the Kultura Blog

This is going to be my first post here in kulturablog. Since being appointed Theater Coordinator for Kultura by Tinette it has mainly become my responsibility to make sure that whatever play we stage for Kultura is really worth staging.

And that starts with finding a play that is suitable for staging in the university.

It really is quite hard trying to look for plays that are worth producing here in the university. And, to top it all off, we can’t keep on doing the same kind of plays. Kultura prides itself in being innovative and creative in the staging of plays, having staged a varied array of plays through the years.

You can imagine my relief when, after our August 2006 production of Yasmina Reza’s Art, a good friend of Kultura who now teaches at one of the high schools that came to watch the production included in her congratulatory e-mail after the play a list taken from a book entitled The Well Educated Mind written by Susan Baue. Apparently, these plays are those that anyone who wishes to have a “well educated mind” should have, in his or her lifetime, watched at least once.

It came as a pleasant surprise to find that some of the plays on the list had already been staged by Kultura or had been considered for staging. Plays like Tartuffe (which we staged in February 2003) by Jean Baptiste Moliere or Murder in the Cathedral (staged in February 2000) by T.S. Elliot were plays I myself was cast in. We did somewhat of an adaptation of Aeschylus’ Agamemnon with our staging of Clytemnestra (staged in February 2005) written by Christian Vallez. And just last Feburary, we staged Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest in its original English and a translated version done collaboratively by a number of creative Kultura minds.

Suffice it to say that my search for plays to stage for Kultura has been made easier. Not that I will limit myself only to the plays that are on the list, but I will, from time to time, consult the list for plays that we might stage. So keep track of this list and watch out for our plays in the coming months.

PLAYS THAT A WELL EDUCATED MIND MUST HAVE WATCHED:

1. Agamemnon by Aeschylus
2. Oedipus Rex by Sophocles
3. Medea by Euripides
4. The Bird by Aristophanes
5. Poetics by Aristotle
6. Everyman
7. The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe
8. Richard III by William Shakespeare
9. A Midsummer Night’s Dream
10. Hamlet
11. Tartuffe by Jean Baptiste Moliere
12. The Way of the World by William Congreve
13. She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith
14. The School for Scandal by Richard Brinsley Sheridan
15. A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen
16. The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde
17. The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov
18. Saint Joan by George Bernard Shaw
19. Murder in the Cathedral by T.S. Elliot
20. Our Town by Thorton Wilder
21. Long Day’s Journey into Night by Eugene O’Neill
22. No Exit by Jean Paul Sartre
23. A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams
24. Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
25. Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
26. A Man for All Seasons by Robert Bolt
27. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard
28. Equus by Peter Shaffer