lemm.ee

6 points

1 year ago

got any good brechtian plays to recommend, by any chance?

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Mardoniush [she/her]@hexbear.net

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6 points

1 year ago

Oh, I like Brecht as a playwright, but his thoughts on “epic theatre” and keeping the audience emotionally detatched from the characters and constantly aware they’re watching actors on a stage requires a deft hand and a great sense of comedy, or it all falls apart.

The best productions I’ve seen are the ones that ignore the stage directions and treat them as straight plays with suspension of disbelief.

That said I dont like Mother Courage, and I think the Threepenny Opera is worse than the source material of the 18th century Beggars Opera.

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4 points

1 year ago

Ah I see. Do you like the work of Dario Fo?

This was my entrance into his work, good bit of explicitly leftist theatre: https://youtu.be/TqKfwC70YZI?si=QG4Zi1vCda7tatws

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Mardoniush [she/her]@hexbear.net

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4 points

1 year ago

I love Fo. His rework of commedia dell arte techniques brings an immediacy and fluidity to his work.

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3 points

1 year ago

I’ll be honest, I’m blagging my way through a stagewriting degree right now as someone who’s seen 1000 films and read/watched about 30 plays, and that observation you just made has given me some much needed material to work with.

If you’ve got any anti-imperialist playwrights or even plays to recommend, I’d really appreciate it. I’m in the process of writing Operation Gideon by way of Dario Fo/Monty Python, and the writings coming along fine, but a chunk of the degree is justifying why I wrote what I wrote and who/what influenced it, which is what’s giving me a headache. Can’t art just be art for the sake of being, because it just feels right??? Ah well.

No worries if not. I don’t mean to outsource my work.

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Mardoniush [she/her]@hexbear.net

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3 points

1 year ago

I’m more familiar with pre-20th century stuff and tend more towards musicals and opera than straight plays, but I’m a big fan of the great 18th century Bourgois revolutionary operas William Tell (Rossini) and La Muette di Portici (Auber). The first was the trigger for the 3 days in July, the latter for the Belgian Revolution.

There’s also the ballad musical Reedy River, about the aftermath of the Australian 1891 Miner’s strike that triggered the formation of the Australian Labour Party, the first Social Democratic Party to take power in the world.

If your looking for Socialist Operas/Plays/Ballets, the Maoist era plays (often filmed before staged, but they’re all quite stagey in scripting) are better than their reputation suggests. The Red Detachment of Women is a particular favourite, though I prefer the ballet to the other adaptations.

For 20th-century straight plays, I recommend John Crawford, particularly his “Rocket Range” which examines the effect of the Woomera Rocket Range opening on local Aboriginal Communities.

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