How to Read a Play (or a Life)
Was the murder necessary?
Greetings!
I was just outside and it smells incredible here in Chicago. It smells like winter and sure enough, the temperature is expected to drop significantly on Friday. I’m not sure I’m prepared for a low of 17 degrees but I’ll get through it.
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving in the US. For much of my life, I didn’t look forward to this holiday. It was just filled with drama. Not the arguing about politics kind but the addiction and abuse kind. All of that is very much in the rearview mirror for me. It’s peaceful here.
When I stepped outside to walk to the store earlier, a woman on the sidewalk said, “Have a good day tomorrow!” So Chicago!
The Midwest is like a warm cup of tea. It’s just lovely.
The Understudy
One of the first places my daughter and I visited when we arrived was The Understudy. It’s a fabulous theater bookstore/performance space/coffee shop that was created by graduates of The Theatre School at DePaul University, where my daughter is getting her MFA. It’s an absolutely enchanting space which I cannot more highly recommend. Everyone is friendly. It’s very chill. They have a wall lined with pages from scripts. They sell a lot of plays.
On our first trip, Alexandra bought a play called Machinal by Sophie Treadwell which we both finally read. I’ll come back to that in a bit but first, I want to tell you about the event I attended celebrating the second edition of How to Read a Play by Damon Kiely which included a conversation with the author and some fabulous women in theater and film, named and pictured below.
How to Read a Play
I took notes that look like a beat poem and don’t include attribution to the people mentioned. I didn’t realize at the time that I would be writing about this event so my apologies to the unattributed people who spoke these words of wisdom that I jotted down and am now sharing with you somewhat didactically, dear reader:
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