Why don’t more people read in the dramatic forum?

JenniferFour · Post by **JenniferFour** » February 21st, 2016, 11:25 am

FWIW - I went to the Folger theatre last weekend and bought a CD of some Shakespearen sonnets and excepts from plays as they would have been originally pronounced. To my American ear, they sound more Irish than anything else.

Post by **chocoholic** » February 21st, 2016, 12:13 pm

TriciaG wrote:
What would make reading for a DR easier is if there were text docs separated by role rather than by chapter, so readers could just open a single page and find all their lines in one place.
I don't like this idea. Aside from the "more manipulation, more potential errors" issue you brought up, there's also the problem of context. A list of lines doesn't give the reader an idea of the emotion involved, nor any emphasis that might be needed.

(And a lot of plays aren't text searchable or use abbreviated names and vary them [in one recently, Morillat was abbreviated MOR in some spots, but MAR in others - in the scan, so it wasn't an OCR error], so I'm not sure that part of the play vs. DR argument is valid for many plays.)

Actually I agree with you on both counts.

This is one of the reasons it can be harder to find readers for dramatic works, but there isn't a great solution.

Peter Why · Post by **Peter Why** » February 21st, 2016, 1:26 pm

I admit to not thinking this through very far, but it may simply be a statistical thing. Readers may not be able to find something that they like in the the small number of subjects and styles available at any one time in the Dramatic Works section.

For example, if I most enjoyed group-reading light or humorous works, I'd probably be able to find something somewhere in the large Readers Wanted section, but these would only occasionally be available in the Dramatic Works section (and then, as *I* tend to do, the potential reader might decide against those few because of what sounds like archaic or strange English ... as an example, I find much of the Shakespeare that I've encountered nearly incomprehensible, which makes it almost impossible to empathise with the characters and read them effectively).

I've occasionally picked up dramatic parts that fit my experience (cockneys in Pygmalion) and abilities ... pompous judges, doctors and policemen elsewhere, so I don't simply have a blanket dislike of dramatic readings. I just don't often see anything that I would want to read even as an ordinary solo or group reading.

EDIT: Also, we do have readers who prefer "straight" readings, without working on characterisation of the voices. Perhaps the implied characterisation in dramatic readings puts them off.

Peter

Carolin · Post by **Carolin** » February 22nd, 2016, 3:47 am

i personally dont like dramatic readings. i have not heard one dramatic reading i liked, even if all the readers in it were excellent. thats also the reason why i dont participate.

i think it is a matter of taste. i myself live in the poetry forum and i love it, but i understand that poetry isnt for everyone. probably it is the same with drama

ej400 · Post by **ej400** » February 24th, 2016, 5:52 pm

I am trying to do some solo's and then me and my sister will be doing some dramatic works together.

pnagami · Post by **pnagami** » February 24th, 2016, 11:46 pm

I'm a Librivox reader, but I am not an actor, voice or otherwise.
I like to read non-fiction, foreign languages, and above all, history. So I leave the dramatic works to the actors--you know who you are!
Go for it!!

Pam

catrose · Post by **catrose** » February 25th, 2016, 1:54 am

Oooh, I should have left these here earlier. I realised a few years ago that one of the reasons people may not be joining the dramatic forum is because of how complicated everything looks and because of the kind of "clique-y" nature of it, which is less because we're all divas and more because the small community means we all work with eachother on lots and lots of projects and so we all become quite close.

Anyway, to tackle that problem, I added some articles to the Wiki about how dramatic projects work. I'm hoping to complete the collection of them in the next year or so.
For readers - http://wiki.librivox.org/index.php/Dramatic_Readings_and_Plays
For proof listeners - http://wiki.librivox.org/index.php/Proof-listening_a_Dramatic_Work

Post by **ToddHW** » March 3rd, 2016, 5:06 pm

Peter Why wrote:I admit to not thinking this through very far, but it may simply be a statistical thing. Readers may not be able to find something that they like in the the small number of subjects and styles available at any one time in the Dramatic Works section.

For example, if I most enjoyed group-reading light or humorous works, I'd probably be able to find something somewhere in the large Readers Wanted section, but these would only occasionally be available in the Dramatic Works section [snip]
Peter

I had not thought about the small number of Dramatic Works that are available. Since there isn't the same thing as the Readers Found forum for FULL (or EDIT) dramatic works to move to, they are in there with the OPEN ones too. This means there are only about 25 works available - about a dozen plays and a dozen dramatic readings.

