I have finished reading the biography Stewart Parker: A Life by Marilynn Richtarik (ISBN: 9780199695034). Currently I am reading his play Catchpenny Twist on my lunch breaks at work. It demonstrates his abilities as a song writer but it does not qualify as a musical. Strangely the Irish Repertory Theater in New York City has never done a Stewart Parker play. Maybe they are prejudiced against Northern Irish playwrights.
Instead of proceeding to read another playwright biography I have decided to finish reading the biography of Jorge Luis Borges which I had set aside, Borges: A Life by Edwin Williamson. I have bought a few volumes of his poetry in translation and added two of them to my notes. Jorge Luis Borges was never a playwright. He is famous for his short stories and poems.
My efforts to explore Spanish theater is going well. I am still translating Scene 6 of Act 1 of Carlos Arniches’ 1920 play Los caciques. I did manage to find a book on Carlos Arniches on eBay, Estudios Sobre Carlos Arniches (ISBN: 9788477841029). This book is entirely in Spanish so I cannot read it without doing some tedious translation work. More importantly I found a biography of Carlos Arniches which is available as an ebook, Carlos Arniches: El gran patriarca (Carlos Arniches: The Great Patriarch). I may run this this through a translator since I don’t need to enter the text. I also bought Translating the Theatre of the Spanish Golden Age: A Story of Chance and Transformation by David Johnston. This is a short book but it is of interest to me because he argues for the value of translating Spanish plays. I have learned that Lightning Source is a printer and distributor of print-on-demand books. Since the last page of this book credits Lightning Source it is clear that this was a print-on-demand book. Fortunately the text is crisp and clear but I have bought other print-on-demand books with dark, smudged print so it is something I now watch out for in buying books that are no longer in print.
As far as books on playwriting go I recently bought The Crafty Art of Playmaking by Alan Ayckbourn as a Kindle book. I recently had to buy a new Kindle since my old one was no longer supported.
