More plays read

I've continued reading plays for the last two weeks or so, and was able to pick up a big stack of great plays at a library book sale, for not that much money.

Since then, I've read:

Comic Potential - by Alan Ayckbourn

This full-length play takes place in a future where television actors are all "actoids;" robots designed to play particular character types.  For the most part, they improvise their way along with direction from a human director.  A new writer throws a wrench into things when he falls in love with one of the actoids and decides to write a new teleplay just for her.  I enjoyed this play quite a bit - it's a good bridge between 'science fiction' type writing and more mainstream theatre.  In this case, the science fiction element is robots, and their ability to be like humans.  In addition to exploring some of the philosophical aspects of that in a humorous way, it's also about the state of entertainment in the world, where everything is analyzed and compartmentalized and standardized, so that it feels like a robot could do any of the standard roles you see on the screen.

Marjorie Prime - by Jordan Harrison

A full-length play in which the characters have "Primes" or realistic, AI holograms of people who have died.  Marjorie is an 85 year old woman who's had a long, full life, and her family uses a Prime of her deceased husband to help her remember the good times.  However, as she loses her memories, and he fills them in, it's apparent that other members of her family are editing the past in a way that makes things more interesting, or less painful, etc.

I liked this one a lot.  It's science fiction, and accessible to mainstream audiences, in a way I like.  I think everyone can relate to the idea of memory loss and wishing you could forget some things and change others in your life.  

Sweat - by Lynn Nottage

This was published this year (2017) so it's about as current as it gets.  In it, Nottage explores a town in Pennsylvania that is hit heavily by economic downturn.  She looks at characters as they were in 2000, and again in 2008.  As the drama unfolds, we can see where tensions are building in the community and between the characters, and what the aftermath is, but it's not until the climax that you know the big thing that happened.  I thought this was a gripping drama, with great characters that you don't get to see very often on stage - blue-collar factory workers - shown with a lot of humanity and detail that felt very honest.

Homecoming - by Harold Pinter

This play was odd.  It does not follow a predictable path, and feels at times like Pinter is just following various gut instincts and letting the characters go in their different directions.  Reading about Pinter's writing style, this may actually be how the play was written.  I think about some of the characters and the scenes, and the absurdism that grows on the stage as things progress, and I like it but I also struggle with it.  I'll read some more Pinter and see if I can get a better handle on things.

More reviews next week.

Recent play reading - The Newly Married Couple

I've re-upped my commitment to read more plays with a variety of perspectives, ideas, styles, etc. as part of my effort to improve my own wrighting.

"The Newly Married Couple," by Bjornstjerne Bjornson

I was browsing the library shelves for plays, and spotted a book of three comedies by Bjornstjerne Bjornson.  Who could resist, right?  I read the first play in the book, his two-act comedy "The Newly Married Couple," from 1865.  There were some interesting elements in it that I enjoyed.  The first act takes place in the home of the young woman's parents.  They are very wealthy, and have lavish surroundings.  The second act takes place in the newly married couple's home, but it's played on essentially the same set - the husband has worked tirelessly to recreate his bride's surroundings, to help her feel more comfortable there.  The conflict came down to the new bride not being ready to leave her parents.  There isn't an indication of her age, but she's referred to as a child quite often, and apparently it took some convincing for the groom to convince her parents that it would be fine.  The girl marries him out of a kind of romantic misunderstanding of what she was getting herself into.

Kind of creepy, honestly.  The young lady has a servant.  The groom basically charmed the servant so that she would say nice things about him in the young lady's presence - part of his marriage proposal plan.  So the servant falls in love with him.

In the second act, the servant has written a novel and had it published.  The novel basically reflects the newly married couple's relationship, but ends in tragedy when the groom falls in love with the servant and the young bride realizes too late that she loved him all along.  The servant reads it to the young woman, but doesn't reveal that she's the author. 

In the end, the young bride does realize her love for her husband, and they proceed toward matrimonial happiness, while the girl's parents head off for Italy, taking the servant with them.  Her parting line is that her next book will be a better one, something none of the other characters understand, since they didn't know she was the author.  It's a nice tragicomic ending, though - she tried to influence the relationship toward something she could capitalize on, but only succeeded in bringing them closer together and alienating herself.  However, now she gets to travel to Italy, so that's something.

As a wrighter, my takeaways from this play was that the characters each had pretty clear motivations, and were working toward their goals throughout the play.  I thought the characters were pretty shallow and 2-dimensional, so their motivations weren't that interesting.  However, even when a character has a motivation that is pretty banal like "I want that guy to fall in love with me," it's hard not to get a little invested in finding out what happens.  So I think that if I can create characters with strong, clear motivations, even well-trod ones, it will be intriguing to my readers/viewers.