When we watch a play under the standard circumstances, we've lost volition and time is passing. A still play feels like an existential threat.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Most great plays of the past lose their grip on immediacy; on application to our lives right now.
In the first place, it must be remembered that our point of view in examining the construction of a play will not always coincide with that which we occupy in thinking of its whole dramatic effect.
I've come to feel that if I can't make something happen in under an hour and a half, it's not going to happen in a compelling way in a three-hour play.
I get the impression sometimes that a play arrives in a sequence of events that I have no control over.
When I do a play, it's like agreeing to be ill for a couple of months.
A lot of times, I think people feel that new plays are suspect, and actually, I don't know where that came from. I completely disagree with it!
In reading plays, however, it should always be remembered that any play, however great, loses much when not seen in action.
When you do a play, you have all this time to rehearse and grow into the character. In television, even though you're waiting and waiting and waiting, once you're actually on set engaging in the scene with another actor, time is of the essence.
The complexity of the emotional life of the play is what you live to work on.
People keep telling us, that they didn't know when they were booking tickets for it, but afterwards they say that they've had no sense that they were watching an old fashioned play.
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