Is it possible for Sir Thomas More’s Utopia to be made into a play?
Today, it is almost possible for any piece of literature or any form of entertainment to be performed on stage. If Broadway can turn the motion pictures Spiderman and Titanic into plays, anything is possible. There are just a few elements of drama that are missed when translating one form of literature to another, and from one form of performance to another, but since this is English class, I’ll stick to the literature!
It is safe to say that Sir Thomas More’s description provided in Utopia is intriguing, intricate and thorough, but does it possess the elements needed to make an entertaining play that audiences would want to attend? At the moment, as it is written, Utopia would be the most boring play to ever exist. This is because it would subsist of Sir Thomas Moore reading his letter to Peter Giles. If the director is truly create, he may include some action of the utopian descriptions being acted out to provide something for the audience to look at, but overall, as written this piece would be the driest play that has ever hit the stage.
Utopia is definitely not the best screenplay, although it does provide a creative basis for a script. Even though, there are two named characters (Thomas More and Peter Giles), there is no character development or interaction. This is a huge problem because this, along with a conflict, drives a play from its start to its finish. With that being said, Utopia does not offer very many details about these elements of the story, but Sir Thomas More provides his audience with enough background information to create what he did not. Pages of description about the land, the people, the costumes, the traditions ect all provide an elaborate image that can be tweaked to assume the standards of a well-written piece of drama.
This conglomeration of the details originally provided by Sir Thomas More can be compared to novels that are turned into movies today. What the audience does not see between the first stage of the novel and the final stage of the film is the creation of the script. Today, almost every movie is taken from a popular novel or vise versa. It seems like these forms of media can be thought of as interchangeable. This can also be applied to Sir Thomas More’s Utopia. With an extraction of information from the narrative a detailed script containing characters, a plot, a conflict and a resolution can be written by an author who possesses the initiative and the creativity to take on such a project.
I am by no means saying that trying to write Utopia: The Play would be an easy project, but it certainly would be an interesting play to see.
For a creative engagement, I had the idea that, we, as a class could start to write the script, by adding to it piece by piece and little by little. But to be honest, I have no idea where I would even start Utopia: The Play. If anyone is ambitious enough to do so, I would love to read what you write and from there I would love to join in. For me, starting any form of writing is the most difficult, so here’s an opportunity for a class project that could turn out great or a disaster (kind of like those group essays some professors love to assign).
I was actually about to do a rumination on the same subject until I saw your piece. Great job at getting to it and thinking of the idea. In some form, Utopia could make a great play. However, it would need to go beyond the written words. The director would have to take creative license to make Utopia come alive - they would need to focus on specific parts of the story, and possibly create events based off of More's words.
ReplyDeleteAnd I absolutely love your creative engagement idea! I might do that.
I'm really intrigued at the idea of making Utopia a play I think mainly because it would take a good amount of genius to do it. There's so much to work with here. Whoever decides to take on this task (i.e. not me) will have to cut out a lot and definitely add in some more dramatic elements and character exposition to keep things moving. I personally would like to see a Broadway musical version of Utopia which makes use of a a few of the overall idealistic elements of Utopia and puts them in a new, more modern, and certainly more wacky context. Perhaps More could be the mayor of a "Utopian" town who refuses to come to terms with the contrary will of the people and ends up becoming a Stalinesque dictator figure? Or perhaps More, in the same position, is the only one to realize that the "utopia" is is governing is fundamentally flawed even though the citizens don't know it? Lots of crazy possibilities...
ReplyDeleteI like your idea of having the class write a play, but could you imagine the wide spectrum that would be hit? I think that everyone has their own vision of Utopia in their minds, and for all of us to come together would be an awesome challenge! I love the above idea of making it a musical too.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading your rumination. Utopia as a play would not be very entertaining or intriguing to me unless there were some tweeks and changes.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure how we would start Utopia: The Play, but I do like the idea. Everyone's Utopias are different and working together on something would be a neat thing to accomplish.
I would have to say that Utopia would need substantial changes to be made into a play that people would flock to see. Sure More's description has alot to it, but just showing brief scenes of the Utopia that was in-visioned in the story wouldn't be enough even with adding more characters to talk about it. You would quite literally need to design from the ground up a play version using More's 2 books as a base and deciding how you want to go from there.
ReplyDeleteYes a lot of novels today can be turned into movies. However, you need to remember that most of those novels have more too them than just two people talking back and forth. While there are one or two person plays in existence, most of them have a spread of things in them. For example, Krapp's last tape, a one person play, has comedy and drama scattered about the story of one man. The audience doesnt get all the details, but the play is clearly focused on him. A play focused on a place as opposed to a person would be like trying to tell the audience of a place most of them have no connection to at all. While they might know what it stands for and wish for something like that, Utopia is different for everyone so the play would probably divide the audience and the performers immediately if it wasn't carefully designed.
While I have nothing against attempting to make a play based on Utopia, I just think it would be an uphill battle trying to make it work. I wish you luck if you do try.
The idea that Utopia is lacking in a central figure in order to make it a play seems to be recurrent in many blog posts. I like your idea for creative engagement, that we as a class could script this, but it would be very difficult to do. Utopia is essentially a work about a system of running things. Because there are no real central characters, a play can't exactly be written about it - but I'd be curious to see one that focuses on More, like you suggest, or Giles - the play could focus on their reactions and ideas while writing/reading the work. Great post! :)
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