Watch or read play????

My personal view on this question is to do both in order to learn to appreciate the effort that the play writers and directors put to come up with a good play .Recently our class started to have another activity which is watching play. I feel it is something beneficial for me as I enjoy watching the plays. There are so many things in the play that I cannot imagine or visualise especially for those plays of past era. So, through watching plays, I manage to understand to setting and lifestyle of the people in those eras. Setting really influences the story line of a play. For example, the play Oedipus Rex is an Athenian tragedy by Sophocles that was first performed in 429 B.C. Maybe, those who read the play will be able to understand it but it would be hard for them to really get into the play and enjoy it. Moreover, the texts that we read now are mostly translations of the original text. For example, when I read Oedipus Rex, I had difficulties to imagine most of the scenes because it was written many years ago and the writer would have something different in his mind when we wrote those words. Even a single word such as “garland” would have looked different in his era compared to the garlands now. Besides, reading dramatic scenes in the play leaves less impact than watching the same scenes in movie. So, I think it is good for us to have the movie session because in a way it exposes us to different eras. I am able understand the plays better when I watch the movies. Reading plays enable to understand the story and watching plays helps me to enhance my understanding of the plays. The movies give me extra knowledge of the play. We have already watched “Elizabeth” and “Macbeth”. Now, i am looking forward for the movie “Oedipus Rex” as we had already discussed the play in our class.

i am a writer too.....

At first I thought writing a play would be merely like writing a conversation between two friends. I only realise the procedures that a play writer should follow and the important things that a writer should consider when we were assigned to write a play. It took us a few days to arrive to the theme of the story. A simple conversation could be of any topics, but for a play that would be assessed; there are a lot of things to be considered. My group members had decided to write a play based on the theme friendship. We planned to give some suspense at the beginning of the play and reveal it at the end. I am not sure how far the situation that we created in our play happens in real life. Anyway, we enjoyed creating the dialogue and the incidents in the story.It were fully based on our imagination. I still remember a part when we ourselves were confused of the story and we read the play from the start to understand it. The play was only for 20 minutes but we spend a few nights to write and edit it. From this experience, I had learnt that it is not easy to convey a message through plays. Sometimes, we simply run out of ideas and stuck in the middle of the play. The choice of the exact word is very important for a play. There are situations when the words that we use in our play could not really create the expected effect from the readers. We did a lot of editing after our lecturer commented on our play. I saw my classmates’ reaction when they got back their play from our lecturer. Some escaped a great sigh when they got good remarks. Those who got “YAWN” comment were happily showing their papers to other classmates and they made fun of their own product. Apparently, what had been interesting for them in their play had been boring for the lecturer. Therefore, what we should take into account when writing a play is not how far it amuses us but the audience. This is why so many plays did not hit the target when it is being performed. Play writers should put the audience in mind before they write a play. Overall, it was a nice experience to write play on our own. I enjoyed reading my classmates’ plays too. This might be a starting point for many of us who plan to be play writers in the future.