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#26

re: Top 10 Plays to Read Before You Die

Posted: 5/29/08 at 10:34pm

In no particular order:


Romeo & Juliet
Angels in America
A Streetcar Named Desire
The Crucible
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Our Town
Long Day's Journey Into Night
A Doll's House
The Glass Menagerie
A Raisin in the Sun
"If you are going to do something, do it well. And leave something witchy." -Charlie Manson
#27

re: Top 10 Plays to Read Before You Die

Posted: 5/29/08 at 11:00pm

Tartuffe

Fear no more the heat o' the sun, Nor the furious winter's rages; Thou thy worldly task hast done, Home art gone and ta'en thy wages: Golden lads and girls all must, As chimney-sweepers, come to dust. ~Cymbeline
#28

re: Top 10 Plays to Read Before You Die

Posted: 5/29/08 at 11:14pm

no exit by sartre
krapp's last tape by beckett
angels in america by kushner
salome by wilde
hedda gabler by ibsen
king lear by shakespeare
oleanna by mamet
who's afraid of virginia woolf by albee
the misanthrope by moliere
suddenly, last summer by williams

good stuff all. :)
#29

re: Top 10 Plays to Read Before You Die

Posted: 5/29/08 at 11:19pm

Oedipus/Antigone
Romeo + Juliet
Springs Awakening (the original writing is beautiful)
"I told you, NO Rodgers and Hammerstein!"- Bart Simpson
#30

re: Top 10 Plays to Read Before You Die

Posted: 5/29/08 at 11:31pm

I concur both Pillowman and Angels in America are essential pieces of theatre to read. And i agree with the person above me that Springs Awakening has beautiful language.
<------ Me and my friends with patti Lupone at my friends afterparty for her concert with audra mcdonald during the summer of 2007.
"I am sorry but it is an unjust world and virtue is only triumphant in theatricle performances" The Mikado
#31

re: Top 10 Plays to Read Before You Die

Posted: 5/29/08 at 11:43pm

I would also add Harvey Fierstein's "Torch Song Trilogy" to the list as well.
Well I didn't want to get into it, but he's a Satanist. Every full moon he sacrifices 4 puppies to the Dark Lord and smears their blood on his paino. This should help you understand the score for Wicked a little bit more. Tazber's: Reply to Is Stephen Schwartz a Practicing Christian
#32

re: Top 10 Plays to Read Before You Die

Posted: 5/30/08 at 12:12am

Oresteia - Aeschylus
The three Oedipus plays - Sophocles
The Trojan Women, The Bacchae, Medea - Eurpidies
Lysistrata, The Birds, The Frogs - Aristophanes
The Second Shepherd's Play
Volpone, The Alchemist - Ben Jonson
Dr. Faustus - Marlowe
All of Shakespeare - Yes, he's hard at first, but so is life!
Women Beware Women - Thomas Middleton
The Duchess of Malfi - John Webster
Life Is A Dream - Pedro Calderon de la Barca
Fuente Ovejuna - Lope de Vega
The School for Wives, Tartuffe, The Misanthrope - Moliere
The Way of the World - William Congreve
The Contry Wife - William Wycherley
The Rover - Aphra Behn
The Beaux' Stratagem - George Farquhar
The Belle's Stratagem -Hannah Cowley
The Beggar's Opera - John Gay
She Stoops To Conquer - Oliver Goldsmith
The Rivals - Richard Brinsley Sheridan
The Servant of Two Masters - Carlo Goldoni
The Prince of Homburg - Heinrich von Kleist
Woyzeck - Georg Buchner
The Inspector General - Nikolai Gogal
A Month in the Country - Ivan Turgenev
The four major plays of Anton Chekhov
Peer Gynt, Hedda Gabler - Ibsen - Hedda is his masterpiece
Miss Julie and Dance of Death Part 1 - Strindberg
The Lower Depths - Maxim Gorky
Blood Wedding, The House of Bernarda Alba - Federico Garcia Lorca
Two Sisters and a Piano - Nilo Cruz
Mud - Maria Irene Fornes
The Pittsburgh Cycle - August Wilson
Topdog/Underdog - Suzan Lori Parks
The Clay Cart - Sudraka
Death and The King's Horseman - Wole Soyinka


