Playwrights, history and a rant on the evils of grammar.
Whenever I try to read plays I have a hard time imagining it.
My mind keeps switching from trying to make it into two people sitting and talking in a real garden or an actual apartment building to putting the same people on a stage with a set and props.
I also take the time to wonder how certain scenes would be staged. Like in my cousin's play Six on Six, how are we going to put a basketball game, complete with crowd and commentary on a stage?
What does the stage look like? How is the set built? Do they use a platform or mostly flats? How long is there between scenes to change the set?
All these techie questions that make it a little harder to concentrate on the actual plot of the play.
I read a photographic history of the Scopes Trial in Tennessee.
I like the way that book was set up for a few really dumb reasons. Stuff like, I liked how they had the pictures and captions explaining it, it was just so much easier to concentrate on because it gave a little bit of information at a time. It also gave photos of the town, the courtroom, and the people. Painting a bigger picture of the trial than it could with my imagination's limited knowledge of the world before 1995.
While certain linguistic structure is necessary to understand something read or heard, the process of LEARNING that structure is a torture in and of itself.
I've actually put more effort into NOT listening to the teacher try to tell me that this part of a sentence comes before that part and this word is this kind of phrase comes before that to make those kind of sentences.... *fades into "Peanuts" adult-language* wah wuah wuh wah wuah wuh..
But I've had people teach me other languages and specifically tell me not to learn the grammar like that, so I guess it's okay that I never really let anyone try to teach it to me.
I'm not even sure I know what grammar is other than the seventh grade workbooks that came to be known as "the essence of painful hellfire".
The only real way I can tell different writers apart is by their descriptive style. The words they would use to paint a picture of a certain room or feeling. But that's all writing really is though, isn't it? The ability to put words together in such a way that a complete stranger could see something through your eyes even if they live halfway across the world?
I guess grammar could affect that style somehow, but I still stick to the "Wah wuah wuh" idea of this aspect of language.
My mind keeps switching from trying to make it into two people sitting and talking in a real garden or an actual apartment building to putting the same people on a stage with a set and props.
I also take the time to wonder how certain scenes would be staged. Like in my cousin's play Six on Six, how are we going to put a basketball game, complete with crowd and commentary on a stage?
What does the stage look like? How is the set built? Do they use a platform or mostly flats? How long is there between scenes to change the set?
All these techie questions that make it a little harder to concentrate on the actual plot of the play.
I read a photographic history of the Scopes Trial in Tennessee.
I like the way that book was set up for a few really dumb reasons. Stuff like, I liked how they had the pictures and captions explaining it, it was just so much easier to concentrate on because it gave a little bit of information at a time. It also gave photos of the town, the courtroom, and the people. Painting a bigger picture of the trial than it could with my imagination's limited knowledge of the world before 1995.
While certain linguistic structure is necessary to understand something read or heard, the process of LEARNING that structure is a torture in and of itself.
I've actually put more effort into NOT listening to the teacher try to tell me that this part of a sentence comes before that part and this word is this kind of phrase comes before that to make those kind of sentences.... *fades into "Peanuts" adult-language* wah wuah wuh wah wuah wuh..
But I've had people teach me other languages and specifically tell me not to learn the grammar like that, so I guess it's okay that I never really let anyone try to teach it to me.
I'm not even sure I know what grammar is other than the seventh grade workbooks that came to be known as "the essence of painful hellfire".
The only real way I can tell different writers apart is by their descriptive style. The words they would use to paint a picture of a certain room or feeling. But that's all writing really is though, isn't it? The ability to put words together in such a way that a complete stranger could see something through your eyes even if they live halfway across the world?
I guess grammar could affect that style somehow, but I still stick to the "Wah wuah wuh" idea of this aspect of language.
posted by Mabreg at 1:21 PM
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