
What complete bullshit.
This thought o' the week is brought to you by my magnificent wife, who mentioned that she read Sarah Ruhl's Eurydice
Neither way of reading a play is better than the other, I suppose. One of the great experiences when reading a play is imagining it as a play. Part of the magic of theater is that it's never an intellectual exercise, bound only by imagination. Theater must always take place somewhere very specific and literal, performed by individual actors, for a unique audience. Having worked there earlier this year, I can't help but read each stage direction and try to set it on that beautiful proscenium.
It's more of a daring choice for The Grand Theatre than I originally thought, and I really hope it pays off for them. Underneath it's modernity, there is a poetic core that their audience can respond to. Theirs is generally an older audience, and it's themes of death and memory and fathers and daughters should make for some powerful and direct theater.
2 comments:
I actually had the chance to see this done back in... January or February... and I must say I was somewhat touched by the words that Sarah Ruhl put in the script itself. The production was not the greatest, and I feel that the stones probably deserved a bit more explanation or part in general... but overall, I was pleased.
Thanks for the comment, Bud.
Yeah, Ruhl's dialog is gorgeous, and it reads like a dream.
The stones comment is interesting. I thought they got short shrift as well, but one of them was played by Peggy Noonan, who is Ruhl's main actress. So Ruhl must have thought there was something there ...
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