Usually, I Make Things More Depressing!

I'm a bit of a freak in that I'm a bookwriter who's not really into plays. I don't have anything against them, and I have a lot of respect for playwrights for doing all that writing without a collaborator, but I almost always wish somebody would start singing. That probably means I should definitely be writing musicals and not plays (although I've written more plays than musicals at this point in life), but even amongst fellow bookwriters and lyricists, I'm an oddity. There are plenty of plays I enjoy, and there are a few I feel very strongly about, but I just don't connect to plays as easily as I connect to musicals.

That being said, I make it a point to read plays, since that's a good way to learn a lot about plot and structure. I hadn't done so in a while--lately I've been reading a lot of comics and non-fiction books about the medical field, which is apparently what happens when your boyfriend is away in med school--but last night I picked up my copy of Six Yuan Plays. I'd needed it for a play structure class I took in undergrad, but hadn't looked at it since.

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed many of the plays. I often have a hard time with very stylized plays, and this type of ancient Chinese drama is stylized like ridiculous. Something about the way it was done, though, combined with the seriousness of the plays' subject matter, really clicked for me. In particular, I found The Orphan of Chao hilarious. It's about the attempted extermination of a royal family and how an infant son is the only member to survive. There are two suicides in the first few pages, the brutal beating of an old man, the threat of infanticide, and LOTS of vengence, so it's not like, you know, Mel Brooks. But the contrast between the horrific events of the play and the calmly direct language of the characters keeps it from being heavy and depressing. I kept expecting someone to react to a suicide with, "Oh, great, you kill yourself now? That's productive." Not that the characters are obnoxious and self-centered--they're not--but it's that kind of absurd, understated kind of world that feels very modern in a lot of ways.

Not all the plays struck me as funny in that way, and I don't know if any of them were meant to be. It's possible I was reading it too much through my own lens. Regardless of whether I totally misinterpreted the text and tone of the plays--especially The Orphan of Chao--it taught me a lot about dark comedy, and it's made me curious about ancient Chinese drama. And any of those plays I read last night would make great musicals :)