Why Plays Are Performed and Not Read Sounds, sight, emotion, actors are all pieces of a play that are signs. Signs that let you know this a performance, rather than words on a page. As I read the play there are moments within those scenes that made me try to envision it and depict what it could look like. I pictured characters’ faces, bodies, voices, attitude, and overall personality, but to turn those ideas and visions into reality is in another sense a type of revelation. In August Wilson’s, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, as much as the characters leap off the page through reading the play, you get a better understanding of August Wilson’s story through the performance of actors on a stage with props, lighting, and sound effects.
