Oh, the drama! The pleasure of reading plays

I’m behind on my usual reports from the reading world, because summer has finally arrived and with it very welcome distractions like planting flowers, visiting family, reading by the water while my husband hauls fish into the air (and ,in the case of a large and lovely bluegill, over my head) and tricking the broiler into leaving char lines on hot dogs (without which they just don’t feel like summer food at all). And, of course, real life has its say, too; spring classes seemed to end mere moments before summer classes took off running, and there’s been grass to mow and chores to do… and a wicked bout of sleeplessness has left me with less desire to read than usual – though not less desire to shop for books! So, now that you’ve endured all my excuses, a much delayed post about plays!

I’m fairly certain that the first plays I ever encountered were in high school English classes, where no effort was expended to talk about the fact that a script in your hands is a very different animal from a production on the stage. If I could go back as a braver self I would love to have taken a drama class back then and learned more about the alchemy that occurs. I may have missed my chance for any grand recitations, but I did get to see a handful of local performances that made me into a reader of plays: Guys and Dolls, Steel Magnolias, and The Laramie Project. After seeing The Laramie Project, I rushed home to order it, which led to Angels in America, a college course in Masterpieces of Drama, and here!

 

No writer has caused me more problems in my day to day life than Ayn Rand, a fact that she would probably take as a compliment! I started reading her (as many Rush fans do) because my beloved band dedicated an album to her. Being a sucker for large books (who says that thin is beautiful?) I didn’t start with the direct and slender Anthem…but leapfrogged over it into The Fountainhead, and I’ve remained a faithful reader ever since. Being a faithful reader, however, doesn’t mean being an uncritical one, as I’ve had to remind the many people who have no problem telling me that I must be somehow misguided if I’m still reading Rand. I don’t agree with her politics or her misogyny, but I do like the prose and I don’t understand why reading her seems to be the literary equivalent of waving a red flag before the eyes of Pamplona-assembled bulls. People read all sorts of things that I don’t necessarily like or agree with, but I don’t try to reason them out of it! I also don’t understand why one assumes you must accept an artist whole cloth in order to enjoy their art. Aren’t there plenty of reprehensible characters out there in the pantheon of geniuses? We don’t have salute their lechery to listen to their music or their politics to look at their paintings, no? <End of Soapbox> All that (and a long, unnecessary introduction it was) to say that The Ideal disappointed me anyway. I can’t put my finger on exactly why (it was depressing, but so are many plays I love). The entire thing felt unfinished. Or maybe I expected more because I filtered the notion of meeting one’s ideal (hero, inspiration) through what it might be like to meet Geddy Lee – and I couldn’t make the actions of the characters sync up with my imaginings! Maybe it’s that philosophical constructs don’t transfer well into characters… you’re left with something far closer to Everyman than Shakespeare. At final tally, I’m glad I read the play, but I don’t see myself reading it again.

I can remember the exact moment I fell for Tennessee Williams. I was sitting in the Masterpieces of Drama class at Bethany College and we had been instructed to work through Suddenly Last Summer, marking each allusion or reference to birds that we read. To either side of me , my classmates netted descriptions of crying gulls… but I found that the references were often subtler than that. Peering at my work, the professor nodded her approval and I felt inducted into the world of being an English major. You don’t forget the cleverness of an author weaving a strangling web of references like that – and you certainly don’t forget the sensation of your mind bumping against a greater one, all because you got to spend time with his words.

This spring, I taught Shakespeare to a splendid cohort of (mostly) eager readers, and I returned to Williams to enjoy a little drama that wasn’t in the syllabus. Summer seemed more tragic than it had been in college, the avenging mother figure making corkscrews of my vertebrae! The Glass Menagerie left me more puzzled I remembered. At first, the unicorn seemed to symbolize Laura, transformed by a kiss into a more confident – but more ordinary- girl. But maybe the unicorn is actually Tom? He lost all claim to magic or being extraordinary because he had to care for his family, initially, but then he lost it again because he couldn’t even live up to his sacrifice. I don’t know, now, quite what to think, except that I’m much more like Laura than I care to be (Rush albums standing in for Victrola records ,of course, and my menagerie is more paper than glass. Maybe someday someone will write a play about me!)

I turned to Edward II because I taught Dr. Faustus and hadn’t read more of Marlowe, and felt that I should. The play dragged a bit after Gaveston left the stage, but it’s every bit a match for Shakespeare’s history plays and makes me wish Marlowe had lived to create a larger canon.

 

I’m currently reading Stacy Schiff’s Witches, so I felt it proper I should read the play that’s done so much to shape Salem in the American imagination. Perhaps I’m losing my analytical edge somewhat, but I really struggled with this read. I found it difficult to keep the characters straight and the emotional impact felt reserved for the final moments.