What I'm Reading: Plays, plays, plays and some more plays...

It may be a compulsive habit, but I seem to be unable to walk out of a library empty-handed.  

Recently I grabbed a bunch of play scripts that I were not on my reading list but were just too tempting to pass up.  

In between studying my part for the upcoming production of Shining City at Off the Wall and filming this cowboy short film, I’m not actually sure when I’ll have time to read them, but rest assured, I will get around to them at some point.. 

I grabbed Julie Jensen’s The Harvey Girls, a brand-new play she wrote last year.  I met Julie at UNLV when I was doing my undergrad and sat in on all the MFA playwriting workshops, acting in them or just watching them.  She’s not just a brilliant playwright, but a brilliant teacher, as well. I was introduced to her work by acting in The Lost Vegas Series and have since become a big fan of her quirky and intelligent wit.  If you’ve never read her stuff, go do it now.

I also grabbed David Mamet’s Race, a recent play of his which is being down at the Pittsburgh Irish & Classical Theater.  

(No, David Mamet is not Irish and no, a play done on Broadway a year or so ago does not make it “classical” so I’m just as befuddled as you as to why PICT is doing it…)

The other exciting gem I grabbed is a collection of plays from the Royal Court Theater.  This is full of playwrights I’ve never heard of but have been doing tons of stuff across the pond.  Playwrights include David Eldridge, Roy Williams, Mike Bartlett, and Lucy Prebble.  There was one play in the collection that piqued my interest by Simon Stephens called Motortown, about a Iraqi vet returning to London.  One critic hailed it as a modern day Woyzcheck, which is high praise.