I want to learn more about theatre plays

What are your favourite plays, Lain? What does theatre offer that other art forms can not replicate? Is it ever going to become a defunct art form? Do you usually watch them being performed or do you just read the script? Do you watch recordings of performances? If so, where do you find them?

There used to be this troupe in Minneapolis that hosted a monthly open cabaret, the final act of which was The Five Minute Movie, where they did an abbreviated and satirical version of some well known film. It was either a good classic or an awful blockbuster but the requirement was, it had to be something most people had seen at least once. These performances were the funniest things I have ever seen in my entire life. Lately I've been torrenting live plays including some musicals that are different interpretations of Alice. It's interesting to see how different each one is, all starting from a single source of an old storybook. For classic stuff like Shakespeare if you're going to just read it, it helps to read it aloud. It just feels good to experience the rhythms that way.

Theatre as an artform appeals to something very visceral and primitive in us, i would imagine. The sensory dimensions that are available to us have a degree of verisimilitude that just isn't present in film. Of course, people also attend theatrical performances for more abstract matters, such as composition, story, characterisation, poetry, metre etc. I recommend starting with Shakespeare - Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, Antony & Cleopatra are my favourite plays. Ideally watch a performance, but reading them afterwards is recommended as well for comprehensions sake (and to grasp the literary intricacies which might escape you in the bombast).

>>3375 it's my post and somehow only a photo got sent... weird. maybe it's too long, so i'm gonna split it in half and post again i have scarce experience with theatre, but oh how would i want to be able to afford to go to some plays again. i remember a school trip a couple of years ago, we went to see hamlet at sort of modern/experimental theatre so the play involved actors interacting with the audience, rain pouring on the stage etc.; also the stage itself at that particular theathre is based on ancient greek one, so even though it is inside a building, it is on lower level than the seats and they enclose the scene from three sides (i'm attaching a photo). on different school trip, to ukraine, we visited an opera house and although i couldn't understand much from the play/performance itself, the singing and dancing of actors was mesmerizing enough to left me stunned. (post 1 of 2)

>>3411 i would want to watch some recorded plays at least, but i don't really have an idea what should i see and where could i find them; i only did watch a recording of revue starlight performance not so long ago, it's a play/musical related to an anime of the same name; i believe it's more interesting to the fans of the anime than those interested in theatre in general, but maybe you would want to give the series a try as it tackles a lot of subjects connected to performing at the stage etc. my favourite scripts that i have read would probably be unfamiliar to you unless you are from poland; i'm not even sure if they have a translation (but i believe they should); i loved "wesele" ("the wedding") by stanislaw wyspianski and "tango" by slawomir mrozek; i don't really have enough faith in my memory to summarize them, but they both have english wikipedia pages if you would want to do some research. at some point of my life i considered studying scenography and i still love seeing theatre props and costumes at the museum; maybe i should pick a book or something about this subject. sorry for such a long post but it seems i had more to say than i expected! and thank you for remindig me i enjoyed so many things about theatre (post 2 of 2)

I used to work in a theater my sophomore year of high school, live plays definitely bring something different to the table from watching regular movies. I've met many wonderful people and seen many shows put on and live performances just have so much passion put into them, from everything I and the stage crew did behind the scenes to the actors themselves on stage, to all the planning done beforehand. I don't think they'll go out of style anytime soon, as long as people keep going out and supporting their local theaters!