What is a good book for getting into plays/drama? I've looked at the wiki and it lists a bunch of plays/writers but how do I know where to start? I think some intricacies of the form will be lost if I just start reading great writers without prior knowledge.
Is Aristotle's poetics a good place to start? Any critics or textbooks worth reading?
btw although I've never read a lot of plays I've studied Strindberg, Edward Albee and Jean Genet for school/uni and they were all pretty cool. I like Chekhov's stories too so I'll probably look into his plays.
maybe you should go see a play, since that's the whole point of writing one
Not trying to further the Greek meme, but I actually read 3-4 books on screenwriting a few years back because I was writing a film and every book mentioned Aristotle's Poetics as a great writing/ literary tool. Mind you, the books I was reading were targeted at film school faggots who think shit like the film Gravity is considered "art", and Aristotle makes a lot of simple and obvious observations, but later when I read Shakespeare and Sophocles I could see a lot of Aristotle's ideas of playwriting form/sense of drama present in the works.
>>7409914
Fair point, but although I might enjoy watching a play I want to learn more about the craft. Also I wouldn't know what play to see, all the people I know involved in theatre at my uni do either Shakespeare or meme plays other upper class kids in our city have written for their hip friends to perform.
>>7409902
I found Arthur Miller very easily accessible as I hadn't read many plays beforehand. The Crucible, A View From the Bridge and Death of a Salesman are good places to start and you can read them each in a day too due to their length. He knew how to write engaging tragedy.
>>7409921
I'm a film school faggot and I think it depends which school you go to because I don't know anybody who likes Gravity.
Saying that, I know somebody who unironically said Mockingjay Part 2 was the most important film of our time because of how it tackles "all the big topics nobody dares to touch."
I just want to die already.
Is that from a movie adaptation of Oblomov?
>>7409902
I first got into them during highschool. We covered a number of Shakespeare's and Arthur Miller's 'The Crucible'. Particularly 'The Crucible' drew me into the format. I then picked a compilation of some Ibsen plays and read that, from then on I was hooked.
>>7409902
>important plays
>ignoring everything before modern era:
Woyzeck by Buchner
Ghosts,An Enemy of the People, by Ibsen
Miss Julie and The Ghost Sonata by August Strindberg
The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov
Mother Courage and Her Children by Bertolt Brecht
A Long Day's Journey Into Night by Eugene O'Neill
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
A Streetcar Named Desire and The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams
Zoo Story by Edward Albee
Waiting for Godot and Endgame by Samuel Beckett
Fences and the Piano Lesson by August Wilson
Arcadia by Tom Stoppard
Angels in America by Tony Kushner
Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw
In the Next Room, or the Vibrator Play by Sarah Ruhl
>drama theory
The Empty Space by Peter Brook
Brecht on Theatre
Shaw on Theatre
Sarte on Theatre
The Theatre and Its Double by Antonin Artaud
enjoy!
>>7409902
The Norton Anthology of Drama (two volumes) is actually a pretty great place to start.
Beyond that, check your Uni's library for collections of plays. Not just "_____ complete works", but stuff from festivals, decade collections, gay/lesbian compilations, etc.
>>7409966
Should add some Vaclav Havel in there, too, bro. And some Galczynski for good measure.
>>7409902
>2015
>writing plays
You might as well go paint horses on the wall of a cave.
>>7409980
this
computers and robots can do this shit in a fraction of a second. you mouthbreathers need to stop fetishizing these obsolete formats.
>>7409980
I don't want to write plays I want to read them you pillock.
> writing anything at all
we're on a dying rock falling through emptiness and you think amoebic trails left for entertainment's sake means anything at all?
What company makes the best productions of plays? I'd like to watch some Sophocles but don't know who to watch.
>>7409970
Shut up pleb
>>7409970
Havel's ok, but Beckett and Brecht cover what would be gleaned from him
>>7410321
Brecht is trash
>>7410348
>man who changed the landscape of modern drama
>trash
nice b8 m8
>>7410363
Okay commie you can stop dick riding a mediocre playwright
>>7410380
>implying ThreePenny Opera isn't a masterpiece
>implying Galileo isn't the greatest expression of the science destroying nature of religion
how long have you known you were autistic?
