The Beaver Coat: Drama and Theater

At this point, we've watched a couple plays and read many more. As we discussed the difference in drama and theater in our last class, I felt like now was a good time to bring up differences in watching a play and reading a play, and why ultimately I believe reading a play is certainly not the best way to experience one.

In most of the plays we've read, hardly anything except dialogue is mentioned. With nothing much else to go on, reading a play feels a lot like looking at a template. By reading a play we can understand its intentions, but so much is lost when a play isn't viewed. Certain character's tones can be misinterpreted, I know on more than one occasion in this and other classes I've been totally wrong about how a character was approaching a situation just because I didn't pick it up from how it was presented in the play. The Beaver Coat is the first play to actually mitigate things like this, being very descriptive in the way people look, act, and speak.

When I say much is lost in only reading a play, I don't just mean better visualizing what's occurring, but the play's character. While that in itself might not be relevant to analysis in our class, it doesn't change the fact that some of my favorite parts from the plays we've watched have been things that were never explicitly mentioned in text alone. In The Venetian Twins, my favorite thing is when Tanino (Zanetto?) is giving an aside and one of the servants squints over his shoulder to try to see who he's talking to. In The Broken Jug, Judge Adam breaking his stick (it just snaps in half as he's banging it, it doesn't look like it was even intentional) was one of the few things that made me laugh.

In the end I believe it is unfortunate that more of these plays aren't watched instead of read, as they were intended.

The Beaver Coat - Interpreting Stage Directions

On Wednesday, we learned about the difference between Drama and Theatre. Drama (the text) can be seen as a direct link from playwright to reader. Theatre (the performance) is a series of links that form a specific interpretation of the text, where certain liberties are often taken.

An interpretation of the stage directions, "A country road. A tree. Evening."

From Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot.

(source: video)

Adverse to the sparse setting above sits Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night. (The video wouldn't embed, but you should seriously check it out.)

In Gerhart Hauptmann's play The Beaver Coat, some stage directions leave a wide spectrum of interpretative possibilities, whereas others add to the text in a literary sense, but would be difficult to portray in a theatrical production. Such as...

Who was not present at all. (p 156)

Think about that one for a minute. As a reader, you have a direct link to that line. You're told Adelheid was nowhere in the vicinity of the deer when her mother spins a yarn about it, which keys you in to the sudden, immediate humor of Adelheid's next line: "I almost dislocated something."

Reading it is quick and funny. But how would you portray it on stage?

With a significant gesture. (p 176)

What gesture? Is Motes doing jazz hands? Is he flipping the bird? This time, being the reader means you have to work for the imagery. If this were to be staged, the director would have to find an appropriate interpretation -- something that could be adapted to the time and place -- and the audience would be exposed to someone's translation of the original text.

... and in the manner of a deaf man... (p 178)

This line is more subtle, since all of us, to a degree, can imagine how "a deaf man" would look, or react. But the use of this vivid imagery comes into question when you think about the alternative. Instead of leaving "the manner of a deaf man" up to a director's interpretation, why didn't Hauptmann simply describe the exact motions he wanted the actor to perform?

... one object after another... (p 188)

This is a perfect opportunity to fill in the blanks with your own personal bias. Julius is picking up and throwing various objects around, and even though there is a great level of freedom in the interpretation, there are still limits to consider. Would he grab an axe and toss it to the other side of the room? Possibly. But since the play was performed in 1893, chances are he isn't going to be chucking an iPhone anytime soon.

Most of these examples are left up to speculation, since every personal image, every inner idea, is a matter of opinion. How would you interpret them? What did you see?