#33

re: Top 10 Plays to Read Before You Die

Posted: 5/30/08 at 1:06am

Othello
Much Ado About Nothing
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
A Doll's House
Antigone
The Cherry Orchard
Angels in America
Our Town
Death of a Salesman

Wow...that was very hard to narrow down to just ten!
"You're the worst thing to happen to musical theatre since Andrew Lloyd Webber!" --Family Guy

"Shut up! It's been 29 years!!!" --the incomparable Patti LuPone in her MUCH DESERVED Tony acceptance speech for Gypsy.

Kitzy's Avatar du Jour: Kitzy as Little Red Ridinghood in her college's production of "Into the Woods"
#34

re: Top 10 Plays to Read Before You Die

Posted: 5/30/08 at 1:30am

Angels in America
Death of a Salesman
Long Day's Journey into Night
A Raison in the Sun
Romeo and Juliette
A Midsummer Night's Dream OR Macbeth
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Hedda Gabler
Our Town
Oedipus
<-- Gwen Stewart, SOLoist at the last show of RENT
Cages or wings? Which do you prefer? Ask the birds. Fear or love, baby? Don't say the answer Actions speak louder than words. (Tick, Tick... BOOM!)
#35

re: Top 10 Plays to Read Before You Die

Posted: 5/30/08 at 2:03am

I would suggest that everyone read at least ten of Tennessee William's early one-acts before they die.

If you can't get your hands on ten of them, then at least look for "The Long Goodbye", "Mister Paradise", and "The Pink Room".
#37

re: Top 10 Plays to Read Before You Die

Posted: 5/30/08 at 2:51am

Our Town
Death of A Salesman
All My Sons (basically all of Arthur Miller's works)
Bash
Doubt
Wit
How I Learned to drive
A Streetcar Named Desire
Occupant
Amazing Grace
Acting should be bigger than life. Scripts should be bigger than life. It should all be bigger than life.- Bette Davis
#38

re: Top 10 Plays to Read Before You Die

Posted: 5/30/08 at 5:09am

Probably my top four:
The Pillowman
The History Boys
Translations
Amadeus

And others I'd suggest:
Oedipus at Colonus, Oedipus Rex and Antigone
The Lieutenant of Inishmore
Suddenly, Last Summer
Death of a Salesman
A Streetcar Named Desire
I am My Own Wife
Shining City


Those are only the ones off the top of my head right now. I've never been a big Shakespeare person, so that's why he's not specified on my list. I know people love his histories but, being a big ol' Yorkist I don't have much love for them at all. Basically, I'm not qualified to give an unbiased Shakespeare choice, so I just won't.
And hang on, when did you win the discus?
#40

re: Top 10 Plays to Read Before You Die

Posted: 5/30/08 at 8:22am

I second "Tartuffe" - a play about religious hypocrisy thats as valid today as when it was written (1664).

Updated On: 5/30/08 at 08:22 AM

#41

re: Top 10 Plays to Read Before You Die

Posted: 5/30/08 at 8:25am

Angels in America
ANY PLAY by Craig Lucas
"Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport. General opinion's starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed, but I don't see that. It seems to me that love is everywhere. Often it's not particularly dignified or newsworthy, but it's always there - fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, old friends. When the planes hit the Twin Towers, as far as I know none of the phone calls from the people on board were messages of hate or revenge - they were all messages of love. If you look for it, I've got a sneaky feeling you'll find that love actually is all around."
#42

re: Top 10 Plays to Read Before You Die

Posted: 5/30/08 at 9:06am

THE FATHER, THE DANCE OF DEATH, EASTER, MISS JULIE by Strindberg (WHY does no one do Strindberg??)

