Read Read Read

It's Summer time!

Which for most means we finally have the chance to read all those books we got for Christmas! High school and college students spend the rest of the seasons keeping up with assignments and academic readings. Summer is the golden opportunity to get to all the leisure reads we've put to the side.

I usually spend my summers toting dime-store romance novels back and forth from the beach. Lately, though, I've been super into non-fiction and biographies.

First on my list this summer is: Me: Stories of My Life a best-selling autobiography by Katherine Hepburn.

Quirky autobiography FULL of photos, anecdoctes, and wisdom.

 A remarkable staff person at my alma mater gifted this nifty book to me as a graduation present and I already can't get enough.

Actor Friends: If you do anything for yourself this summer, whether it's cleaning, crafting, camping, practicing, exercising etc., do yourself a favor and READ MORE! (A tip I should put into practice myself).

The head of our Drama Department at Washington College, my dear friend, and my constant inspiration, is famous for saying "A play a day". Your average play is ~70-100 (usually double spaced) pages. Read a play a day. It's easy. It's good for you. You find audition material. You have conversation material for shmoozing and socializing. You find inspiration.You find what you like, what you hate, what is overdone, and what is missing. Read a play a day.

Don't know where to start?
Here is a list of plays/theatre books I was given as a freshman:

• Antigone by Sophocles
• Macbeth by William Shakespeare
• Hamlet by William Shakespeare
• Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
• Angels in America by Tony Kushner
•  A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams
• Playboy of the Western World by JM Synge
• A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansbury
• Caucasian Chalk Circle by Bertold Brecht
• Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen
•  The Bakkhai by Euripides
• Medea by Seneca
• Wasps by Aristophanes (or another Aristophanes substitute)
• Bacchides by Plautus (or another Plautus substitute)
• The Second Shepherd's Play by Anonymous
•  Heartbreak House or Major Barbara by George Bernard Shaw
• The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde
• The Triumph of Love by Maravaux
• The School for Scandal by Sheridan
• The London Merchant by Lillo
•  Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
• Tartuffe by Moliere
• A Midsummer Night's Dream by Shakespeare
• Buried Child by Sam Shepard
• Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf by Edward Albee
•  Our Town by Thornton Wilder
• Spring Awakening by Wedekind
• Six Characters in Search of an Author by Pirandello
• Oklahoma by Rodgers and Hammerstein
• Blood Wedding by Lorca
•  The Piano Lesson by August Wilson
• Awake and Sing by Clifford Odets
• Under the Gaslight by Augustin Daly
• Idiot's Delight by Robert Sherwood
• The Homecoming by Harold Pinter
•  The Rover by Aphra Behn
• The Verge by Susan Glaspell
• Watch on the Rhine by Lillian Hellman
• How I Learned to Drive by Paula Vogel
• Fefu and her Friends by Maria Irene Fornes
•  Accidental Death of an Anarchist, by Dario Fo
• Betrayal by Harold Pinter
• Master Harold and the Boys by Athol Fugard
• Matsukaze by Zeami
• American Buffalo by David Mamet
•  Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekhov
• Dr. Faustus by Christopher Marlowe
• 'Tis Pity She's a Whore by John Ford
• Cloud Nine by Caryl Churchill
• Long Day's Journey Into Night by Eugene O’Neill
•  Shakuntala by Kalidasa
• Death and the King’s Horsemen by Wole Soyinka
• The Ghost Sonata by August Strindberg
• Uncommon Women and Others by Wendy Wasserstein
• Six Degrees of Separation by John Guare
•  The Dramatic Imagination-Robert Edmond Jones
• The Empty Space- Peter Brook

Mostly groundbreaking classics. I do not claim to have read even a fraction of these. I can say that the ones I HAVE read (Cloud 9, Streetcar, Waiting for Godot, Our Town, Uncle Vanya, and Six Characters in particular) have made lasting impacts on me and continue to present themselves in my my life and the newer plays I read. Let's work our way through em together. Let me know what you think!

Perk of most of these being classics? They're in the public domain and easy to find for free or cheap. Troll yard sales and used book stores for major play bargains. 

Too good for classics? Reconsider. I thought I hated classics. (Sorry, Billy Shakespeare) But hey! classics are classic for a reason. They withstand the test of time. Centuries can pass and these works still have relevance. I can still identify with Chekhov's pained characters. Can you?

What about new work? Make no mistake, however, I am a constant supporter of new work. There are hundreds/thousands of talented contemporary playwrights churning out new work. Read as much new work as you can too! Basically, read EVERYTHING. It's nifty when you find parellels between contemporary and classic.

Also available for Android!

Play a day too much right now? Start small! Just keep reading! Start your day reading an article from Backstage, American Theater, or the Arts section of the Guardian. *cough* the Guardian has an app *cough* #justsayin #playaday #noexcuses

Whatever you do, keep reading!

Thanks for reading ;)