backstage.com: The book is always better than the movie, as they say. Taking a novel, an essay, or a historical record and translating it to a dramatic form requires harsh cutting and can alter the essence of the piece. How do you decide which scenes to include? How do you turn prose into dialogue? How do you honor the source material while still creating something new?
These are questions that writers have been dealing with for ages, but theater makers are reinventing the process of taking text to stage.
5 comments:
I like this idea. I feel that books are certainly not being read as they once were, libraries are not nearly as popular as they once were, I could be completely wrong though. I am an offender of not reading- I have enjoyed reading but have never been fast or particularly great at it. Sometimes the best moment in reading for me happens though, when I was younger and had to read summer books or even today when reading, when I push myself to read past when I think I should stop- the book becomes alive. In theory, it sounds like this piece is presenting books in a similar way, preserving and reading all of it, so moments of magic can happen and come alive through the text alone and slow smooth progression of words, I what I liked that had been referred to as "beautiful sentences". Sometimes beautiful sentences can carry a story of their own, and acting just isn't needed. This interests me so much- I think this company is giving the greatest ode to some of the greatest writers of time, I respect that a lot.
I never really thought about bring a book to the stage. In my plays and books always existed in two very distinct universes and the two didn't overlap. But looking at it now, it is not that insane to think that the two could have some crossover. The cuts a book would require are obviously hard to decide but that should be no reason to keep a show off the stage. Gatz sounds really interesting, though since it is the whole book it be hard to sit through (I know it is divided, but still, that a lot of prose) I think the idea of using essays instead of books is a very good idea because they are shorter and they still get a point across. the only problem with a story is that there is not as much of a story.
In this modern era, I fear that books are slowly dwindling for video-based storytelling. Articles such as this one give me hope that written word is something that will persevere for still more time. I have nothing against telling story with video, but literature offers the reader the opportunity to customize the world of the story in their head to their heart's content.
I understand the difficulty of transforming a novel into a 2-hour play or movie. So, while reading these new innovative ideas that theaters try to approach, I really thought them creative and original. I think playing "The Great Gatsby" in a less pretend way and in a way that focuses on what is going on rather than the exact dialogue is very interesting. However, 6-hours! I must assume that the actors' acting is very natural and interesting to stay whole six hours to watch. I believe that to those people who haven't read the book might find very interesting instead of reading by themselves, but to those fans of "The Great Gatsby," there will be huge gaps between pros and cons. Rather than trying to make it short but creative, the company chooses to do whole script. I am also curious how it will turn out to be. I wonder if it will stimulate more imagination from the audience or a mere boredom. However, I hope the show to turn out to be a great success!
I think this is a very interesting and new idea for theatre. I like how the Company is doing both a book reading and a performance at the same time. I agree with David that books are dwindling, but I feel that this is a fun way to bring it back. I was always upset when companies created adaptations of books, while losing the beautiful language that the book was written in. Usually, all of the beautiful imagery and descriptions in the original text are lost to silent stage directions in the script. Here, we bring this language back into an epic form of story telling
Post a Comment