SportsInTheatre
This list is totally unedited, and is the compilation of the members of the ASTR list.
I did not include the contributors' names, and probably should have. I will try to review the emails and do so as soon as I am clear of a whopping pile of essays.
“An
article appeared this week on the Greenpage about “Magic/Bird” about the two
famous basketballers and their relationship. The comments on the article were
very much “what a clever idea to do a play about sports.” And the one or two
people that knew this wasn’t a new thing all cited “Lombardi” as if the first
play about sports was written last year.”
One of my colleagues here at Carnegie Mellon sent me the message above and
suggested a course on sports-related plays might be interesting, and I thought
it would be an amusing holiday diversion for the ASTR list, if we defined
“sports” as broadly as possible to include any kind of performance of athletic
or martial skills as a central focus of the plot, but not including plays that
merely make references to a sport. Here’s my list so far – I’d be happy to see
anyone else’s ideas, especially from the more ancient periods:
THE CHIEF (Rob Zellers) - about the life of former Steelers owner Art Rooney Sr.
BROWNS RULES (Eric Schmiel/Bill Hoffman) - a musical comedy about the Cleveland
football team
DAMN YANKEES (Abbot/Wallop/Adler/Ross) - baseball
FENCES (August Wilson) - baseball
SUCKER PUNCH (Roy Williams) - boxing
SING YER HEART OUT FOR THE LADS (Roy Williams) - British football
THE CHANGING ROOM (David Storey) - rugby
UP N’ UNDER (Jon Godber) - rugby
RED REMEMBERS (Andrew Guerdat) - about the life of Red Barber, announcer for the
Brooklyn Dodgers
TAKE ME OUT (Richard Greenberg) - baseball
RUNT OF THE LITTER (Bo Eason) - autobiographical account by the former Houston
Oilers safety
That Championship Season -- Jason Miller. Reunion of high school basketball team and their coach. 1972.
Amazing how frequently the wheel gets reinvented. Claire
Conceison has taught a course on Sports and Theatre for years, latterly at
Tufts; Noe Montez, now on the Tufts faculty, has also offered such a course.
A Night in November (Marie Jones) - the World Cup and "The Troubles" in Northern Ireland
Also add Bleacher Bums, about the Cubs.
There is also a baseball scene with song in You're a Good Man Charlie Brown.
And last year the ART did an original musical about the Red Sox. It was
originally called Red Sox Nation but then the title was changed to, I believe,
Johnny Baseball.
Johny
Baseball - musical
http://www.americanrepertorytheater.org/events/show/johnny-baseball
Lee Blessing, Oldtimers Game -- set in the locker room of a minor league
baseball team
Tom Lysaght, Nobody Don't Like Yogi -- set in the Yankee clubhouse on the day in 1999 when Yogi returned to Yankee Stadium. Yogi, alone, remembers.
THE BEAUTIFUL GAME, by Ben Elton and Andrew Lloyd Webber – soccer
Cobb by Lee Blessing
The Fool by Edward Bond (uses boxing as a metaphor)
As You Like It (the wrestling match)
The first production of Brecht's The Measure's Taken was set in a boxing ring.
And of course Brecht's short essay, "Emphasis on Sport"
Damn Yankees (musical featuring Shoeless Joe from Hannibal, MO.)
The Sweetest Swing in Baseball - Rebecca Gilman
And if you stretched the definition about how sports is used, perhaps Beautiful Thing - Jonathan Harvey
Framji Minwalla wrote:Oh, and Israel Horowitz, The One on One Basketball Game
Oh, and Israel Horowitz, The One on One Basketball Game
Damn Yankees, surely. Also, there was a
one-person play about Babe Ruth called The Babe that starred Max Gail (of
Barney Miller fame) on Broadway in the mid-1980s.
I know this isn't a play, but there's a monologue from Bang the Drum Slowly
that's pretty popular as an audition piece.
