Your Favorite Playwrights

[Florestan]

I don't think it's been done before.

My list, in no particular order:

Edmond Rostand*
Ibsen
Goldoni
Schiller
Chekhov
Gerhard Hauptmann
Goethe
Shakespeare
Molière
 
*I placed this one hit wonder on top because Cyrano de Bergerac was the very first play I've ever read, in an exceptional translation by a Romanian poet in his own right --- I was in my early teens and I was instantly hooked. It is to him that I owe my love of the theatre.

[ritter]

Nice thread idea, Andrei, and good evening to you.

My favourites (in no particular order, and off the top of my head ):

Calderón
Valle-Inclán
Giraudoux
Claudel
Goldoni

[Florestan]

Nice thread idea, Andrei, and good evening to you.

My favourites (in no particular order, and off the top of my head ):

Calderón
Valle-Inclán
Giraudoux
Claudel
Goldoni

Good evening, Rafael.

I haven't read any Calderón play. Where should I start? Ditto for Valle-Inclán.

[ritter]

Good evening, Rafael.

I haven't read any Calderón play. Where should I start? Ditto for Valle-Inclán.

Calderón: La vida es sueño or El gran teatro del Mundo.

Valle-Inclán: Luces de Bohemia.

Sorry, cannot elaborate further now (results of local and regional elections held in Spain today coming out now).

[Florestan]

Calderón: La vida es sueño or El gran teatro del Mundo.

Valle-Inclán: Luces de Bohemia.

Sorry, cannot elaborate further now (results of local and regional elections held in Spain today coming out now).

Thanks --- and may your favorites win! 

[Mandryka]

The  most impressive and unforgettable play I've ever seen was Jean Claude Carrière's Mahabharata.

[Brian]

Not nearly as much experience with live theater as I'd like - it is often not at its most invigorating in middle America - but these are definitely some favorites from either live performance or reading:

William Shakespeare
Oscar Wilde
August Wilson
Tom Stoppard
David Ives
Michael R. Jackson
Martin McDonagh
Kate Hamill, for an astonishingly lively, intelligent, and truly theatrical adaptation of Sense & Sensibility I saw off Broadway

Looking forward to possibly having a first live encounter with Lucy Prebble soon.

[vers la flamme]

I've been to the theater maybe two or three times in my life. I reckon that will change soon as I'm moving to New York in a few months for school, but the majority of my experiences with drama are through reading it. That being said, I loved the Ibsen plays I've read, and the Chekhov, and of course Shakespeare. These are probably the most boring, predictable choices possible. 

[(poco) Sforzando]

I could say "me," but that would be an Unpopular Opinion.

[foxandpeng]

Nice thread, indeed. Predictably 17th century English dramatists...

Thomas Middleton
Shakespeare
Ben Johnson
John Fletcher
Thomas Heywood

More recently...

Ibsen
Chekhov

[San Antone]

Eugene O'Neill
Sam Shepard
August Wilson
Tennessee Williams
Shakespeare
Sean O'Casey
Bertold Brecht
Noél Coward
Moss Hart
David Mamet
Anton Chekhov
Arthur Miller
Samuel Beckett
Edward Albee
Harold Pinter
The Greeks Aeschylus; Sophocles; Euripides; Aristophanes

[Jo498]

I've been to the theater maybe two or three times in my life. I reckon that will change soon as I'm moving to New York in a few months for school, but the majority of my experiences with drama are through reading it.

If I could be bothered to go the theatre, I'd usually rather go to the opera. In fact I went somewhat regularly to a local theatre in the late 1990s and early 2000s, partly because I knew some people working there and as a student one could get fairly cheap tickets anyway.

So I've been to performances not often enough to have seen many great plays but enough to realize how different this is from reading plays. (To the shame of my school, IIRC we never went to see a play despite we had to read lots of them in German literature class, also Death of a Salesman in English)
Sure, many plays were also (at least to some extent) intended for being read (as they are often far too long for unabridged staging) but usually it's not the real thing.

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

Yukio Mishima.

[vers la flamme]

Yukio Mishima.

I read his 5 Modern No Plays at your recommendation, I think. It was excellent. Do you have any other recommendations from his theatrical works?

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

I read his 5 Modern No Plays at your recommendation, I think. It was excellent. Do you have any other recommendations from his theatrical works?

His Rokumeikan, Nettaiju, Shiroari no Su, are twisted and wonderful, but they haven't been translated into English. Sorry.


https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%86%B1%E5%B8%AF%E6%A8%B9_(%E6%88%AF%E6%9B%B2)

https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%99%BD%E8%9F%BB%E3%81%AE%E5%B7%A3

https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%B9%BF%E9%B3%B4%E9%A4%A8_(%E6%88%AF%E6%9B%B2)

[vers la flamme]

His Rokumeikan, Nettaiju, Shiroari no Su, are twisted and wonderful, but they haven't been translated into English. Sorry.


https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%86%B1%E5%B8%AF%E6%A8%B9_(%E6%88%AF%E6%9B%B2)

https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%99%BD%E8%9F%BB%E3%81%AE%E5%B7%A3

https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%B9%BF%E9%B3%B4%E9%A4%A8_(%E6%88%AF%E6%9B%B2)

It seems there's some kind of renaissance in interest in his writings in the Anglophone world, so maybe translations will be forthcoming.

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

Shakespeare
Ibsen
Strindberg
Shaw
Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz AKA Witkacy (the true inventor of Theatre of the Absurd)

[Ganondorf]

Shaw
Goethe
Ibsen

[brewski]

Great idea for a thread, thank you, with already some names mentioned whom I do not know.

My faves at the moment. McDonagh is probably my favorite living playwright, but others are waiting in the wings. Just saw Abandon, a new play by James Ijames (Fat Ham), which grew more interesting the more I thought about it.

Michael Frayn and Oscar Wilde wrote my two favorite comedies (Noises Off and The Importance of Being Earnest).

In the early 2000s, a small production of Bug by Tracy Letts was one of the greatest things I've ever seen.

Martin McDonagh
Eugène Ionesco
Michael Frayn
Oscar Wilde
Federico García Lorca
Caryl Churchill
Samuel Beckett
Sam Shepard
Tracy Letts
Tennessee Williams

-Bruce

[vandermolen]

I'm not a great theatre goer - however:

J B Priestley ('An Inspector Calls')

Euripides (The Bacchae)

Arthur Miller (Death of a Salesman)

Shakespeare (Tempest, King Lear, Macbeth)

Samuel Beckett (Waiting for Godot) - especially the last lines ('Shall we go?' - reply 'Yes, let's go' - stage direction 'nobody moves')

Oscar Wilde

Harold Pinter (The Caretaker)