Hutchins Library News Blog

Looking for Lilith was founded by Shannon Woolley Allison, Trina Fischer, and Jennifer Thalman Kepler in New York City, 2001. LFL is committed to collaboratively creating original theatre based on women’s history, both oral and written, both past history and history in the making. This feminist ensemble theatre company is dedicated to lifting up unheard and “underheard” stories. Defining Infinity, an original play, explores individuals’ stories about the spectrums of both gender and sexual orientation. Enlightening, thoughtful, and powerful, the play shares experiences of queer folks from all along both of these spectrums.

The Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler; Gloria Steinem

Call Number: 822.914 E59v

ISBN: 0822217724

Publication Date: 2000

THE STORY: An Obie Award-winning whirlwind tour of a forbidden zone, THE VAGINA MONOLOGUES introduces a wildly divergent gathering of female voices, including a six-year-old girl, a septuagenarian New Yorker, a vagina workshop participant, a woman

 

LGBTQ Comedic Monologues That Are Actually Funny by Alisha Gaddis

Call Number: 822.045 L687 2016

ISBN: 9781495025150

Publication Date: 2016-08-01

(Applause Acting Series). The first and only book of its kind, this cutting-edge and incredibly hysterical monologue book is specifically for actors auditioning for LGBTQ roles. LGBTQ Comedic Monologues That Are Actually Funny features works by LGBT writers and comics (and their allies) who have written and/or performed for Comedy Central, Backstage magazine, NBC, the Huffington Post , the Onion , Second City, E!, and many more. This collection is the go-to source for the comedic monologue needs of actors seeking LGBT material, as well as a paean to LGBT characters and artists.

 

Almost Normal by Moody, Marc

Call Number: DVD 791.437 A452 2005

ISBN: 9781932134544

Publication Date: 2005

A 40 year old gay man is tired of the frustrations involved with being "not normal". He is heading for his dysfunctional parents' wedding anniversary party when he crashes his car and ends up in the hospital. While in a coma he experiences his high school world again but this time gay is normal and straight is outcast and shameful.

As long as I've lived on this earth (which is roughly 20 years and 7 months) I've always liked my stories to be linear and easy to follow. I think it shows a great amount of talent to allow your audience insight into your mind and have it make complete sense. However, I also find that there are very many plays that do not do this for the sole purpose of leaving the meaning up to the audience. It's important to have these types of plays in the world to show other people how far art can go. Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett is one of those plays.

Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett

Call Number: 842 B396wxb 1982

ISBN: 9780802130341

Publication Date: 1994-01-18

A seminal work of twentieth-century drama, Waiting for Godot was Samuel Beckett's first professionally produced play. It opened in Paris in 1953 at the tiny Left Bank Theatre de Babylone, and has since become a cornerstone of twentieth-century theater. The story line revolves around two seemingly homeless men waiting for someone--or something--named Godot. Vladimir and Estragon wait near a tree on a barren stretch of road, inhabiting a drama spun from their own consciousness. The result is a comical wordplay of poetry, dreamscapes, and nonsense, which has been interpreted as a somber summation of mankind's inexhaustible search for meaning. Beckett's language pioneered an expressionistic minimalism that captured the existentialism of post-World War II Europe. His play remains one of the most magical and beautiful allegories of our time.

 

Waiting for Godot is what we call an absurdist play. It is meant to be a comedy with very little to say about anything. It's about two men waiting near a tree for a person named Godot (riveting stuff, I know). However, while they're waiting, they realize it's taking Godot a long time to get there. They meet two men named Lucky and Pozzo, who both claim to be messengers for Godot, saying that Godot will be there if they wait long enough. And that's it. That's the plot of the play. It has many comedic moments that are easy to understand, but the deeper meaning behind the play has been theorized by many people. My theory is that they're waiting for God, but God doesn't quite want to meet them. 

 

But in order to create your own speculations, you're going to have to read it yourself. Since it's only two acts, it should be an easy read for newcomers in the theatre scene (or just about anyone who hasn't read an absurdist play before.) Since this was one of the first plays I've read, I recommend it highly to anyone looking to catch the theatre bug. If you want to read Waiting for Godot, or any of Samuel Beckett's plays, you can find them circulating on the third floor of the library. Tune in next week for another entry on Theatre Thursday!

