10 iconic plays you need to know to look like a cultured person and a seasoned theatergoer

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Dramatic art is a special genre of interpretation of previously written texts, but not everyone loves theater and is ready to visit it even to get acquainted with beautiful works. Moreover, the performances, as a rule, convey the director's vision, and therefore it is better to go to the theater, having first become acquainted with the literary source. Especially when it comes to plays that have influenced the development of both theater and literature.

"King Oedipus", Sophocles

One of the main works of ancient tragedy raises the main question of that time about the right of man to his own will or his complete submission to the gods. Later, the myth of Oedipus will be interpreted more than once, and therefore its influence on world literature and drama is extremely difficult to overestimate.

Medea, Euripides

The revolutionary nature of this play lies in the fact that before its appearance, the inner world of a person had never been an object for artistic depiction. Euripides showed how a suffering and unhappy woman can turn into a very real and very terrible demonic creature.

The Tragic Story of Doctor Faustus, Christopher Marlowe

It was this drama that became the model for the great Goethe, who decided to rewrite the folk legend about Doctor Faust in verse. And the play itself is a subtle psychological and philosophical tragedy of a person striving for complete personal freedom and realizing, as a result, how destructive this path can be.

"Bourgeois in the nobility", Moliere

This play is rightfully called the author's bold literary experiment, thanks to which he ridiculed a simple bourgeois who, with a wave of his hand, intended to become an aristocrat with an honorable pedigree. It is worth noting that during the writing of the play, this topic was very acute and the impoverished aristocracy made a deal with wealthy bourgeois, ready to pay a lot of money for titles. The main idea of the play is very simple and clear: it is impossible to become what you are not really. Even having paid a very decent amount for it. By the way, this play may well be considered the main theatrical sitcom.

Sonata of Ghosts, August Strindberg

The play of the Swedish classic is one of the main works that influenced the development and formation of the author himself. The writer created a fantastic, even ghostly atmosphere and demonstrated against its background: in fact, a beautiful picture turned out to be a house of cards that could instantly crumble and show the true state of affairs in society.

Hamlet by William Shakespeare

The constant dialogue of the protagonist with the audience was a very innovative move for the time of the creation of an immortal piece. Hamlet allows the reader to penetrate into the depths of his consciousness, and not just observe his life. This play is more like a painful reflection, and allows the directors to interpret the work in a new way every time.

Salome by Oscar Wilde

The first English symbolist drama with a poetic substructure marked a new stage in the history of the romantic tradition. The author uses symbolist techniques - music, color, refrains, images - and at the same time puts a romantic heroine in the center. And as a result, Wilde introduces to society a new woman, sensual, passionate, who knows what she wants in life and knows how to achieve what she wants.

"Thunderstorm", Alexander Ostrovsky

The deep meaning of the play lies not only in the plane of an ordinary family conflict that ended in the death of Katerina. "The Thunderstorm" is about the conflict of two eras, old and new, and in this interpretation the play does not look at all like an everyday story about life in a provincial town on the Volga.

The Seagull, Anton Chekhov

This play by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov is constantly addressed by playwrights all over the world, and it is she who is rightfully considered the pinnacle of his work. Here comedy coexists with drama, and also with the touching tenderness of youthful love, the quest for youth, hopes and idealism. The Seagull, written in the theater about theater genre, was long ahead of its time, anticipating the development of theater and the search for new forms in drama.

Pygmalion by Bernard Shaw

This play is not only an interpretation of the ancient myth of a sculptor who fell in love with his creation. It is about the right of each person to his own path and realization, about a careful attitude towards all living things. And at the same time - a mockery of those who consider themselves the highest caste.

Performances are usually very difficult to come up with, but it is even more difficult to film literary works that have already been staged on the stage. The viewer always compares the original with the motion picture, and when a production is added to this comparison, the director cannot predict how his rethinking will be perceived by the public. Nevertheless, in the history of cinema there are many examples of brilliant adaptations of dramatic works.