I loved this. Can you guys recommend any more metatheatre / absurdist

>>9321887
Do I need to read Shakespeare to understand this?

Try his radio play Darkside. It's a weird exploration of the trolley/tram problem set to Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon.

>>9322061
It's funnier if you do

>>9322061
You should read Hamlet anyway if you care at all about literature

>>9322061
It helps to be familiar with Hamlet.

>>9322061
Just Hamlet.

Ionesco
Artuad
Pinter

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>>9322061

Nietzsche once wrote something along the lines of 'many thinkers have failed to produce anything interesting because their memories were too good', i.e. that part of creativity is simply attempting unsuccessfully to reconstruct/understand things that you don't entirely remember of understand. When you come up against something you don't get, or try to work with something slippery, you are bound to have thoughts outside of what the author wrote. This is as often bad as good, but having total understanding removes the possibility. So you could read Shakespeare and perhaps therefore end up with the perspective the author expected you to have. But wouldn't you rather use your ignorance and misunderstanding to arrive at thoughts that no one expected or hoped you'd have?

Embrace your ignorance, which is essentially a tool for creativity that most are too proud too admit is one. You feel me?

>>9322086
I understand what you're getting at but this is literally the worst example to be applying it to

To understand what conventions of theatre Stoppard is deconstructing one must have knowledge of the context

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>>9322090

I think you gave me too much credit, because what I wrote is not a very interesting or useful thought. No matter how much you know, the misunderstanding and ignorance remains, but might just take a different or more intense form depending on what you don;t know. If it works with 1% knowledge, it works with 40% knowledge (or any other number) and 100% knowledge is impossible. I was just writing that for the sake of seeing how people would receive it and I think your negative impression of that thought is the right way of looking at it (but I'm also ignorant and barely literate, tbqh, so you probably shouldn't trust my assessment of y own thought).

Anyway, I haven't read this play, but I'm interested and I own a copy. Is it worth reading if I've read Hamlet, in your opinion? Or is it more a work whose interesting bits are really just interesting to those who are particularly interested in theater as a medium?

>>9322119
Well it's always nice to go into something with a different perspective...

Honestly, I have no idea if you'll like it or not. I'm a person very tuned into this sort of deconstructionist humor. I'd say the biggest indicator if you'll appreciate this is whether or not you liked Waiting for Godot. They are similar in tone and pacing. Godot is probably the better written and more important play, but I can't say I haven't read this more times than the former. It's very entertaining and cartoonish, almost.

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>>9322127

Hmm, I can never quite tell whether I like Waiting for Godot, but I always end up thinking about it for a good couple days, and always wit a different perspective. Plays are short anyway, so if it's 'genetially' similar to WfG in some way, I'll probably give it a read-through over the weekend. Thonx for the perspective.

>>9322141
You're welcome. Just remember, it's a very quick-paced play, funny too, so it doesn't take long to get into it. The closer it gets to the ending the more surreal and "heavy" it gets.