Don't forget The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity by Kristoffer Diaz
To You, The Birdie (Phèdre) by The Wooster Group [badminton]
Lombardi by Eric Simonson [Football]
Three Japanese plays that come quickly to my mind:
"Summer Runners" by Makino Nozomi. Baseball during the post-WWII black market .
"Tokyo Atomic Klub" also by Makino. Baseball as a metaphor for the Japanese attempt to build an atomic bomb during WWII.
"A Legend of Mermaids" by Chong Wishin(g). Boxing. A Korean migrant family struggles to make a living in Japan.
The last two are translated in the series "Half Century of Japanese Theater"
Boxing 2000 by Richard Maxwell
Charles T. Vincent, "A Naval Cadet" starred Gentleman Jim Corbett (the reigning heavyweight boxing champion) and includes a gymnasium scene in which he demonstrates bag punching (while the actress Annie Blake swings from a set of rings in full evening dress...)
Dermot Bolger, In High Germany (World Cup football)
Shaun Dunne's very recent "I am a Home Bird (It’s very hard)" has a fantasy scene of the Irish 2002 World Cup team celebrating
Charles T. Vincent, "A Naval Cadet" starred Gentleman Jim
Corbett (the reigning heavyweight boxing champion) and includes a gymnasium
scene in which he demonstrates bag punching (while the actress Annie Blake
swings from a set of rings in full evening dress...)
Dermot Bolger, In High Germany (World Cup football)
Shaun Dunne's very recent "I am a Home Bird (It’s very hard)" has a fantasy
scene of the Irish 2002 World Cup team celebrating
Beautiful Burnout - created by Frantic Assembly and National Theatre of Scotland (played St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn last year)
All American - a new play by Julia Brownell, currently up at Lincoln Center Theatre's LCT3
Bring it On! The Musical [competitve cheerleading] is currently in rehearsals for a Broadway production.
Frankel, David wrote ; Of course, The Great White Hope, by Howard Sackler. And Clifford Odets' Golden Boy.
Also Trafford Tanzi - Claire Luckham (wrestling)
Also Deb Margolin's Three Seconds in the Key: basketball.
Tomson Highway's Dry Lips Oughta move to Kapuskasing about 7 Native American men and (among other things) hockey.
How She Played the Game by Cynthia Cooper, a short play about Eleonora Randolph Sears, Althea Gibson, Gertrude Ederle, Sonie Hennie, Gretel Bergmann, and Babe Didrickson
And Tom Stoppard's <Professional Foul> (soccer & ethics),
- Kate Kelly
George a Greene, The Pinner of Wakefield (1593) turns around several bouts of staff-fighting that function as sport, a feature of numerous late medieval and early modern Robin Hood parish plays as well. I discuss the social contexts for and performance implications of these forms of athletic combat in the second section of an article I wrote a few years ago: Erika T. Lin, "Popular Festivity and the Early Modern Stage: The Case of George a Greene," Theatre Journal 61 (2009): 271-97.
Did anyone mention Lee Blessing's COBB? I saw that in NYC about a decade ago
- loved it!
I am not a teacher in theatre history but I think maybe it would be interesting to add to the theme
Theatre/Sports a cross cultural approach.
Sports in United States is one thing and sports in Argentina and Brazil is another. For example, a known
argentinian writer and director Ricardo Bartis had dealt with Sports, politics and theatre in a trilogy of
plays. El box is the latest one. He is writing one on football now. I am sure there are many cases in Brazil also.
Gustavo von Bischoffshausen
In Brazil: Chapetuba Futebol Clube, by Oduvaldo Vianna Filho (Vianinha). I
do not know if an English translation exists.
Claudia On 11/6/11 5:01 PM, "gustavovon" <gustavovon@SPEEDY.COM.PE>
wrote:
That Champion Season
What about August Wilson's Fences? - Lindsay Cummings
Cornell University
Writing Workshop
lbc29@cornell.edu
You may also want to look at "Les Canadiens" by Rick Salutin.