THREE SISTERS, THE CHERRY ORCHARD, UNCLE VANYA, Chekhov

For Ibsen, I think his best is THE MASTER BUILDER...its actually better read than watching it.

Some ones you might have overlooked:

ALL OVER by Albee
ROAD by Jim Cartwright
THE MISANTHROPE, Moliere
ECCENTRICITIES OF A NIGHTINGALE by Tennessee Williams
BURIED CHILD and CURSE OF THE STARVING CLASS by Sam Shepard
THE DESIGNATED MOURNER by Wallace Shawn
A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE by Arthur Miller
SPRING AWAKENING and LULU by Frank Wedekind

Nicky Silver and Christopher Durang are also good fun to read.
"Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they've been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It's an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It's a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.” ~ Muhammad Ali
#43

re: Top 10 Plays to Read Before You Die

Posted: 5/30/08 at 2:38pm

Pygmalion and Candida- Shaw
Six Characters In search of An Author-Pirandello
Anything by Tennesee Williams
Vanities
Anything by Neil Simon
A Doll's House and the Wild Duck-Ibsen
Mother Courage
Crucible, Death of A Salesman, View From the Bridge
Long Days Journey Into Night
You Can't Take It With You
Arsenic and Old Lace
#44

re: Top 10 Plays to Read Before You Die

Posted: 5/30/08 at 3:25pm

The Normal Heart
A Moon For the Misbegotton
Translations
The Pillowman
Extremeties
"What a mystery this world. One day you love them and the next day you want to kill them a thousand times over." The Masked Bandit in THE FALL
#45

re: Top 10 Plays to Read Before You Die

Posted: 5/31/08 at 1:10pm

OUR TOWN

you can read it in like an hour, and it will change your life. the movie changed mine, and reading the script was amazing
#46

re: Top 10 Plays to Read Before You Die

Posted: 6/1/08 at 12:45am

In no particular order...

BLACKBIRD
WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?
CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF
A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE
A RAISIN IN THE SUN
ANGELS IN AMERICA
OUR TOWN
THE PILLOWMAN
#47

re: Top 10 Plays to Read Before You Die

Posted: 6/1/08 at 1:47am

Angels in America
Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf
Look Back in Anger
A Streetcar named Desire
The Glass Menagerie
Woyzeck
Ubu Rex (Ubu Roi)
Death of a Salesmen
Our Town
Pillowman
#48

re: Top 10 Plays to Read Before You Die

Posted: 6/1/08 at 2:32am

The Scottish Play (don't want to say cuz of bad luck)

Um, it's only bad luck if you say it in a theatre.
"This table, he is over one hundred years old. If I could, I would take an old gramophone needle and run it along the surface of the wood. To hear the music of the voices. All that was said." - Doug Wright, I Am My Own Wife
#49

re: Top 10 Plays to Read Before You Die

Posted: 6/1/08 at 3:26am

Die Verfolgung und Ermordung Jean Paul Marats dargestellt durch die Schauspielgruppe des Hospizes zu Charenton unter Anleitung des Herrn de Sade

also called:

Marat/Sade
#50

re: Top 10 Plays to Read Before You Die

Posted: 6/1/08 at 9:16am

I'll go with some ones not mentioned so far:

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Crave and 4.48 Psychosis by Sarah Kane
Talk Radio/surbUrbia/one of his one man shows by Eric Bogosian for a scathing look at American society in the 80s-90s.
Four by Christopher Shinn
Arcadia by Tom Stoppard
Dutchman by Amiri Baraka
The Skin of Our Teeth by Thorton Wilder
Everyman by anonymous
The Clean House by Sarah Ruhl

Those are my ten! Oh and to whoever talked about Chekhov's Four masterworks, what are they?

I know Ivanov, Cherry Orchard, Three Sisters, Seagull, and Uncle Vanya are his big ones, but which are considered his masterworks?

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