Why Read Plays? by Edward Albee.
The question is so absurd that we need not only answer it but find out why it's being asked as well. Most simply put: plays--the good ones, at any rate, the only ones that matter--are literature, and while they are accessible to most people through performance, they are complete experiences without it.
Adjunctively, I was talking to a young conductor the other year whose orchestra was shortly to give the world premiere performance of a piece by a young composer whose work I admired. "Oh, I can't wait to hear it!" I said, and the conductor replied, "Well, why don't you? Why don't you read it?" And he offered to give me the orchestral score--to read and thereby hear. Alas, I do not read music. Music is a language, but it is foreign to me and I cannot translate. If I did know how to read music, however, I would be able to hear the piece before it was performed--moreover, in a performance uncolored, uninterpreted by the whims of performance. This is an extreme case, perhaps, for few nonmusicians can read music well enough to hear a score, but it raises provocative issues, including some parallelisms. Succinctly, anyone who knows how to read a play can see and hear a performance of it exactly as the playwright saw and heard it as he wrote it down, without the "help" of actors and director.
Knowing how to read a play--learning how to read one--is not a complex or daunting matter. When you read a novel and the novelist describes a sunset to you, you do not merely read the words; you "see" what the words describe, and when the novelist puts down conversation, you silently "hear" what you read . . . automatically, without thinking about it. Why, then, should it be assumed that a play text presents problems far more difficult for the reader? Beyond the peculiar typesetting particular to a play, the procedures are the same; the acrobatics the mind performs are identical; the results need be no different. I was reading plays--Shakespeare, Chekhov--long before I began writing them; indeed, long before I saw my first serious play in performance. Was seeing these plays in performance a different experience than seeing them through reading them? Of course. Was it a more complete, more fulfilling experience? No, I don't think so.
Naturally, the more I have seen and read plays over the years, the more adept I have become at translating the text into performance as I read. Still, I am convinced that the following is true: no performance can make a great play any better than it is, and most performances are inadequate either in that the minds at work are just not up to the task no matter how sincerely they try, or the stagers are aggressively interested in "interpretation" or "concept" with the result that our experience of the play, as an audience, is limited, is only partial.
Further--and not oddly--performance can make a minor (or terrible) play seem a lot better than it is. Performance can also, of course, make a bad play seem even worse than it is. God help us all! When I am a judge of a playwriting contest I insist that I and the other judges read the plays in the contest even (especially!) if we have seen a performance. And how often my insistence results in the following: either "Wow! That play's a lot better than the performance I saw!" or "Wow! The director sure made that play seem a lot better than it is!"
The problem is further compounded by the kind of theater we have today for the most part--a director's theater, where interpretation, rethinking, cutting, pasting, and even the rewriting of the author's text, often without the author's permission, are considered acceptable behavior. While we playwrights are delighted that our craft and art allows us double access to people interested in theater--through both text and performance--we become upset when that becomes a double-edged sword. I am convinced that in proper performance all should vanish--acting, direction, design, even writing--and we should be left with the author's intention uncluttered. The killer is the assumption that interpretation is on a level with creation.
I'm not suggesting you should not see plays. There are a lot of swell productions, but keep in mind that production is an opinion, an interpretation, and unless you know the play on the page, the interpretation you're getting is secondhand and may differ significantly from the author's intentions. Of course, your reading of a play is also an opinion, an interpretation, but there are fewer hands (and minds) in the way of your engagement with the author.
Article found on the web page http://www.all-story.com/issues.cgi?action=show_story&story_id=85
After reading the article, i would like you to answer the following question: If you had the chance to read or see a play, which would you do and why? Answer the question providing an explanation (7 sentences at least)
I clearly can understand what the writer of this article wants transmitting. Edward says that the proper is combine the reading of the play with watching it. It's the a perfect way to understand clearly what the author of the play felt, saw or heard at his moment. If you ask me what do I prefer, read or watch a play, I have to be real and answer that I prefer watch it. It's much easy and amused. If I watched the play and I liked it, maybe I'll read it. If the play is bad for me and I don't understand it, I wont watch it again, much less read it.
ReplyDeleteSincerely I prefer reading, because of this form I learn new words and since they write. Reading is better because it allows him the reader imagine since it will be the end or the following scenes. I am not fanatical of seeing works because I think that it takes emotion from him that when it is read. If the work was not of my taste I neither see nor look anything relating for the same one, if I like me try to know mas on her and his author
ReplyDeleteWell, I like both because when you read you can learn about anything but when you're watching a play learn and entertain in the same time too. I mean, both are good,It's the same feeling to me.
ReplyDeleteis a bit difficult to give an accurate answer, but give my best to try to explain from the different points of view, which I believe are involved in the response to achieve a certain answer. so we have:
ReplyDelete1) If I have the sheet music of the work, and can I read music, maybe i can read it. but always be different to the interpretation that the musicians give the piece remembering that always we print our emotions to music we are creating, through the guidance of sounds we have in the sheet music..
2) If i can not read music read music, i should look the way that i can read it the sheet music, to have the original interpretation of the music, and learn to understand its essence, before it being changed by the musicians, to interpret the work. because they changing of subtle emotions, according to the principal decides to print on the piece. therefore read the original piece is the best way to get information exactly.
Well, I think both are important but for me. I prefer to watch it because is more easier than read. And for other reason just because I don't have the chance to read because I work a lot. But it doesn't matter the important thing to remember is that plays are meant to be seen and heard. That's the best experience of a play, when you have it live right in front of with the sound of the dialogue, the sight of the action, the use of music and lights, and the energy from the audience. There's no other experience like it, which is why theatre can be so thrilling at times. It's not the same when it's just you and the page are trying to imagine that scenes.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI prefer in a 100% watch the play because It's interactive and watching what the characters do I can understand it even know the meaning without know the word. I'm very lazy when I have to read this kind of reading. So, I choice to see it.
ReplyDeleteIf I have the chance to read a play, I'm make available to see if the work really is interesting or not, if i don't like, maybe I don't watch the play, with their respective performances. Really, when the play has its actions or interpretations, can be much more interesting or maybe not, as there are changes depending on many opinions, often without the permission of the author as says the text of Edward Albee.
ReplyDelete