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Re: RAT The Sassies!!!!
Again, I have to second the mention of both "Six Degrees" and "Mad Forest".
I have no original opinions. My place in the world is second others'
opinions. Or denegrate them. I also think I might be soulmates with
Jeffrey Sweet, resident playwright, etc. I've agreed with nearly everything
you've said so far. But fear not. Someday soon you'll say something I
disagree with, and bitter disillusionment will follow.
donna
>From: DgSWEET@aol.com
>Reply-To: rat-list@whirl-i-gig.com
>To: rat-list@whirl-i-gig.com
>Subject: Re: RAT The Sassies!!!!
>Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2000 16:31:18 EST
>
>I wasn't too big a fan of SALESMAN till I saw the recent Robert Falls
>revival. Since I found tears streaming down my face, I couldn't pretend
>that
>the play isn't effective.
>
>But, yeah, there are plays I think are less manipulative and more rigorous.
>those who think Wilder's OUR TOWN is a sentimental play having seen a
>really
>good production or read it closely enough. It achieves heartbreak honestly
>with a strange detachment. OUR TOWN is also notable in that it was a
>genuinely avant-garde play that nonetheless premiered and flourished within
>the commercial theatre.
>
>Hard to name a great work for the Nineties. There is a temptation, because
>of its size and audacity, to go for ANGELS, but somehow that doesn't quite
>do
>it for me. There are some structural problems that, as I watched the play,
>didn't bother me too much, but make me hesitate to give it the crown of the
>Nineties.
>
>I think SIX DEGREES opened in 1990, and I think that's the most impressive
>American play I've seen this decade. Of the foreign plays I've seen, Caryl
>Churchill's MAD FOREST probably is the one that most excited me.
>
>Of the musicals of the Nineties, the only one that was compelling enough to
>lead me to see it three times was RAGTIME. Not perfect, but a grand
>whirligig of a construction with facets that only begin to reveal
>themselves
>after repeated hearings -- always something new to discover in it.
>
>I would also nominate Viola Spolin and Paul Sills (her son) as being the
>most
>important influence in American theatre of the 1900s. Between them, they
>invented theatre games, created the template for improvisational theatre,
>trained or trained the people who trained several hundred major actors,
>writers and directors, and created the story theatre form. But I'm
>slightly
>prejudiced -- I wrote a book about them.
>
>
>
>----------------------------------
>Jeffrey Sweet
>Resident Playwright, Victory Gardens Theatre
>Faculty, Actors Studio at the New School
>Council, the Dramatists Guild of America
>http://members.aol.com/DgSWEET/index.html
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