Favourite absurdist play?- Page 2

[Pgenre]

Posted: 6/16/09 at 3:46pm

Here is a link to both the complete text for the play and a video of Jenny Stoller performing the complete play, brilliantly.

I was actually going to include THE SKRIKER but CLOUD 9 wins by a hair, if I were forced to choose between the two. I feel that someday THE SKRIKER may very well become my favorite merely for its timeless, fantastical, fairy-tale elements.

I never knew that about Yeats and Ibsen, nomdeplume! Or if I had I forgot... Churchill certainly has a certain Ibsen-ish cerebral chilliness about her work which I think turns some people off... much like Sondheim.

I would say she is the greatest female playwright, as well.

And the brevity of many of her works (SEVEN JEWISH CHILDREN is only 10 mins long!) makes them easier to go back and re-read, which I do all the time. I probably can recite large chunks of A NUMBER at this point (what monologues! I would've killed to see Daniel Craig in the original production!).

P
SEVEN JEWISH CHILDREN

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 6/16/09 at 3:56pm

Three of my favorites are Endgame by Beckett, The Goat by Albee and Baby With the Bathwater by Durang. I read an early draft of The Play About the Baby (I think jerby was in my class when we had to perform monologues from the script) and didn't care for it at all (though I may still have a copy), but I have never read or seen the finished product, so it could be quite different.

[Pgenre]

Posted: 6/16/09 at 6:10pm

Edward Albee is my favorite playwright and I have read his canon a few times over (the only author besides Shakespeare or Caryl Churchill whom I tend to re-read) and I must say that THE PLAY ABOUT THE BABY is a true anomoly is a very varied oeuvre and you really have to see it performed excellently, or read it very closely, to even understand what Albee was going for... and what all of it is trying to say. I know I'm being vague but Albee's plays tend to be very personal experiences (at least they are for me) and how you wish to perceive certain elements and why he chose to implement them has a definite effect on one's overall perception of the piece as a whole. I'm speaking specifically of the vaudeville artiface (complete with routine and comic banter), the intentional artificiality (aside: at previews out of town an animatronic baby walked onstage), and the surreality of the situation not to mention the very specific characterizations Albee maps out for the actors to follow for the duration of the drama (made even more explicit in the Actor's Edition, which I recommend over the published one for a number of reasons, specificity in particular).

To merely say "it was all a dream" is deductive, and I, for one, don't belive that even has anything to do with it.

And, I don't believe anyone who understands what the play is truly about (clue: it's not about the baby) could fail to recognize its originality and audacity, if nothing else.

P

[nomdeplume]

Posted: 6/16/09 at 11:09pm

I saw A Number at NYTW with Sam Shepard and Far Away there with Frances McDormand. Very good.

They were kind of short plays, though.

The Skriker was full length and more meaty. Loved the way that Churchill set it up and broke language in the Skriker's speech patterns, helping to create character no matter what outward guise the shapeshifter took. Fascinating what she does with language. And all that needy "love love" talk coming from the Skriker that was actually dangerous hostility. (Reminds me of people who claim they love the partners that they beat, kill or maim and trick the unwitting into believing that they cared about the person with all this phony talk of love.)

[nomdeplume]

Posted: 6/18/09 at 2:30am

Thanks for the referral to Seven Jewish Children. i've made a new thread for that.

I don't find either Ibsen or Churchill to be chilly or cerebral. Ibsen strikes me as humanist. Tom Stoppard and Peter Frayn I would call cerebral.

[DMsquared2]

Posted: 6/18/09 at 4:12am

Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard. I don't think it's the best but it's my favorite.

[nomdeplume]

Posted: 6/19/09 at 11:36am

Other absurdist plays?