For me, there is always a magic about seeing a good live play. This summer I’ll take in the Free Will Players’ The Comedy of Errors which is one of the few Shakespeares I’ve not read or seen.
I’ve literally seen hundreds of plays going back to university days (in Winnipeg, in Edmonton at Theatre Three, the original and new Citadel, Studio Theatre, Vic Comp’s theatre beside the school, Walterdale, Northern Lights, and at Fringe. Drama would be my second-favorite genre (after poetry) of literature overall. (I once took a u-course in 19th and 20th century British and American Drama.)
I’ve acted in and directed plays in my teaching career and, before that, in high school. I once played Daddy in Edward Albee’s “The Sandbox”, Zeus in The Rape of the Belt, Jim in “The Gift of the Magi”, the mayor in “The Red Velvet Goat”, and the butler in The Importance of Being Earnest.
Plays depend largely on language, and I suppose that would be the main fascination, going back to first studying Macbeth and Hamlet, (might as well start at the top) in senior high school. But it is also always interesting to see the imaginative visual designs of live plays or in film adaptations when images round out the naked words of a script. In particular, great speeches and quotations resonate for me. And, hence, my long-time interest, too, in film, particularly great films and classics.