Superfluities Redux

by George Hunka
Artistic director, theatre minima

A Theatre Surrounds a City:
Vienna's Burgtheater

Thursday, 27 May 2010

"Are plays proper literature?"

... asks David Jays in today's Guardian. I'm rather with "zauberberg" in the comments section when she or he says, "I find the very fact that this question is posed baffling."

But more, they'd pretty damn well be literature or the May 2010 issue of Theater journal from the Yale School of Drama is a waste of so much pulp and ink. This new issue specifically addresses the current status of play-as-text or vice versa, featuring new performance texts from the Nature Theater of Oklahoma (Romeo and Juliet) and Big Art Group (SOS), as well as essays by editor Tom Sellar, Juliana Francis Kelly, Jacob Gallagher-Ross and Karinne Keithley. I suppose I provide my own response to Jays' question in my own contribution to the issue, "The Booking of the Play" — about six thousand words of it, I think, and only available to paying customers there, or on your local newsstands now.

But in brief: are plays proper literature? Of course they are, and capable of being interpreted from a variety of valid standpoints as readers: for entertainment, for study, for formal qualities. It's just that, like novels, poems and other forms, sometimes they're very poor proper literature indeed.

Posted in /Guardian
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Theory and polemic
95 Sentences About Theatre (2007)
Organum I (2006-2007)
Organum II (2008-2009)
Critique of Tragedy (2010-continuing)

Notes
Howard Barker 1
Howard Barker 2
Samuel Beckett 1
Samuel Beckett 2
Bertolt Brecht
Richard Foreman 1
Richard Foreman 2
Je Suis Sang
Sarah Kane
Music
Marilyn Nonken
Saint Oedipus

Contact
geh@panix.com