During these ten weeks, we’ll take turns reading aloud four or five plays by two award-winning contemporary American playwrights, Sarah Ruhl and David Henry Hwang. The plays we’ll read by Sarah Ruhl are Eurydice, In the Next Room (or the Vibrator Play) and Clean House. Plays by Hwang are Yellow Face and Golden Child.

Each of the plays looks at individual, cultural and racial identity. The question of how we perceive our own actions, needs and behavior, in opposition to how society expects us to feel and behave, thematically permeates each of the plays. These plays range from the poetic to the unexpectedly and outrageously funny.

Format: No class presentations are required, although everyone is expected to participate in discussions. Outside of class, participants are expected to read the plays and the assigned articles and play reviews. Discussions will focus on style, action, language and characterization. This is not an acting class. Reading dramatic texts aloud allows readers and listeners to more fully engage with the play.

Resources/Expenses: Plays should be purchased from the used book sites AbeBooks or Alibris, as they both have the editions needed for the course. The total cost of the books will be about $30. Please purchase the collection of plays by Sara Ruhl called Clean House that includes the play Eurydice. Purchase the TCG (Theatre Communications Group) editions of both Hwang plays. (Readings are easier if we are all reading from the same edition.) These plays are also available from area libraries.

Coordinator: Wendy Salkind is a retired university professor of Theatre and an actor. This will be her seventh time coordinating a Reading Plays Aloud course.