Give Theatre a Chance

Books are fairly easy to read. They are portable, and are available for your entertainment at any given time. Movies are also not too hard to enjoy, either. If you ever miss a screening, there will most likely be a way to watch it online. Plays are different. They are limited time offers. Plays can go completely extinct. In most cases, you will never be able watch a local small-scale play if you live in a different region. This is why I enjoy plays. It is genuine, unpredictable, and finite in nature. Today I will be introducing three different plays that I honestly think are too good to miss out on.

 

Starting strong, Equus by Peter Shaffer, 1973. A psychological Greek style drama, widely known for its shocking visual production, Equus is one of the most captivating plays that I have ever seen. It may seem silly or even distasteful out of context, but the real experience overrides the crude imagery of half-naked men. I swear they look like real horses once you are seated in front of the stage. The plot is about a child psychiatrist and his patient who has blinded six horses. The theme is religious and sexual trauma, homoeroticism, and obviously beastiality which also acts as a metaphor for Apollonian and Dionysian conflict. The play ends with a monologue by the psychiatrist Martin Dysart: “There is now, in my mouth, this sharp chain. And it never comes out.”

 

Next up, Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett, 1953. A classic contemporary absurdist tragicomedy, and the most well-known one as far as I know. Set in a desolate stage, the play is led only by five characters talking to each other in great lengths about not particularly much at all. They wait for Godot. The main characters are all sick, old, bitter and even insane. When asked if Godot is God, Samuel Beckett said that even he does not know who Godot is, but he is not God. Vladimir and Estragon contemplates illness, despair, war, suicide and the endless pointlessness of life. Yet they wait for Godot.

 

Finally, the youngest, Littoral by Wajdi Mouawad, written in 1999 and most recently performed in Seoul, 2024. The play teeters on the verge of comical, framed in a lighthearted, even humorous way, accentuating the true desperation of the situation. Based on the author’s own experience in fleeing his home country in the Lebanese Civil War, the plot pushes the characters towards the tideline as the dead body of a man who was once a father decays, slumped against a bench in the frontmost corner of the stage.

 

A great play does not necessarily need an incredibly high production value, or to be on Broadway. Sure, Hamilton and Wicked and The Phantom of the Opera is great, and I loved Notre-Dame de Paris so much that I saw it four times in a row. However, I recommend that you go looking for more local – meaning domestic- pieces. Anton Chekov Theatre in Seoul, Hyehwa-dong always has an Anton piece on show, and Uncle Vanya is a beautiful work of art. Give theatre a chance.