# SFF in the theatre



## chrispenycate (Jul 2, 2009)

Yesterday evening being the first wednesday of the month I went for the traditional pizza/gabfest of the Geneva SFF readers/writers/illustrators.

The subject came up "what SFF exists for live theatre?"

I could suggest the many Pratchett adaptations, obviously, but apart from the fantasy element in your typical traditional panto, not much bobbed to the surface. A parody of "Star wars", I believe there was a theatre adaptation of the Hitch-hiker's guide; although Hollywood has adopted both SF and fantasy, it seems Broadway and the west end haven't (Ah, yes, "An offshore island")

Do those who walk the boards consider us non-literature, or do they equate the field with unachievable special effects?


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## blacknorth (Jul 2, 2009)

Caryl Churchill has written some acclaimed plays which are, I think, borderline SF - _A Number_, a play about cloning and _Far Away_, a sort of post-apocalypse worldscape. _Far Away_ is all the more disturbing because it is very beautifully written, in fact so beautiful I bought the playscript and read it often.

Edward Bond's _The Sea_ has an extra-terrestrial presence affecting the behaviour of inhabitants in a coastal village. I haven't seen this one performed but the BBC made an effective radio version.

I was interested in writing SF for the theatre but I couldn't get the ideas past the various managements - they kept wanting to reduce the science to an easy metaphor for emotion or turmoil or conflict. I felt that that was being unfair to the genre and dropped the idea. Sigh.


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## Ursa major (Jul 2, 2009)

chrispenycate said:


> I believe there was a theatre adaptation of the Hitch-hiker's guide....


 
There was, and very good it was too (performed by the then Theatr Clwyd).


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## j d worthington (Jul 3, 2009)

Well, Chris, it all depends on what you consider SFF, I suppose. There have been adaptations of some of Shirley Jackson's stories, which might just fit as fantasy; there are of course, the famous (as well as several infamous) adaptations of both *Dracula* and *Frankenstein* for live theatre. Then there are several plays by Dunsany, such as those in *Plays of Gods and Men* and *Five Plays* (as well as others).

Then there are always *The Dybbuk*, by S. Ansky (Solomon Rappoport), not to mention *R. U. R.*, by Karel Čapek, or *The Castle Spectre* by "Monk" Lewis.... Clive Barker also wrote several plays which, I as I recall, saw production at one point or another with small theatrical troupes. And then there are the "dramatic duologues", such "The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion, by E. A. Poe (which, for the latter part, is much more in the nature of a monologue... but that is being a shade pedantic).

Then there is *Eight Science Fiction Plays*, a collection about which I know absolutely nothing beyond its existence, though I can provide a link which (if you scroll down to "details") can provide you with a TOC:

Eight science fiction plays. [WorldCat.org]

These are ones that come to me right off the top of my head; there are others, but I'm a bit befuddled at the moment, so this'll have to do....


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## j d worthington (Jul 3, 2009)

ACH! My brain must really be softening! How could I forget the number of plays which Ray Bradbury himself wrote? Things such as *Pillar of Fire*, *The Veldt*, *The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit*, *Kaleidoscope*, *The Fog Horn*, etc....


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## Dave (Jul 3, 2009)

This subject came up before when Looth tooth posed the question here:
SF Theater

He mentioned Shaw's *Back to Methuselah* and something called *Warp*.

The musicals *Return to the Forbidden Planet*, *The Rocky Horror Show* and *Little Shop of Horrors* came to mind.

I wonder if you might include plays with a supernatural element such ad JB Priestley's *An Inspector Calls* and *Dangerous Corner*.

There was an eight-hour adaptation of Robert Anton Wilson's *Illuminatus* trilogy by Ken Campbell recently at th National Theatre in London.

*Rossum's Universal Robots* was staged this year at the People’s Center Theater in Minneapolis.

Edit : edited broken link


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## j d worthington (Jul 3, 2009)

And, of course, there's always the HPL-themed satire, *A Shoggoth on the Roof*... though legal complications have prevented more than _one_ (iirc) actual production of that one going through....


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## chrispenycate (Jul 3, 2009)

Dave said:


> This subject came up before when Looth tooth posed the question here:
> http://www.sffchronicles.co.uk/forum/48394-sf-theater.html
> 
> He mentioned Shaw's *Back to Methuselah* and something called *Warp*.
> ...



Ah. I did do a search but missed that one, probably because of a difference in my spelling of "theatre". Not many relative to Cinema, are there? 

I had forgotten that RUR was originally a real play, rather than a film, but intend to print out this thread for August…


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## Jev (Jul 8, 2009)

Thornton Wilder's 'The Skin of Our Teeth' could definitely fall into SFF, as could a good chunk of Bertoldt Brecht's stuff, and you wouldn't even have to loosen the definition all that much.


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## MattyK (Aug 10, 2009)

Working in theatre, I can confirm that it comes along occasionally (but not very often at all). We've had one or two Pratchett adaptions. We've had a Star Trek themed HMS Pinafore during the annual Gilbert and Sullivan festival (alas, this was before I worked here). My favourite, however, was the One Man Star Wars show by Charles Ross, who performed the original trilogy of movies in sixty minutes on his own. Very funny indeed. I also believe he's now touring exactly the same style show but this time it's the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I want with bated breath...


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