play he handed united states. At get-go information technology didn't make sense considering the writing was laid out on the page with a person's name printed out followed by blah blah blah… so the other person'south name printed followed past apathetic blah – ii bums talking.
Very repetitive, I thought, very fucking repetitive just I got sucked into their grouse about one of them having gotten crush up and the Savior not saving them. Then another guy – Pozzo – comes forth dragging another guy – Lucky – on a leash like a dog and starts talking about how "behind the veil of gentleness and peace, nighttime is charging," how it will burst and the earth is a bitch. My eyes popped wide open reading "this bitch of an earth" and I imagined four guys standing within my caput yowling, and even though Lucky didn't say much I SAW him shining and helpless like a unsafe pet. I didn't empathize a lot of what I was reading but I FELT the words, I felt the two guys who were waiting for Godot to evidence upward.
Correct nigh the cease Vladimir says that they'll hang themselves tomorrow unless Godot comes, so he says, "Well? Shall we go?" and Estragon says, "Yes, let'southward get," and the stage directions say, "They exercise not move. THE Terminate."
That'due south when I realized Godot was never going to arrive and those ii were never going to leave. It left me kind of stunned so I went back to the beginning, not considering I wanted to effigy out why they kept waiting but considering I wanted to keep that wild standing-withal trip all over again.
Reading the play was way unlike than reading the books and novels I'd read up to that point because on the page nothing came between me and the characters – their words, their spit, the way they're feeling – there was no 'he said then she said', no descriptions of seashores or buildings or which fashion the sun was shining or what happened thirty years ago, everything was NOW and everything the characters did – kick, standing, walking away from each other – made me want to follow them.
The stage directions gave me glimpses into what the characters were feeling. Here are the directions when Vladimir and Estragon are sharing a carrot merely before the entrance of Pozzo and Lucky: "A terrible cry, close at hand. Estragon drops the carrot. They remain motionless, and then together make a sudden rush towards the wings. Estragon stops halfway, runs back, picks upwards the carrot, stuffs it in his pocket, runs to rejoin Vladimir who is waiting for him, stops again, runs back, picks upward his kick, runs to rejoin Vladimir. Huddled together, shoulders hunched, cringing abroad from the menace, they await." Clearly the two are afraid just still hungry and they cling to each other similar footling children. Samuel Beckett was so generous with his stage directions.
My English teacher wanted to put on the play and have information technology to Wawa where a approximate from the Dominion Drama Festival would come from Toronto. He gave me the part of Pozzo but I really wanted to be Lucky – I wanted to stand with a rope around my neck shouting, "Given the existence every bit uttered along in the public works of Puncher and Wattmann of a personal God quaquaquaqua with white beard quaquaquaqua exterior fourth dimension without extension…" because those words stirred my heart and information technology was exciting to rip through a speech communication with no periods or commas.
My best friend Nancy got bandage as Vladimir and our friend Ralph got to be Estragon merely we didn't know the boy who got the role of Lucky because he was a grade ahead of us. We put lots of blackness middle liner on our faces and I got to carry a WHIP. We chopped down a small birch tree in the bush behind the school and stuck it in the torso and our English teacher cut the grapheme called Boy because nosotros could but fit v people in his machine for the trip to Wawa. Our English instructor probably didn't know that the Beckett estate wouldn't have exist too keen on a) cutting the character of Boy and b) assuasive girls to play Vladimir and Pozzo.
I was nervous performing in Wawa only I wasn't as afflicted proverb the words out loud as I was when I first read them… plus I was trying to control the urge to whip the crap out the boy playing Lucky because I wanted and then badly to play that part but at the same time I had a big shell on him fifty-fifty though he never noticed me except when we were Interim.
Our English teacher said we did a pretty good job but we came in second backside a British farce that was very popular in the 19th century. Nosotros were pissed off almost losing (Good day TRIP TO TORONTO) then we drank beer, smoked cigars, and I went a bit crazy touching everything in our room because I had never stayed in a hotel before. Our English language teacher threw upwards on the drive home and said the hamburger at the Esso station was probably rotten.
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Reading a play and watching a play are two unlike experiences, as dissimilar every bit dreaming versus beingness awake. Time bends in dreams – a minute lasts a day, a twelvemonth lasts an hour, and perspectives flip around in an instant. You can stand up on Earth and wait at the Moon or stand on the Moon and look at Jupiter or just GO to Jupiter. Y'all conjure up the world and play all the characters in it – creating them and performing them at the same fourth dimension.