I think I'll line up some more play offerings to help!

Thanks, Todd

Carolin · Post by **Carolin** » March 4th, 2016, 2:37 am

there is a good chance that opening more plays will just delay the completion of all projects. the number of projects in the dramatic works forum is, i feel, proportionate to the number of readers.

Elizabby · Post by **Elizabby** » March 4th, 2016, 4:10 am

The main thing that I've noticed lately is that we don't seem to have many men. I don't know where they all went - we used to have more men, I'm sure! But I've been thinking on and off about launching a new play - but I don't think I can fill it as it requires equal numbers of men and women.

Post by **annise** » March 4th, 2016, 4:56 am

We've always been short of men who are interested in reading drama, the male roles are always last to go - this is partly because most have more and better male roles of course

Anne

Post by **Availle** » March 4th, 2016, 5:54 am

As Anne says, we were always short of men, that's no news. Besides, even the Parson's Wedding, which is an all female production, hasn't been overrun by readers in the 5 months it has been open.

We have 25 DRs/Plays open looking for readers right now. Maybe it's just too much, that people are spoilt for choice (if that's the correct expression)? I agree with Carolin, less may be more in this case. Besides, I see always the same people reading in the DR forum, maybe that's simply the maximum that's interested in plays and DRs right now?

Another reason could be that the plays that are open at the moment are simply not that well known to be attractive to people without drama background. I mean, I know when I see "Romeo and Juliet" in the Launch Pad that I want to be Juliet; who wouldn't. But what is in the DR forum right now, I'd have to read first just to see if there's a role I'd like to have if there's one at all that's a fit for my voice/age. And I really don't have that kind of time at this point.

RuthieG · Post by **RuthieG** » March 4th, 2016, 6:03 am

Perhaps a description of the roles and size would help (some BCs do this already). That said, I am not going to leap at "aged crone, 6 lines, dies in the second act" myself

.

Ruth

Post by **Availle** » March 4th, 2016, 6:09 am

You wouldn't? But you'd make such a nice.... OH, sorry, phone...

SweetPea · Post by **SweetPea** » March 4th, 2016, 10:48 am

I'm not sure that not having as many men as women is the entire problem. I think that part of it is that a large portion of our DW BC's are women, who often BC works which appeal to women. There was Mary Louise (a mystery for girls) which had almost entirely female characters, but the few male characters took a long time to get claimed - and there was Oliver Twist, Huckleberry Finn, and some other well-known books with male authors that had no trouble finding men. (I'm talking about main characters at the moment. I'm still looking for a bunch of readers for small male parts in Oliver, and I might have to make them gender neutral.)

(Random comment: I have more of a problem finding boys and young men. There are very few around here, and I think a large amount of them are the sons and brothers of the BC's who have dragged them over here because their projects need more boys

. My brother is included in this category, but he isn't much help because he refuses to record anything that isn't his idea.)

I think another reason more people don't read in the dramatic forum might be because the main roles are usually filled in the launch pad or even pre-claimed, so if you want a big part the actual DW forum might not be the right place to look. (In fact, if you want a main part one of the only ways to get it might be to BC the project yourself, which might contribute to people not looking.)

Of course, there are some people who don't want to read big parts at all, but go around claiming as many little roles as they can without overlapping. These are the sort of people I love having around my project, they speed everything up!

But I've done that myself, and it isn't much fun doing it all the time.

I think it would be helpful if people provided short descriptions of the roles, I think it would help me decide if there was a role I wanted. I've done it for my projects once or twice, but I don't know if it helped anybody else or not. Most people don't provide descriptions, and sometimes I can figure out what I want, but sometimes I just have to say "Is there a role you think would suit me?" And you can't do that on all projects either, because some BC's aren't comfortable suggesting roles. I also don't think some BC's know the play well enough to provide descriptions. (I'm talking about plays now, with DR's the BC knows everything about the book from turning it into a script

).

I also wonder if some newbies want to participate, but they can't figure out the MW. A couple years ago I saw several projects with the new MW system that looked interesting, but I couldn't figure out which parts if any needed readers, or even which sections were parts and which where I-don't-know-what's! I really wanted to be part of some of these projects, but I couldn't figure out how they worked. I definitely think the new MW system is really nice and helpful for BC's (I am extremely excited that I don't have to add all those links into the notes column

) but I'm not sure how friendly it is - not only to newbies, but to people who are new to the DW forum. Of course, this might just be my experience and this isn't a problem at all.