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Anne Dalke's picture

on the aridity of plays...

Well, I’m continuing to work my way through your reading list, Mark…still not turning up much I’d like to use in the class, so far. I read In the Jungle of Cities. I like Brecht’s work a lot (and have some hopes for some of his other poems about cities, which are now in the reading pile…) but I can’t see how this piece would give us much leverage in the course…

Also I am going to need some help teaching plays in a classroom, as a script…
seems so…

Arid.
Missing all the good multi-modal stuff.
Just the outline.
A novel w/ everything but the dialogue removed.
Thin.

Anyhow: Stoppard’s Travesties engaged me much more than Brecht’s play…largely because it’s so much more playful—all that extravagant literary pastiche: the parody, the puns and limericks, the comedy of all these bits and pieces filtered through Carr’s distracted mind…

But, still: it’s old and far away. I want something more current. Closer by.
Europe doesn’t do it for me any more…

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