Reading a play is like to dreaming in that the words human action as conjuring sticks, conjuring up characters and feelings in your imagination, enkindling impulses and creating images. Similar dreaming, reading is a malleable and personal experience. Sometimes the all-time production of a play is the one in my head.
The dream world is so unlike the wide-awake world where everything takes on a concrete shape in 3 dimensions.
The first production of Waiting for Godot I saw was in 1998 – a touring show from the Gate Theatre in Republic of ireland performed at the Wintertime Garden in Toronto. Even though a few theatre friends quipped that the production was 'tired' I bought a ticket for a seat in the second row and was astonished considering the production was as wide awake equally anything I've seen since.
There is no anticipation as blithesome every bit existence in a theatre when the business firm lights fade down and I'thousand breathing forth with other people. I don't know if the person in front of me volition fall asleep or the person behind me will express joy or cry or fart, and who knows what will happen on the stage. Add to that the terrible thrill of not beingness able to get out – I mean you can leave – I've done it, fumbled along over a pile of knees but generally I effort to stay because I contend that in watching a play I step from the real earth into the more real world, from the cooked world into the raw one, from the day into the night.
Watching Waiting for Godot in three dimensions I could FEEL time… feel it PASSING, and I felt the moments and the silences and the breaths – non simply from the actors but as well from the audience around me – and I could hear so sharply the collision of consonants and the stretched music of vowels coming out of the role player'due south mouths.
The strongest elements that live theatre offers are tension, rhythm, and silence, and all three miracles are created with words and gesture, sometimes merely a gesture, sometimes just words.
I forgot I was watching actors ACT. Instead it felt like Vladimir and Estragon and Pozzo and Lucky and the Boy were up there LIVING every moment of their lives and it was funny and scary and pitiful. Vladimir and Estragon seemed so lost at times, and Pozzo was a fucking mean bastard – I'g glad he goes blind even though I felt sorry for him a little chip – and Lucky, I just wanted to climb onto the stage and hug him.
I enter a play through grapheme – character takes me and holds me. I'll start watching a play and recollect geez this is as deadening as ditchwater and then a character says something incredible or does something unexpected and suddenly the playwright has made me give a shit. I experience a play through character, and experience grapheme through the actor. I still vividly recollect the actors playing Vladimir and Estragon in Waiting for Godot. Barry McGovern and Johnny Murphy were so alive on the phase, so present in every moment, that I believed it was the kickoff time they ever performed the play.
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At our last DRAMA club meeting (nosotros didn't know it would be our concluding because we didn't know how sick our English language instructor was) one of us four – probably Ralph who was buoyed by the tiny success in Wawa – asked how could we tell if the play we pick for our next Rule Drama Festival adventure would be a practiced selection. Our English language teacher said, 'Moving a corpse from two dimensions into 3 is no guarantee of resurrection – what's dead on the page often remains expressionless on the stage and what is alive on the folio is alive on the stage.'
His words – which sounded so weird and vehement at the fourth dimension – stuck with me forever so I always keep my nose up sniffing the air, e'er alert for the dreaded whiff of the sweet putrid smell that comes from something decomposing, particularly if it's wafting upwardly from my own writing.
But when the writing is live, when it'southward gulping huge mouthfuls of oxygen, the deed of reading or watching a play – dreaming or awake, experiencing information technology as malleable or physical, privately or publicly – both are as compelling in different ways, both offering the reader or watcher a trip through the potent and uncertain machinations of the homo middle, a glimpse into death and a peek within the guts of a beautiful bloom.
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Colleen Murphy is a playwright, filmmaker, and librettist. She won the 2014 Carol Bolt Award for her play Pig Girl and was shortlisted for the 2014 Siminovitch Prize in Theatre. Her play The Dec Man (Fifty'homme de décembre) won the 2007 Governor General's Literary Accolade for Drama, the CAA/Carol Bolt Award, and the Enbridge Playwrights Award. Other plays include Beating Heart Cadaver (nominated for a 1999 Governor General's Literary Honor for Drama), Armstrong's State of war, The Goodnight Bird, The Piper, Down in Adoration Falling, and All Other Destinations are Cancelled. She won awards in the CBC Literary Competition for the radio dramas Burn-Engine Carmine and Pumpkin Eaters. She is also an award-winning filmmaker and her distinct films accept played in festivals around the earth.
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