BWW Blog: The Importance of Reading a Play a Week

Hello everybody! I'm glad to be back writing to you all about another week and another topic! The program I am studying in here at Catholic University is part of the Rome School of Music, Drama, and Art. The Drama program is an all-encompassing major that includes studies in all areas of theatre. These areas include: script analysis, acting, directing, technical theatre, design, etc. One of the most rewarding parts of our Theatre Topics class, I believe, are the reading and discussion of a wide variety of plays.

Specifically, this semester, I am taking a course entitled Theatre Topics: American Drama. The course is structured so that we read one play a week by completing the reading for Monday's class session and then the class collectively discusses the work through exercises, interactive games, roundtable discussions, etc. These in-class discussions and activities take place during our Monday & Wednesday class sessions. This gives us two full classes to thoroughly work through the plays. I have found that is vital and of utmost importance that a student studying theatre read one play per week.

I spoke with the professor of my course, Dr. Rosalind Flynn about why she structured the course the way she did, here's what she had to say: "In my American Drama course, the students read only one play a week so that we can spend two full class periods on it. I adhere to the message on an educational poster I saw once that read, 'Too much Too fast Won't last.' I prefer that students leave my course with a solid understanding of 12 plays rather than a quick glimpse of 24 plays."

In agreeance with Dr. Flynn, it is almost like studying a foreign language in the sense that too much time away from the subject material will not help your growth in that area. In theatre, exposing yourself to plays as much as you can, will only benefit you in whatever facet of theatre you are interested in. It is very important to give yourself plenty of time to read the play, discuss it, ponder it, and understand it, as we do in our Theatre Topics class.

The past three weeks have been filled with great plays: The Children's Hour by Lillian Hellman, The Skin of Our Teeth by Thornton Wilder, andAll My Sons by Arthur Miller, A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, and Long Day's Journey Into Night by Eugene O'Neill. These classic American Dramas are essentials and should be read at least once by every theatre student! This coming week, our class is reading/discussing Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf by Edward Albee. This play is another staple of American Drama and these works are timeless!

I'm appreciative of this course for widening my library of plays and broadening my horizons in reading classic American Dramas. I hope that this blog post inspires you to read a play week! It's important to keep our mind thinking about plays and all they have to offer us as students and artists!

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