Reading Plays

Gareth Stack
  • 5.0 (1)
  • PERFORMING ARTS

Reading plays is like a book group, but for plays. Each episode features an in depth discussion of a new or classic modern play. Each week we do a close reading of a play, discussing it’s merits, themes, issues raised, and so on. You can play along by reading or watching a production of the play before you listen to the show. Join Gareth Stack & James Van De Waal for a light hearted but in depth discussion of theatre, from classic French farce, to post modern drama.

  1. 12/14/2016

    Lets Write a Film – EP2 – Badgers

    A new podcast in which two writers attempt to develop a film in real time, with no preparation. Featuring Gareth Stack & James Van De Waal. Download: Let’s write a film – Episode 2. Previous episodes.

  2. 11/24/2016

    Lets Write a Film

    A new podcast in which two writers attempt to develop a film in real time, with no preparation. Featuring Gareth Stack & James Van De Waal. Download:  Let’s Write A Film.

  3. 04/23/2015

    Love & Money – Reading Plays – Episode 16

    Love and Money is a little known play from 2006, an early work by Dennis Kelly, the London Irish television writer who would go on to create controversial British television series Pulling & Utopia. The play debuted at the Manchester Royal Exchange, before moving to the Young Vic. It was recently staged in Dublin by […]

  4. 01/13/2015

    The Miss Firecracker Contest – Reading Plays – Episode 15

    A satire of the Southern potboiler in the form of a beauty pageant, The Miss Firecracker Contest was first performed at a tiny LA theatre in 1980. Later moving to an off Broadway production directed by ubiquitous character actor and storyteller Stephen Tobolowsky. Tobolowsky’s childhood experiences served as the inspiration for this story of narcissism […]

  5. 12/16/2014

    The Cripple of Inishmaan – Episode 14 – Reading Plays

    Martin McDonagh’s 1996 play ‘The Cripple of Inishmaan’ is the first in a loosely defined and as yet unfinished Aran Island Trilogy. Set on the most banal of the islands, Inish Maan, in the early 1930s, the play is a violently farcical examination of family, social exclusion and the noble lie. Cripple of Inishmaan was […]

  6. 12/09/2014

    The Piano Lesson – Episode 13 – Reading Plays

    A family history entwined with the legacy of slavery. Black urban poverty in 1930’s Pittsburg. Criminality and working class aspirations. Intersectionality and the patriarchy of the poor. August Wilson’s Piano Lesson is an issue play, and winner of the Pulizer prize. Does this relentlessly grim parlour drama descend into stereotyped kitsch, or lend it’s denigrated […]

  7. 12/02/2014

    Some Girl(s) – Episode 12 – Reading Plays

    Some peanuts are eaten, some water bottles empties, some hotel rooms vandalised. Outside of that Neil LaButes ‘Some Girls’ is a less than action packed look at relationships. Love through the eyes of an immature ‘every guy’ whose self absorption drives his quest to reexamine a history of failed relationships. There are plenty of plays […]

  8. 11/11/2014

    Picasso at the Lapin Agile – Episode 11 – Reading Plays

    His autobiography boasts that Steve Martin began working at age ten in the newly opened Disneyland, graduating to study poetry and philosophy and spend 18 years performing as “America’s best loved stand up comedian”. Martin has in addition managed a career an accomplished banjo musician and movie star. He writes “I was not naturally talented… […]

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About

Reading plays is like a book group, but for plays. Each episode features an in depth discussion of a new or classic modern play. Each week we do a close reading of a play, discussing it’s merits, themes, issues raised, and so on. You can play along by reading or watching a production of the play before you listen to the show. Join Gareth Stack & James Van De Waal for a light hearted but in depth discussion of theatre, from classic French farce, to post modern drama.

Information

  • Creator
    Gareth Stack
  • Years Active
    2014 - 2016
  • Episodes
    19
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Show Website
    Reading Plays