28/09/2024
We're inviting aspiring and emerging playwrights and screenwriters to join our
Wonderland Theatre Book Club 12
Around the World in Classic Plays : Iraq, India and Japan
Tuesdays October 1st – December 17th 2024 online 17.00-19.30
Overview
The Wonderland Theatre Book Club is a lively Book Club for writers and artists who want to ignite their craft by reading important plays we have chosen together.
Each fortnight we analyse the playwrighting and stagecraft of a great play from Ancient Greece to the Modern Stage. At the first Book Club we study key scenes together so as to identify what we can learn from this playwright for our own writing today. Then at the second Book Club of the fortnight, we share the ‘Challenges’ we have written in response to this play with our peers.
Led by Director, Dramaturg and Playwright Alice Coghlan, and inspired by her twelve years as an Abbey Theatre Literary Reader, Wonderland Theatre Book Club meets a primary need for emerging artists - to hone and expand your understanding of your craft by studying important plays in the creative company of your peers, and then applying that understanding to your craft.
For more info please message us here or email alice AT wonderlandtheatre.com
Around the World in Classic Plays
Over 2024-25, our theme is Around the World in Classic Plays. Yes it is time to investigate some of the greatest plays ever written from Chile to South Africa to Japan. We have chosen these particular plays and playwrights, as these plays are considered to be some of the most important plays ever written in that country.
This Autumn, having explored Europe, Kenya, Ghana, South Africa and the USA, we will move east to the Iraq, India and Japan. Our program combines some of the most ancient surviving plays and dramatic epics in existence. These two epics are as influential to Eastern literature as the Bible is to the West. Together we will encounter the radically different theatre traditions of Japan and India which have so much to teach and inspire in us, from their origins in ritual, masked performance and codified theatricality to their poetry and emotion.
Our work is going to be exciting. Our curiosity endless. And as ever the craic will be mighty!
Around the World in Classic Plays: India and Japan
Tuesday 17th September Ancient Sumeria in Iraq: The Epic of Gilgamesh
Tuesday 24th September
Writer and artists’ share their creative responses to The Epic of Gilgamesh
Tuesday October 1st
Introduction to Indian mythology via
The Mahabharata by Jean-Claude Carriere translated by Peter Brook
https://www.scribd.com/document/398374857/The-Mahabharata-A-Play-based-upon-the-Indian-Classic-Epic-pdf?_gl=1*177zjoh*_gcl_au*MjAyOTYxOTczNC4xNzI1NDUwNTg2
Tuesday October 8th
Writers and artists share their creative responses to The Mahabharata
Tuesday October 15th
Introduction to Sanskrit drama in Ancient India via Shakuntala by Kalidasa
Tuesday October 22nd
Writers and artists share their creative responses to Shakuntala
Tuesday October 29th Introduction to Noh Drama and
Matsukaze by Kan’ami kiyotsgugu
Tuesday November 5th
Writers and artists share their creative responses to Matsukaze
Tuesday 12th November
Yukio Mishima Five Modern Noh plays
Tuesday 19th November
Writers and artists share their creative responses to Five modern Noh plays
Tuesday 26th November
Introduction to the great kabuki and the revenge play and classic film The Loyal Forty Seven Samuri by Nakamura Matagoro and James R. Brandon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiCWrDMZZFk
Tuesday 3rd December
Writers and artists share their creative responses to The Loyal Forty Seven Samuri
Tuesday 10th December The Little Clay Cart by Shudraka Mrichchakatika
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/21020/21020-h/21020-h.htm
Tuesday 17th December
Writers and artists share their creative responses to The Little Clay Cart