 

You know what's a shame? Halloween doesn't fall on Theatre Thursday. It's almost as if the universe is trying to ruin my fun. It's a shame too, I could have talked for hours about Sarah Kane and her fabulous body horror drama Cleansed for literal hours on end. I mean, what's scarier than a university turned into an institution under the sadistic rule of an irresponsible man named Tinker? 

Anyways, since we can't celebrate the pivotal day of spooky month, we're going to go with a classic. Let's start off with this: Did you know that Denzel Washington has been in some theatre productions? No? Well he was in five! Julius Caesar, A Raisin in the Sun, Checkmates, Iceman Cometh.... oh! And Fences by the late and great August Wilson.

August Wilson's Fences by Ladrica C. Menson-Furr

Call Number: E-Book

ISBN: 9781441168443

Publication Date: 2013-06-06

Fences represents the decade of the 1950s, and, when it premiered in 1985, it won the Pulitzer Prize. Set during the beginnings of the civil rights movement, it also concerns generational change and renewal, ending with a celebration of the life of its protagonist, even though it takes place at his funeral. Critics and scholars have lauded August Wilson's work for its universality and its ability, especially in Fences, to transcend racial barriers and this play helped to earn him the titles of "America's greatest playwright" and "the African American Shakespeare."

August Wilson, as a playwright, is pretty phenomenal. He was known for writing the Pittsburgh Cycle, which were ten different plays in different decades of the 20th century that depicted the tragic African American experience in America. If you were watching any of Berea College's theatre productions in Spring of 2018, you may have seen the play Ma Rainey's Black Bottom. This, although set in Chicago, was part of the Pittsburgh Cycle.

But Fences is definitely in Pittsburgh, and it's about a black man in the 1950s and his control over his life and his family. Troy, the man of the hour, a 53-year-old man who has a job as a trash collector and struggles to keep a living wage for his family. The thing about Troy is that he's more or less a villain in this play. He's cheating on his wife, he's verbally abusive towards his sons, and he can't quite grasp that his reality is different from the dream that he had about playing negro baseball in his younger years. This play is about subtly in dialogue and the nuances of a broken family. And trust me, it relates back to the titular fence.

This play is brilliant (and one of my favorites.) And it's good for people who like little details and doing research after a play is over. Or for the watch-and-go type of person. This play is just good, okay? I give it a 10/10. If you want to read Fences or any of August Wilson's works, feel free to find them as an E-Book in the Hutchins Library database or circulating somewhere on the third floor. Tune in next Thursday night for another fun theatre read!

In honor of that spooky month being right around the corner (unless you're me and every month is spooky month), let's talk about the dead. Ah yes, theatre is definitely known for being over the top and melodramatic, especially with the dead, but what if we take that idea to a completely different level. This week on Theatre Thursdays, in honor of both spooky month and Theatre Season™ starting up next week, we're gonna take a look at the zany Sarah Ruhl's Eurydice.

Eurydice, like many other plays, is a take on a Greek story. The Greek story is about Orpheus, who loses his wife (Eurydice) to the Underworld and goes to retrieve her because he loves her SO MuCh. Hades, being the God that he is, tells him he can have her back if, when ascending back to Earth, he does not look at her even once. This almost works until Orpheus gets real anxious and decides that he really wants to see his girl, thus losing her forever to the Underworld. Men, amiright?

But Ruhl's take on the classic tale comes from the perspective of Eurydice herself, who gets tricked into going to the Underworld and can't quite remember anything about herself or where she is. The play mixes modern elements with classic ones, including an elevator that descends the characters into the Underworld, three very eccentric stones, and a whole theme involving water and washing away memories. It's kind of sad, but also a little bit heartwarming. Ruhl even creates a completely different ending from the original tale that I like much better. But you'd have to read it to find out. ;)

If you want to read Eurydice - or any of Sarah Ruhl's works -you can find it in the library circulating on the third floor. And be sure to grab tickets for Dead Man's Cell Phone, a drama/comedy by Sarah Ruhl, at the McGaw Theatre on October 4th, 5th, and 6th (directed by a Berea College student!)

