Play Suggestions

Plays and other dramatic works
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ChuckW
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Post by ChuckW »

Here's a ridiculous project for anyone with a lot of free time on their hands: George Bernard Shaw's Back to Methuselah. A monstrous sequence of plays that moves from the Garden of Eden all the way to the year 31920. It doesn't get much bigger than that (although, alas, this one isn't PD in Europe!).

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13084

Come on. I'm sure someone would love to do this one... right? :lol:
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Current Solo:Septimius Felton (Hawthorne's final novel)
Help Needed: Strange Interlude (O'Neill's Freudian melodrama - roles available!)
Carolin
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Post by Carolin »

id like to suggest this play:

Household Gods by Aleister Crowley
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14040
Carolin
ChuckW
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Post by ChuckW »

Carolin wrote:id like to suggest this play:

Household Gods by Aleister Crowley
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14040
Whoa! I had no idea Aleister Crowley had anything in the public domain! That's wild!
PROJECTS
Current Solo:Septimius Felton (Hawthorne's final novel)
Help Needed: Strange Interlude (O'Neill's Freudian melodrama - roles available!)
Peter Why
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Post by Peter Why »

I've no idea how good these are; I just bumped into them on Gutenberg when I was looking for something else:

The Unicorn from the Stars and other plays - Lady Gregory and W.B. Yeats

Consisting of three plays:
The Unicorn from the Stars (Gregory, Yeats)
? 5 male, 3 female
Cathleen ni Houlihan (Yeats)
3 male, 3 female, and "neighbours"
The Hour-Glass (Yeats)
A wise man, some pupils, a fool, an angel, the wise man's wife and two children.

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/26144

Peter
"I think, therefore I am, I think." Solomon Cohen, in Terry Pratchett's Dodger
bluechien
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Post by bluechien »

Play suggestion: The Devil is an Ass, by Ben Jonson

Pardon me for borrowing wikipedia's synopsis:

The play opens in Hell, with Satan and an inferior devil called Pug. Pug wants to be sent to Earth to do the Devil's work of tempting men to evil – but Satan thinks he isn't up to the job; the world has grown so sophisticated in its vices, especially in the moral cesspool of London, that a simple devil like Pug will be severely out of his depth. Pug pleads his case, however, and Satan sends him into the world, specifically to plague an eccentric and foolish gentleman named Fabian Fitzdottrel.

Fitzdottrel is obsessed with the idea of meeting a devil; he has consorted with magicians and conjurers (Simon Forman among others) in hopes of encountering an imp who will aid him in the discovery of buried treasure.


This play is quite funny and influential, and now, possiby, underexposed.

The catch: readers have to translate the parts into english since the gutenberg text contains old s/f and u/v notations (please insert the fancy word for this here as I am at a loss ...) (there may be more than one gutenberg text)

https://archive.org/stream/devilisanass00jonsuoft/devilisanass00jonsuoft_djvu.txt

The good news is, if you knew what you were getting into, you could probably make this work, especially with this online "regular english" translation that could probably be quite useful to decipher the gutenberg:

http://www.hollowaypages.com/jonson1692devil.htm

If any interest, I would be willing to contribute my zero-drama-experience voice to this project, or, if enough interest, contribute even more by not doing that ;)
Eva D
If we do meet again, why, we shall smile;
If not, why then, this parting was well made.
ToddHW
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Post by ToddHW »

Here's a version with normal s's and v's. In a book with many of his other plays we could do as well.

https://archive.org/details/completeplayswit02jonsuoft

We have other Jonson in the catalog and this could be fun. I have too much on my plate to volunteer now but would be glad to help some else to run it and edit it....

Thanks, Todd
bluechien
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Post by bluechien »

ToddHW wrote:Here's a version with normal s's and v's. In a book with many of his other plays we could do as well.

https://archive.org/details/completeplayswit02jonsuoft

We have other Jonson in the catalog and this could be fun. I have too much on my plate to volunteer now but would be glad to help some else to run it and edit it....

Thanks, Todd
Maybe this is something I could learn to do in the future :hmm:

(in the meantime I am still learning how to manage my little solos so I would need to work that out first.)


Thanks for finding that text!

ps, another teaser :D

Pug appeals to Satan to take him back to Hell with whatever punishment the lord of the underworld chooses—for nothing in hell compares "to a lady of fashion." Satan is triumphant in his prediction that 1616 London was more than Pug could handle.
Eva D
If we do meet again, why, we shall smile;
If not, why then, this parting was well made.
ChuckW
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Post by ChuckW »

ChuckW wrote:Here's a ridiculous project for anyone with a lot of free time on their hands: George Bernard Shaw's Back to Methuselah. A monstrous sequence of plays that moves from the Garden of Eden all the way to the year 31920. It doesn't get much bigger than that (although, alas, this one isn't PD in Europe!).

