Reading Rohan's blog gave me a good feeling today. This guy is getting very good at writing a tight piece. As I was perusing his post I was reminded of how much I love drama, of the arts kind. Nowadays either drama is the what people call about soaps like Kkusum or it is what people do to get something.
However the drama I speak of is defined as : a play in a theatre or on television or radio. I really love plays. In recent years I enjoy watching Marathi plays on Alpha TV, though I find the language a bit tough. In earlier days I used to watch Malayali plays when drama troupes used to visit Vashi. However over a period of time I find that quality of plays have suffered and most profitable plays tend to be of the slapstick variety. There are many reasons for this downfall and maybe we can discuss these reasons in another post. The silver lining is that there are still plays being written and performed which are unique, serious and makes one question oneself. It is sad that these plays make up only 5-10% of the whole gamut but at least they are there.
As I have mentioned in the previous paragraphs I love watching plays. However what I love even better is reading them. There is an unique pleasure in reading plays. You are the director, the actor and the audience. Your imagination gets a complete workout. Reading plays is not like reading prose, primarily due to the inherent structure. Prose is not as easy to read aloud as are plays. Plays also tend to have more dialogues in them, these dialogues being very expressive as the dialogues have to convey a lot of emotions. In prose the writer is not bound by dialogues and can express himself more freely. However due to this lack of the spoken words prose is not fun to act out. This is the precise reason that despite the greatness of a novel it takes a skilled playwright to convert it into a great movie.
Though I like reading plays I prefer reading stuff like Shakespeare as prose because I find the Old English quite difficult. Furthermore over the years my patience is not what it used to be . More often than not modern plays irritate me. So nowadays to get my kick of reading a play to myself I read screenplays of my favourite movies. For e.g.. I have read the screenplay for Pulp Fiction at least 15 times. Another great script that I regularly read is The Dead Poet's Society.
I would highly recommend all of you to try reading screenplays out. Choose your favourite English movie, stop over at the sites pointed to by this search(Google Search: film scripts) and read the screenplay. It is a wonderful way to spend an afternoon indoors.
P.S:I glanced at my post again and am embarrassed at the way all my thoughts are just flying around without coming together. Specially after reading beautifully put ideas in other blogs. Got to keep trying harder. Maybe I need to implement reviewing in my blogs too:( :D Any advise?