Tune in next Thursday night for another fun theatre read!

The Clean House and Other Plays by Sarah Ruhl

Call Number: 822.92 R933c 2006

Publication Date: 2006-01-01

"Passionate. Show-stopping. Daringly over-the-top and impressively consistent in its delirious excess. The Clean House shines."--New Haven Advocate   "The Clean House is not, by any means, a traditional boy-meets-girl story. In fact disease, death, and dirt are among the subjects it addresses. This comedy is romantic, deeply so, but in the more arcane sense of the word: visionary, tinged with fantasy, extravagant in feeling, maybe a little nuts."--The New York Times   "Touching, inventive, invigoratingly compact, and luminously liquid, Eurydice reframes the ancient myth of ill-fated love to focus not on the bereaved musician but on his dead bride--and on her struggle with love beyond the grave."--San Francisco Chronicle   This volume is the first publication of Sarah Ruhl, "a playwright with a unique comic voice, perspective, and sense of theater" (Variety), who is fast leaving her mark on the American stage. In the award-winning The Clean House--a play of uncommon romance and uncommon comedy--a maid who hates cleaning dreams about creating the perfect joke, while a doctor who treats cancer leaves his heart inside one of his patients. This volume also includes Eurydice, Ruhl's reinvention of the tragic Greek tale of love and loss, Late: A Cowboy Song, and Melancholy Play.   Sarah Ruhl received the prestigious Susan Smith Blackburn Prize in 2004 for her play The Clean House, which has been produced at Yale Repertory Theatre in New Haven, Wilma Theatre in Philadelphia, South Coast Repertory Theatre in Costa Mesa, and Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in Washington, DC. Her play Eurydice has been produced at Madison Repertory Theatre and Berkeley Repertory Theatre.

Are you a theatre nerd who hasn't yet read or watched all of the cool plays that your other theatre friends keep talking about? Do you have a strange interest in reading dramatic lines of text that you'll quickly get invested in? Do you just like theatre in general? Really? Great! Because these posts are for you! Welcome to Theatre Thursdays, where we take a look at a play (or musical, but probably mostly plays) that are both fun reads and fun to talk about. 

Sophocles's Oedipus Rex by Harold Bloom (Introduction by)

Call Number: 882.2 B655s 1988

ISBN: 0877549184

Publication Date: 1988-01-01

-- Presents the most important 20th-century criticism on major works from The Odyssey through modern literature -- The critical essays reflect a variety of schools of criticism -- Contains critical biographies, notes on the contributing critics, a chronology of the author's life, and an index

This week's topic is Oedipus the King, or more commonly known as Oedipus Rex, or sometimes even Oedipus Tyrannus if you're from Ancient Greece. The play was written by Sophocles, also known as a tragedian who sought to make things both very difficult and very sad. Sophocles also wrote Antigone, which is somewhat of a continuation of Oedipus in an also very difficult and sad light. Sophocles was Ancient Greece's version of Ryan Murphy, creating Grecian Horror Stories instead of American ones. 

But Oedipus is about, well, Oedipus. He's a king, whose father has been killed, and he wants to know who did it. But the twist is that [SPOILER ALERT] he did it! (I know, engaging stuff.) However, the real twist comes when Oedipus finds out that not only did he kill his own father, he also married (and had children with) his own mother! I know, it makes you want to poke your own eyes out, huh? (Wink, wink.) This play also had a hand in spearheading Sigmund Freud's most controversial idea about mothers and their children. But I'll let you read about that one yourself. 

Overall, this play is considered a tragic classic among the ranks of Hamlet. It holds the OG title of "Super Messed Up" while almost inviting you to vomit at the thought of it's ending. The play itself has even been talked about in most theatre classes here at Berea College. If you want to start your theatre reading off with a disgusting bang, I recommend this piece as a good starting point.

Tune in next Thursday night for another fun (and maybe a little messed up) theatre read!