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13084

Come on. I'm sure someone would love to do this one... right? :lol:
Okay, I'm probably crazy, buuuuut... I'm actually thinking of doing this myself. Yes. A five part play intended to take up half a day, with reincarnated characters, sci-fi settings, and a 30,000 word prologue. There's clearly something wrong with me.

Still waiting for my remaining projects to finish up before I launch this, so you still have time to talk me out of this.
PROJECTS
Current Solo:Septimius Felton (Hawthorne's final novel)
Help Needed: Strange Interlude (O'Neill's Freudian melodrama - roles available!)
ToddHW
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Post by ToddHW »

Chuck,

I'm waiting to see your tag line change to describe words on your office door something like: "Pardon the real life wait. Librivox life has hit me hard. Back whenever I run out of PD things to read"

Ya don't have to do the GBS as one item, you know. Group project to read the prolog, 4-5 separate plays (last is only a one-act perhaps - yes, you did make me look)....

Thanks, Todd
ToddHW
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Post by ToddHW »

By the way, I do have the next Dumas (Belle-Ville), Farquhar (Love and a Bottle), Moliere (The Misanthrope), and Pinero (Dandy Dick) plays selected for when my current offerings of theirs finish.

Thanks, Todd
ChuckW
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Post by ChuckW »

ToddHW wrote:Chuck,

I'm waiting to see your tag line change to describe words on your office door something like: "Pardon the real life wait. Librivox life has hit me hard. Back whenever I run out of PD things to read"

Ya don't have to do the GBS as one item, you know. Group project to read the prolog, 4-5 separate plays (last is only a one-act perhaps - yes, you did make me look)....

Thanks, Todd
What can I say? I like doing dramatic productions with ridiculously large cast lists! I'm also a little surprised someone hasn't tried to do this play before, although I can understand their reluctance.

And this isn't an immediate goal. The Broken Heart is almost done, and Princess Zoubaroff won't be far behind... but I might do someone a little easier/shorter before plunging into this.

I'll probably wind up doing the plays and the prologues as two separate projects. I'd love to break up the 5 sections, but there are too many characters who overlap between two or more plays (and their descendants pop up every now and again too). Believe it or not, but Adam and Eve make it all the way to 31,920 A.D.
PROJECTS
Current Solo:Septimius Felton (Hawthorne's final novel)
Help Needed: Strange Interlude (O'Neill's Freudian melodrama - roles available!)
ChuckW
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Joined: January 22nd, 2012, 7:47 am
Location: Ohio

Post by ChuckW »

Alright, not to spam this thread, buuuut...

Okay, so I'm trying to break Back to Methuselah up into acceptable bite-sized chunks and wanted some help. What is the average word count for a single act? I ask because some sections of the play (which aren't broken up into a traditional three act structure) clock in anywhere between 15,000-27,000 words. Some (like the Adam and Eve section) are an acceptable length (two Acts, each around 6000 words), but I'm sure I'll have to create my own individual stopping points for the sections without Act breaks.

So... what word count should I shoot for?

(I guess this is also a not-too-subtle way to announce that I'm going to launch this project after I finish up The Broken Heart).
PROJECTS
Current Solo:Septimius Felton (Hawthorne's final novel)
Help Needed: Strange Interlude (O'Neill's Freudian melodrama - roles available!)
ToddHW
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Post by ToddHW »

I have seen acts from 25 minutes to 1 hour 5 minutes. Your guess on word involved...

Thanks, Todd
Elizabby
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Post by Elizabby »

I think it depends a bit on the accuracy of the word count, too. If it is already in script form I find word counts are not very accurate.

Personally, I prefer longer sections to too much breaking up, so I'd go for 12,000 to 15,000 words per section. So if I had a section of 15,000 words I'd try to keep it all together, if it were 27,000 words I'd break that into two sections by finding an appropriate point in the action rather than looking for exactly halfway through on the word count. I dislike a play break exactly in the middle if it is achieved by breaking a conversation.
annise
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Post by annise »

not sure about plays , but about 10,000 would probably be the maximum
However , as you edit the bits together , there is no reason why you couldn't split them during the editing if they finished up too long . It's not like books , when you need to decide on the file names before you start , the catalogue file names come after all the reading is done, You may have to fiddle the person who does the disclaimer but if you are editing you could do it yourself

Anne
Beth and I cross posted - my comment re word counts was because I'm not sure whether a dramatic word count would take the same time as a straight reading ? I've always felt that reading dialogue took longer but have no evidence re this
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