Resumption of Playreading

[pegkerr]

Tonight, playreading group met for the first time in, what two or three years? Or more. [Edited to add: Definitely more. pameladean thinks we haven't met since 1998 or so.] elisem decided to resume it, and she played hostess.

For those of you rather new to my journal, this is a group of friends who met for years to read plays aloud together every fortnight or so, mostly Shakespeare, but we would occasionally throw in other playwrights like Christopher Fry or Tom Stoppard. I was in the group for, oh, I don't know, at least a half a dozen years. Regular members included elisem, pameladean, carbonel, eileenlufkin, Mike Ford (John M. Ford), Lois McMaster Bujold and Patricia C. Wrede. kijjohnson attended a few times as a guest when she was in town. We had others who passed in and out of the group over the years (Kara Dalkey, for example, was excellent at comic voices, particularly those with foreign accents). It was an intense joy, to get together with like-minded literary people, gorge on delicious food, and laugh and cry over some of the greatest plays in the English language.

There had been a hiatus for a couple of years, but Elise and Mike had been talking about resuming it again before he died. We met tonight to read Tom Stoppard's Arcadia. I started thinking about the parts earlier today and realized that Thomasina, one of the leads, was about Fiona's age. So I called and asked Elise rather diffidently whether it would be all right for Fiona to attend, and Elise graciously said "yes." Fiona was interested: she's read several Shakespeare plays out loud at school, and she loved the experience. So she came along and read Thomasina. She did just fine, and she enjoyed it, and she wants to come back again.

It was wonderful. We had several new members, besides Fiona. I am delighted to include her in this activity which has given me so much joy over the years. I think it will be an excellent opportunity for her, simply for her own education, giving her the chance to socialize with some extremely bright and bookish people and exposing her to some wonderful plays and giving her the opportunity to become more familiar with Shakespeare in particular.

We missed Mike, of course. I remember how beautifully he used to read Septimus Hodge whenever we did Arcadia, as we did several times. He was just about the best reader we had in the group.

Delia asks that if we get around to A Midsummer Night's Dream that she be included (she read Helena when they did it in her fifth grade classroom).

Comments

[pameladean]

It was a stupendous evening, and I'm so glad that you brought Fiona.

Kara was actually a founding member of the group, along with me and carbonel and Pat and eileenlufkin. We also suckered Curtis Hoffman, with whom Kara was living at the time, into attending the first handful of readings, because we had too few people otherwise. It was really carbonel's idea. She'd participated in a reading put together by Nate Bucklin, who was assigned the task in a class he was taking, and she was amazed by how the play came to life even though none of the readers was at all experienced.

You're right about Kara's voices. The other thing I remember about her contribution was that, just before the thunderstorm scene in King Lear, she slipped away to the kitchen and came back with a flexible aluminum baking sheet, which she shook to emulate thunder.

I should put up my own post, rather than maundering about in your comments.

P.

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

I'd love to read your report on the evening, too.