Also Deb
Margolin's Three Seconds in the Key: basketball.
Tomson Highway's Dry Lips Oughta move to Kapuskasing about 7 Native
American men and (among other things) hockey.
How She Played the Game by Cynthia Cooper, a short play about Eleonora Randolph Sears, Althea Gibson, Gertrude Ederle, Sonie Hennie, Gretel Bergmann, and Babe Didrickson
George a Greene, The Pinner of Wakefield (1593) turns around several bouts of staff-fighting that function as sport, a feature of numerous late medieval and early modern Robin Hood parish plays as well. I discuss the social contexts for and performance implications of these forms of athletic combat in the second section of an article I wrote a few years ago: Erika T. Lin, "Popular Festivity and the Early Modern Stage: The Case of George a Greene," Theatre Journal 61 (2009): 271-97.
Baseball:
Ernie by Mitch Albom
Fences by August Wilson
Rounding Third by Richard Dresser
Bang the Drum Slowly, adapted by Eric Simonson (someone mentioned a monologue, but there is a complete stage version by Simonson, who also wrote Lombardi and is currently working on Magic/Bird)
Honus and Me by Steven Dietz (adaptation of Dan Gutman's novel)
Boxing:
The Homecoming by Harold Pinter
Blade to the Heat by Oliver Mayer
Joe Louis Blues by Oliver Mayer
The Tooth of Crime by Sam Shepard
The Champion by Robert Gurik (translated by Allan Van Meer)
Football:
Wonderful Town by Comden and Green
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
Hockey:
Five Flights by Adam Bock
Horse racing:
Pure Confidence by Carlyle Brown
Tennis:
Ball Boys by David Edgar
Golf:
Yodellers by Michael Healey and Kate Lynch
One Under by Israel Horovitz
Let the Big Dog Eat by Elizabeth Wong
Wrestling:
Cementville by Jane Martin
In Brazil: Chapetuba Futebol Clube, by Oduvaldo Vianna Filho (Vianinha). I
do not know if an English translation exists.
Sports in United States is one thing and sports in Argentina and Brazil is another. For example, a known
argentinian writer and director Ricardo Bartis had dealt with Sports, politics and theatre in a trilogy of
plays. El box is the latest one. He is writing one on football now. I am sure there are many cases in Brazil also.
And Tom Stoppard's <Professional Foul> (soccer & ethics),
Spin
Moves and The Catch by Ken Weitzman
Back Back Back by Itamar Moses
How about Blade to the Heat (Apple
Tree got a Jeff for that):
http://theater.nytimes.com/mem/theater/treview.html?res=9C04E7D9143EF937A35752C1A962958260
I saw a show once at Circle in the Square called “Diamonds” about Baseball.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamonds_%28musical%29
Here’s four more:
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/features/smash-hits-plays-about-sport-850319.html
a couple more and a discussion of this idea:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatreblog/2010/apr/22/theatre-sport-human-drama
and some more, in an article that Google found on the Green Page:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/28/theater/28bison.html?_r=2&ref=theater
and that’s just the first page of results on Google to “plays about sports”
db
See
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/features/smash-hits-plays-about-sport-850319.html
Also Trafford Tanzi - Claire Luckham (wrestling)
Babe Ruth called The Babe that starred Max Gail (of Barney Miller fame) on Broadway in the mid-1980s.
I know this isn't a play, but there's a monologue from Bang the Drum Slowly that's pretty popular as an audition piece.
The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity by Kristoffer Diaz
To You, The Birdie (Phèdre) by The Wooster Group [badminton]
"Summer
Runners" by Makino Nozomi. Baseball during the post-WWII black market .
"Tokyo Atomic Klub" also by Makino. Baseball as a metaphor for the Japanese
attempt to build an atomic bomb during WWII.
