Plays and Books ( Archived) (11)

What plays and or books have you seen that left a great impression on you?

I have been fortunate to get to see many plays here in NYC over the years.
One that stuck with me was "Pillow Man". "Rent" I loved because of the performers more than story.
"West Side Story" They did a revival and they really did a wonderful job and stayed true to the choreography.
Patrick Stewart in "Tempest".............oh that was a whole lot of giddy yumminess.

Books: Catcher in the Rye, To Kill a Mockingbird, Uncle Tom's Cabin, and I can go on and on.

Oh I read that. Never got to see it on stage though.

As a child I do happily remember my Español book -elementary- and some of the lessons there I still keep in my mind. One was about a man making the bread “El Panadero” and he did it in a lovely way as it was his mission in this world, a happy and tasty one.

The math books were something that I always enjoyed and in some way I did think life was that precise -which is far from reality-.Although at that time I did not have the concept of it, just some feeling, the same with above.

Later in middle school, The classics of Literature -mostly Spanish with a few English both American and British- were a major part of my reading and I did read every single book that was an assignment and a few others. Often I could not afford to buy the book -not many libraries around either- so someone would and then passed it to me on the premise that I would had to deliver an extract for that person, a bit different from mine.

In high school, apart from the text books: philosophy was a lovely feast for me and from there I did start thinking about love, freedom, the world, the skies, the universe.......myself.

After that, it was mostly Text books and scientific papers.

To these days, I am been able to read as much as I want and I am particularly interested in Asian cultures along with other subjects including my own country. Now I am reading about: How my country was 200 years ago from the eyes of some British exploiting doing business here and about the Tibet.

For the plays we don’t get good ones here but the ones we do are mostly very modern and I just do not enjoy them. However, we do get, once in while Opera and that is just excellent which I do love it.

How books and plays impress/mold a person?
That is a very fascinating question Kendall.

I think books shape us in a significant way,
books can make us to discover ourselves
and they are great company!

The Egyptian: A Novel by Mika Waltari, if you want to be really clever read it in Finnish. But there are English translations.

Yesterday I read a book about icons -paintings- of the XV century.
It is interesting to know about the interpretations for those paintings. A painting that I found fascinating is one of Jan van Eyck

Something that I admire also about Jan van Eyck was his persistence to find a technique for the oil painting to dry quickly so painters did not have to wait days to continue painting and that could be used too for writing books in a faster way, so more people -common- people could have access to information, knowledge............although that was from another book (The painter of Flanders). Yet the clergy was opposed to make sapience available to the common people,
the time XV century.

And what prevents us now?

I read a book named " the sphere" and after I saw the movie ...
the book was better because it could really get into the physiological thought while the movie didn't .....

the movie was blah...
good actors in it tho...

but the book really had you there in person and living and thinking with the characters...

Being that I live in NJ, very close to Broadway, I've seen many plays and concerts. The play that left me breathless is Phantom of the Opera.

The concert that I loved was so good that I saw it four times is Jersey Boys.

The book that was the most difficult to understand but also the most rewarding is Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett who is my favorite author.

Some years ago The Diary of... was produced as an underwater ballet...go figure, I just can't imagine it...
Back in the 80's a writer, can't exactly recall if they were Israeli or Palestinian produced a version set in Gaza, with Anne Frank as a Palestinian girl hiding from the Israeli soldiers...It caused a lot of trouble. It was raided and shut down in Jerusalem, then banned. It had a profound effect on the Israeli peace movement and got a lot more people on their side.
For myself, the first play that I really loved that I read was Edward Albee's The American Dream. Years later I saw it in NY and loved it more; it was all so true. Albee was a brilliant playwright . For me it was his best. I've seen a couple of French films that could have easily been either a prelude or a further continuance of this play...just so hilarious when people's behaviour is depicted.
Books, I could easily list several dozen, all in widely different fields.