Reading Plays

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.

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.

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 the La Touche Players, in a production directed by James O’Connor. The play has been called variously ‘one of the best new plays of the year’ and ‘beyond doubt the most self indulgent drivel I’ve ever reviewed’.

Our protagonists David & Jess, live their lives backwards, moving from horrific conclusion to existential conundrum – by way of addictive shopping and sexual harassment. Thematically, Love and Money is a contemporary piece – concerned with the impact of debt and the crushing phenomenology of the bureaucracy on families and marriages. Tonally it’s a pitch black comedy, with aspirations to social criticism. We take two hours to explore this timely piece of modern theatre.

Download: Episode 16 – Love & Money

‘Reading Plays‘ is a discussion show, featuring Gareth Stack and James Van De Waal. Each week we do a close reading of a modern 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.

Music – Amor & Psyche – by Bitwise Operator.

Image – Rude Guerrilla Theatre Company production 2009.

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 and loathing at the Mississippi Rose of Tralee. The part of rakish Brontesque lead Delmount was written with him in mind. Miss Firecracker Contest was later adapted into a film starring Holly Hunter. Beth Henley’s script has been praised for it’s ‘quirky characters’ and ‘strong messages’, but is this a profound comedic examination of the lives of Southern women? Or merely a message in a bottle – a didactic wafer thin work, constrained by form and inhabited by shadows?

The play centres around one aspiring firecracker Carnelle Scot, raised by her cousins – the glamorous Elain Routledge and the roguish sex offender Delmount Williams. Carnelle’s efforts to win the contest are aided by her goggle-eyed, underclass seamstress Popeye Jackson, and deterred by her reputation as a floozy. Despite having cleaned up her act and treated her syphilis, Carnelle is haunted by the neglect and abandonment of her parents and her years as the town’s good time. Meanwhile Carnelle’s lush cousin Elain has left her wealthy husband, and her hated brother Delmount has returned from his imprisonment in a mental asylum – where he was committed due to his penchant for broken bottle fights, devirginations and attempted strangulations – to sell the family mansion.

Download: Episode 15 – The Miss Firecracker Contest

‘Reading Plays‘ is a discussion show, featuring Gareth Stack and James Van De Waal. Each week we do a close reading of a modern 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.

Music – Amor & Psyche – by Bitwise Operator.

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 recently revived on Broadway in a production starring Daniel Radcliff, and Pat Short, winning six Tonys. Another sterling success for a playwright who once said “Theatre isn’t something that’s connected to me, from a personal point of view, I can’t appreciate what I’m doing.”

https://garethstack.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/reading-plays-episode-14-the-cripple-of-inishmaan.mp3

‘Reading Plays‘ is a discussion show, featuring Gareth Stack and James Van De Waal. Each week we do a close reading of a modern 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.

Next weeks play:

Music – Amor & Psyche – by Bitwise Operator.