The 10 sorts of new plays that theatre people are tired of
In no particular order, drawn from research performed over lunch with theatre people, and including solo shows:
- Four neurotic New Yorkers complain about their lives.
- I’m emotionally wounded and you should be fascinated / amused.
- College professor gets divorced!
- Three women complain about men.*
- My life story — it’s so wacky!
- Dad abused me and I can’t get over it.
- (Family member) is dying and I feel sad.
- Ugh, the relatives are coming over and dinner is ruined and we suck.
- Clever college grads hang out and talk!
- You don’t understand this, and that means it’s good.
*submitted by a female friend (thank you)
June 2nd, 2012 at 4:36 pm
Love this! Very, very true. It has ever been thus. Especially in my lifetime.
Back in the last century, (the 1970s to be approximate,) “New York” magazine used to run literary contests. The contest editor had determined that the most frequent ending of bad new plays in those days was that one character gets run over by a bus (offstage, of course,) and so the character remaining on stage would reach down to the sofa, pick up the cat, start stroking it to say meaningfully, “Well, it’s just you and me now, Socrates.” The contest that week was to write the worst closing line of the worst kind of new play. Do the line and then describe the play it came from. You ought to start such contests on your blog and see what you get.
I don’t know why but I often class plays by the furniture required by the script and can often judge what the play is likely to be before it’s acted out, If the same old seedy thrift store set is staring at us I know we’re in for play about neurotics from the wrong side of town; if it’s upscale throwback to any time between the sixties and late eighties it’s likely to be a wordy but shallow and tiresome sex relationship comedy or dramedy involving neurotics from the suburbs; if it’s undiscernable it’s likely to be strained literate neurosis masquerading as absurdism. My wife and I, frequent theatregoers in our county, recently counted four (not new) plays in a row which used the same refrigerator. Plays to avoid have a) an old refrigerator, b)a too worn sofa, c)a kitchen table in the living room, a)a cot instead of bed to save space.
June 5th, 2012 at 10:40 am
What I’d like to do (if I had that kind of time!) is re-write HAMLET in each style….
June 5th, 2012 at 10:43 am
… I can see Hamlet, Horatiom Marcellus and Bernardo kvetching about how the ent in Elsinore is too damn high….
June 5th, 2012 at 10:43 am
… or Hamlet re-capping the play as a one-man show…..
June 5th, 2012 at 10:45 am
…or Polonius’s wife getting fed up and leaving him….
June 10th, 2012 at 1:23 pm
Interestingly, Dan, HAMLET did not take place in a hamlet.
June 21st, 2012 at 9:03 pm
Some years ago, I heard a parody of country songs, in which the lyricist attempted to include every cliche from country songs. I seem to recall that at the end of the song, the narrator sees, from his pickup truck, his dog run over by a train. Mamma was in there somewhere too.
It might be fun to write a play involving all the cliches you mentioned.
The ingredients: Four neurotic New Yorkers complain about their lives.
I’m emotionally wounded and you should be fascinated / amused.
College professor gets divorced!
Three women complain about men.*
My life story — it’s so wacky!
Dad abused me and I can’t get over it.
(Family member) is dying and I feel sad.
Ugh, the relatives are coming over and dinner is ruined and we suck.
Clever college grads hang out and talk!
You don’t understand this, and that means it’s good.
The play, entitled, perhaps, Oh Those Wacky New York Academics!
Four, or possibly three, related, divorced and neurotic female NYU professors, college grads all, but emotionally wounded, cleverly complain about the abuse they suffered from their fathers while at the home of one of them (she has an old refrigerator) who has ruined dinner. One of them is dying which makes them sad, but still, it’s wacky, which I don’t understand. Sounds good.
Oh, and it’s a musical.