Friday, August 19, 2022
Wallace Shawn on reading plays: ‘the written play has its own music’
Wallace Shawn | The Guardian: On the one hand, there’s something rather strange about the idea of reading plays. You could certainly say that what a play is, really, is what actors do together in front of an audience—or a one-person play is what one actor does alone in front of an audience.
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As someone who enjoys just reading plays it is cool to see someone else’s perspective on just straight up reading a play. Personally I like being able to see only the words of a play and think of what the other elements could look like without any limits. I think it is interesting how Wallace Shawn says “The written play has its own music,” because in a way it is true. Sometimes there are things that you can only get from a play if you strip everything else away and only look at the words. Although, I do understand why some people are not the biggest fan of just reading plays. Especially because plays are often written to be performed in front of an audience. Experiencing them as a solitary thing can be kind of unusual at times for sure.
I saw Wallace Shawn and clicked IMMEDIATELY. I have a theory that Wallace Shawn is in every piece of media ever, and you just don’t know it. His voice is so ridiculously distinct but you never put two and two together until you Google him. Like, yeah he’s that guy in the Princess Bride but then you realize that you totally forgot that he was Rex in Toy Story, and the list goes on and on. I never knew he was an essayist! These thoughts are very meta and thought-provoking. The idea that theatre could be considered people conspiring to lie in front of a whole other group of people - it’s very much deconstructing the purpose of the artform itself. I also understand the intimacy of reading a play alone. There is something irreplicable about creating a story in your head - thoughts that are all uniquely your natural interpretation of the text. People talk about drawing from your real experiences as an actor, and that question is interesting - are you still “lying” then? What constitutes inspiration vs. reliving? Could you argue that tapping into any real emotion is automatically “truly” experiencing it?
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