"A Legend of Mermaids" by Chong Wishin(g). Boxing. A Korean migrant family
struggles to make a living in Japan.
The last two are translated in the series "Half Century of Japanese Theater"
Boxing 2000 by Richard Maxwell
Charles T.
Vincent, "A Naval Cadet" starred Gentleman Jim Corbett (the reigning heavyweight
boxing champion) and includes a gymnasium scene in which he demonstrates bag
punching (while the actress Annie Blake swings from a set of rings in full
evening dress...)
Dermot Bolger, In High Germany (World Cup football)
Shaun Dunne's very recent "I am a Home Bird (It’s very hard)" has a fantasy
scene of the Irish 2002 World Cup team celebrating
Beautiful Burnout - created by Frantic Assembly and National Theatre of Scotland (played St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn last year)
All American - a new play by Julia Brownell, currently up at Lincoln Center Theatre's LCT3
Of course, The Great White Hope, by Howard Sackler. And Clifford Odets' Golden Boy.
Bring it On! The Musical [competitve
cheerleading]
Oh, and Israel Horowitz, The One on One Basketball GameFramji
The
Sweetest Swing in Baseball - Rebecca Gilman
And if you stretched the definition about how sports is used, perhaps Beautiful
Thing - Jonathan Harvey
he Fool by Edward Bond (uses boxing as a metaphor)As You Like It (the wrestling match)The first production of Brecht's The Measure's Taken was set in a boxing ring.And of course Brecht's short essay, "Emphasis on Sport"Framji
There are some scenes here and there, such
as the long (and fictitious) speech in Sophocles’ ELECTRA about a chariot race.
Aeschylus had a play, now lost, called ATALANTA, presumably about the mythical
woman who would only marry a man who could defeat her in a footrace.
We can, though, add an adaptation, the soon-to-open on Broadway:
LYSISTRATA JONES, by Douglas Carter Beane and Lewis Flinn – basketball
I’ll also throw in:
THE BEAUTIFUL GAME, by Ben Elton and Andrew Lloyd Webber – soccer
Lee Blessing, Oldtimers Game -- set in the locker room of a minor league baseball team
Tom Lysaght, Nobody Don't Like Yogi -- set in the Yankee clubhouse on the day in 1999 when Yogi returned to Yankee Stadium. Yogi, alone, remembers.
Also add Bleacher Bums, about the Cubs.
There is also a baseball scene with song in You're a Good Man Charlie Brown.
And last year the ART did an original musical about the Red Sox. It was originally called Red Sox Nation but then the title was changed to, I believe, Johnny Baseball.
Stuart
A Night
in November (Marie Jones) - the World Cup and "The
Troubles" in Northern Ireland That Championship Season -- Jason Miller. Reunion
of high school basketball team and their coach. 1972.
That
Championship Season -- Jason Miller. Reunion of high school basketball team and
their coach. 1972.
On Nov 6, 2011, at 9:07 AM, "Michael Chemers" <chemers@ANDREW.CMU.EDU>
wrote:
Theatre/Sports My dear colleagues,
“An article appeared this week on the Greenpage
about “Magic/Bird” about the two famous basketballers and their relationship.
The comments on the article were very much “what a clever idea to do a play
about sports.” And the one or two people that knew this wasn’t a new thing all
cited “Lombardi” as if the first play about sports was written last year.”
One of my colleagues here at Carnegie Mellon sent me the message above and
suggested a course on sports-related plays might be interesting, and I thought
it would be an amusing holiday diversion for the ASTR list, if we defined
“sports” as broadly as possible to include any kind of performance of athletic
or martial skills as a central focus of the plot, but not including plays that
merely make references to a sport. Here’s my list so far – I’d be happy to see
anyone else’s ideas, especially from the more ancient periods:
THE CHIEF (Rob Zellers) - about the life of former Steelers owner Art Rooney Sr.
