Reading Plays
Reading plays is like a book group, but for plays. Each episode features an in depth discussion of a new or classic modern play.
Each week we do a close reading of a 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.
Join Gareth Stack & James Van De Waal for a light hearted but in depth discussion of theatre, from classic French farce, to post modern drama.
- Update frequency
- every 9 days
- Episodes
- 19
- Years Active
- 2014 - 2016
Lets Write a Film – EP2 – Badgers
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.
Lets Write a Film
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 & Money – Reading Plays – Episode 16
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 Miss Firecracker Contest – Reading Plays – Episode 15
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 direct…
The Cripple of Inishmaan – Episode 14 – Reading Plays
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 …
The Piano Lesson – Episode 13 – Reading Plays
A family history entwined with the legacy of slavery. Black urban poverty in 1930’s Pittsburg. Criminality and working class aspirations. Intersectionality and the patriarchy of the poor. August W…
Some Girl(s) – Episode 12 – Reading Plays
Some peanuts are eaten, some water bottles empties, some hotel rooms vandalised. Outside of that Neil LaButes ‘Some Girls’ is a less than action packed look at relationships. Love through the eyes…
Picasso at the Lapin Agile – Episode 11 – Reading Plays
His autobiography boasts that Steve Martin began working at age ten in the newly opened Disneyland, graduating to study poetry and philosophy and spend 18 years performing as “America’s best loved…
Disco Pigs – Episode 10 – Reading Plays
Arriving at the end of the nineteen nineties, at exactly the time Martin McDonagh was exploding the Irish national theatre with the first of his Leenane trilogy, Disco Pigs articulated a radical n…
The Bald Soprano – Episode 9 – Reading Plays
Quantum Physics, synchronicity, English mustachios, it has to be Eugene Ionesco’s ‘The Bald Soprano’ (La Cantatrice Chauve). This is a play for which context is essential: Beckett’s growing reputa…
Doubt (Part 2) – Episode 8 – Reading Plays
We conclude our discussion of JP Shanley’s classic play, doubt.
Download: Episode 8 – Doubt (Part 2)
‘Reading Plays‘ is a di…
Reading Plays – Interview – Cast of ‘Welcome to the Ethics Committee’
We interview the cast of the recent Smock Alley production of ‘Welcome to the Ethics Committee’.
The play was based on the collaborative fiction project, The SCP Foundation, and was written and di…
Doubt (Part 1) – Episode 7 – Reading Plays
In the introduction to his already classic play ‘Doubt: A Parable’, JP Shanley writes ‘we are living in a culture of extreme advocacy, of confrontation, of judgment, and of verdict’. In the decade…
Arcadia – Episode 6 – Reading Plays
The titular Arcadia is Sidley Park, Estate of the earl of Croom. We enter Sidley park at the dawn of the 19th century, and today, as two parallel storylines converge to resolve a literary mystery.…
The Misanthrope – Episode 5 – Reading Plays
The Misanthrope (or the ‘The Cantankerous Lover’) by Moliere, is a comedy first performed at the Theatre du Palais-Royal in 1666. Despite its age the play deals with modern concerns, like the natu…
Death of a Salesman – Episode 4 – Reading Plays
Death of a Salesman is perhaps Arthur Millers best known play. A seminal work of twentieth century American theatre, it touches on themes as diverse as the death of masculinity, family dysfunction…
The Baltimore Waltz – Episode 3 – Reading Plays
This weeks play – The Baltimore Waltz by Paula Vogel. The play was recently produced by Acting Out at the Harbour Playhouse in Dublin, and we’re joined by the cast Michael J. Kunze, Niamh Denyer a…
The Lonesome West – Episode 2 – Reading Plays
This weeks play – Lonesome West by Martin McDonagh.
Lonesome West is part of Connemara triology, along with Beauty Queen of Leenane and A Skull in Connemara. Published 1997, Methuen Drama. First p…
Oleanna – Episode 1 – Reading Plays
This weeks play – Oleanna by David Mamet.
First produced 1992 (stage), 1994 (film) starring William H. Macy & Rebecca Pidgeon. Oleanna was controversial on release and remains so, as it deals with i…