I went to a playreading yesterday. It was organized through my class, and hosted by a member who quite conveniently lives just around the corner from me. The play we read was "Long Day's Journey into Night" by Eugene O'Neill, a deeply autobiographical play dealing with his family and their relationship with each other, addictions, illnesses and resentment over the past.
And it kinda sucked. Well that was the opinion of more than one person at the reading, the first and most opinionated being Ben, one the teachers in our class, who piped up that he didn't like it immediately after we finished the first act. Brian, the other teacher and the one who chose the play, quietly showed his disapproval. He'd introduced the play to us, describing O'Neill with great reverence as one of America's greatest playwrights, on a level with Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller. He lost no time in justifying Ben's criticism by saying that he's known to not really like playreadings, he only goes along because he feels he should, being a teacher. His own reason for not liking it was that there were too many stage directions. And he's Australian, and just what do they know about posh stuff like that?
In my opinion the play was not suitable for this sort of reading. It's very wordy, and as has already been mentioned there are too many stage directions (that Brian felt the necessity to have read). We also had some Czech people in the group who's English is pretty good but not quite good enough to do this sort of cold reading, which is difficult enough to do in your own language. It's probably a much better play when seen on stage, or studied properly.
I read the part of the morphine addicted mother in the family for the first half, and then our hostess took over the role. It's a very complicated role and kind of hard to read just like that but I think both of us did a reasonably good job. If I'm completely honest I'll have to say I read it just slightly better than she did, but others may disagree with my opinion on that.
Afterwards I went for a beer.
4.21.2007
Next time one with more explosions please..
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3 comments:
Another insight into the world of Drama!
I always thought play readings were dialogue only... the stage directions being left until rehearsals began. It just goes to show how much I know about the business.
If I've understood you correctly, the play itself was criticised for having too many stage directions? Hmmm... is that relevant? After all, the members of the audience are unaware of that, and the final verdict on a play is how it's performed, isn't it? I reckon if I criticised Walt Disney's Bambi because I know the making of it was a laborious frame by frame process, you and everyone else would think I was a trivial, attention-seeking twat (don't go there!).
I liked the bit about going for a beer afterwards... it smacks of professionalism.
"one with more explosions please"... hehe!
Well I think it depends on the reading, everyone does it differently, this guy wanted the stage directions read out but I don't think it's always that way, and the other guy didn't like the detailed directions from an actor's point of view, there should be more scope for the actor to interpet roles themselves. Of course, I've been advised by a very reliable source that we read from the book version, and a script for actors would have the more usual "she walked over to the chair" type directions, rather than telling the actor how to deliver the line.
Oh I see. Well, if an actor can't put his own interpretation on it then they might as well have trained monkeys playing the parts.
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