Themed readings

Certainly one of the reasons I decided it was better to part ways with this theatre company with whom I had gotten involved was that I was having trouble not seizing control over the artistic direction and I wasn't particularly good at fund raising, so it just became an untenable position.

In any case, if I were left in charge of staged readings, I had three programs that I would have wanted to put on.

City comedies of the Elizabeth Era through the Restoration:
Jonson -- The Alchemist
Jonson -- Volpone
Jonson -- Bartholomew Fair
Sheridan -- School for Scandal
Massinger -- A New Way to Pay Old Debts
Congreve -- The Way of the World
Farquhar -- The Beaux' Stratagem
Middleton -- The Changeling
Middleton -- Women Beware Women
Middleton -- A Mad World, My Masters
Middleton -- A Chaste Maid in Cheapside
Goldsmith -- She Stoops to Conquer (hardly a city comedy but too good to be left out)

Plays that referenced Genesis in some way:
Wilder -- By the Skin of Our Teeth
Bulgakov -- Adam and Eve
Miller -- The Creation of the World and Other Business
Rudnick -- The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told
Jean-Claude van Itallie -- The Serpent
Rosamund Small -- Genesis and Other Stories (a Toronto Fringe hit from 2013)
There's a musical version of Findley's Not Wanted on the Voyage in the works, but I don't think that is published in any form.  If this comes to Toronto, I am dropping everything to go see it.
As most of these are farces (aside from The Serpent), I might add Drew McCreadie's Hotel Bethlehem, though this is obviously New Testament. (This was a Vancouver phenomenon, and I wonder if this ever will find its way to Toronto.)

(There was at least one more in this category, but I can't seem to remember it.)

Science-inspired theatre:
Bertolt Brecht -- Galileo
John Mighton --  A Short History of the Night
Michael Frayn -- Copenhagen
Glen Berger -- Great Men of Science Nos. 21 & 22 (kind of a flop in Chicago at any rate) 
Shelagh Stephenson -- An Experiment with an Air Pump
Penny Penniston -- Now Then Again
John Mighton -- Possible Worlds (managed to see in Stratford in 2015)
Jordan Hall -- Travelling Light
David Auburn -- Proof

These are more tangentially related to science by including famous physicists (but not really getting into the important aspects of their careers), though they have their moments:
Steve Martin -- Picasso at the Lapin Agile
Friedrich Durrenmatt -- The Physicists

(I think I am forgetting one here as well, though it will probably come back to me later.)

There is also some theme I am toying with looking at how plays present Africa changing white people, but that is so super touchy that it is probably not worth the trouble.  It would probably be better just as a general lecture and not a bunch of staged readings.  Nonetheless, the only part of Friel's Dancing at Lughnasa that I actually cared for was the depiction of the missionary uncle come back to Ireland.  Moss Hart's The Climate of Eden sounds like it would also fit the bill, though that is more exotic (British Guiana) than related to African missionaries.  Churchill's Cloud 9 is a pretty insightful piece.  If I were to put on the readings, I might want to pair Overmyer's On the Verge with Nell Benjamin's The Explorers Club.  (And The Book of Mormon is of considerable interest, though without the music and songs it is just a shell of itself.)  Obviously, most of these treat Africa as an abstraction, and I think I would not want to get into South African readings, as that could definitely be its own category.  I am quite curious about Lynn Nottage's Mud, River, Stone, which sort of flips the script with African-Americans going on vacation in Africa and not quite finding what they were looking for.  This actually sounds quite brilliant, and I am slowly convincing myself that it is worth the trip to Chicago to see it.  (I suppose in the back of my mind I am intrigued by the African bellhop.  The most interesting part of the hotel exhibit at VAG a couple of years ago was the section on international hotels in Africa, but sadly little turned up in the catalog of the exhibit.  I think a brilliant story or play could be written about the role of these hotels as revolutions and decolonization swept through Africa in the 1960s.  But one would definitely not want to be stepping on Lynn Nottage's toes here...)

As it happens, my very next post is going to be about how inspiration can strike at any time, and one ought to follow it, or at the very least get the ideas down on paper...

Update (8/15) I actually saw two of these for the first time this summer (Miller's The Creation of the World and Other Business and Durrenmatt's The Physicists).  I also saw Infinity in the late spring and that could be added to the science-related list.  And I'll be seeing Possible Worlds in Sept., so that's a pretty good run.

I just heard about a new play -- Payne's Constellations -- that takes the concept of multiple realities (like Possible Worlds or Now Then Again) and plays with it.  I don't know how detailed they go into the physics of this (and whether it truly belongs on the science list), but I'll keep an eye out to see if it makes it to Toronto (or Chicago).  It closed earlier this year on Broadway and it usually takes 2 years or so for regional companies to start programming the Broadway hits.  (Actually, I read the play and found it totally disjointed and uninteresting, so I'll be passing on that.)

Now I am somewhat curious about Shelagh Stephenson's An Experiment with an Air Pump.  This play was done at Brock in 2002, though there are no upcoming Canadian performances. I do wonder if ADs just find it too similar to Stoppard's Arcadia.  That is my general impression, though I'd go to a local production.