BROWNS RULES (Eric Schmiel/Bill Hoffman) - a musical comedy about the Cleveland
football team
DAMN YANKEES (Abbot/Wallop/Adler/Ross) - baseball
FENCES (August Wilson) - baseball
SUCKER PUNCH (Roy Williams) - boxing
SING YER HEART OUT FOR THE LADS (Roy Williams) - British football
THE CHANGING ROOM (David Storey) - rugby
UP N’ UNDER (Jon Godber) - rugby
RED REMEMBERS (Andrew Guerdat) - about the life of Red Barber, announcer for the
Brooklyn Dodgers
TAKE ME OUT (Richard Greenberg) - baseball
RUNT OF THE LITTER (Bo Eason) - autobiographical account by the former Houston
Oilers safety
Thanks!
-Michael
--
Michael M. Chemers, PhD, MFA
Associate Professor of Dramatic Literature
Dramaturgy Program Director
School of Drama
Carnegie Mellon University
5000 Forbes Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3890
412-268-2399
Fax: 412-621-0281
http://www.drama.cmu.edu/
A. R. Gurney's Big Bill is about the great tennis professional Bill Tilden.
Edvard Radzinsky's Jogging
Dr. Catherine A. Schuler
Hurl by Charlie O'Neill (about a team of asylum-seekers and new
immigrants to Ireland who create a hurling team; done by Barabbas
with some interesting sport movement segments)
Charlie O'Neill has another play in which the All-Ireland tournament
is a backdrop for community unrest in regard to the Travelling
community
A Little Bit of Blue by Alan Archbold (about a passionate Gaelic
football fan in Dublin)
Alone It Stands by John Breen - about the Munster (Irish) rugby
team's victory over NZ's All Blacks in the 1970s
and STUDS - by Paul Mercier - was made into a film about a local
soccer team in the "depressed" Tallaght section on the outskirts of
Dublin.
I have more examples - many in which sport is a backdrop to other
issues. I wrote my PhD dissertation about the Irish sports of Gaelic
Football and Hurling as performance.
Sara Brady
And to add to Sara's list, Macnas' excellent (semi-retelling of the Odyssey) "The Lost Days of Ollie Deasy." Deasy is a former, great hurler in this play. - Jay Ball
This list is not compltere without Richard Greenberg's _Take Me Out_ about a gay baseball player. - Michael Winetsky, Ph.D.
Sorry to come late to the sports
party, but I noticed the general lack of hockey plays. And at the
risk of perpetuating Canadian stereotypes, there are no shortages of
hockey-centric plays in our national theatre canon:
Les Canadiens - Rick Salutin – iconic play about hockey as a
metaphor for Quebec politics
Hockey Mom, Hockey Dad - Michael Melski – dramatic comedy about
parents
The Big League - James Durham – Theatre for Young Audiences show
about violence in sport and parental pressure
The Hockey Sweater – adapted from the Roch Carrier book – many
versions of this in both English and French
Playing With Fire: the Theo Fleury Story – Kirstie McLellan Day –
based on the real life of NHL all-star Theo Fleury, opening in 2012
Life After Hockey – Kenneth Brown – solo show
Mending Fences – Norm Foster – not hockey-centric, but the play’s
action hinges on the father and son fighting during a game.
Hockey Dreams – David Adams Richards – trying to make the NHL
Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing – Tomson Highway – series of
First Nations women discuss many topics, including hockey
A graduate student is working in this area, and I know he has
collected more than 50 plays, including at least a dozen hockey
versions of Shakespeare...
These are movies, but both were notable in Canada this year:
Score: a Hockey Musical – starring Olivia Newton-John – this opened
the Toronto Film Fest
Breakaway – a Bollywood hockey adventure
These are non-Canadian shows that I have heard of, but have no
information about:
Slam: the Rock Hockey Opera
The Loves of Wayne Gretzky, in which Gretzky leaves his wife for
Mario Lemieux
Nicholas Hanson