I was talking to a novelist/playwright yesterday about submitting plays to theaters versus submitting manuscripts to literary agents/publishers and he was saying that the theaters he submitted to often failed to send him even a form response to his queries. In general, he found literary agents/publishers to be more courteous in this regard. As someone […]
I believe that when someone adapts a piece of art from one genre to another, they should really take to heart the concept of adaptation. The tranfer from one genre to another shouldn’t be seamless; otherwise, why adapt at all? People who complain, for example, about books being adapted into movies, quibbling with this missing […]
June 15, 2011 at 12:54 pm
Recently, a good friend of mine watched an acquaintance give a reading of a short piece at a New York bookstore. I asked how it went, and she replied, “Boring. He read in a monotone voice off a sheet of paper and went on forever and ever.” As someone who’s sat through my own share of dull readings, I sympathized […]
June 15, 2011 at 12:50 pm
Watching the Tony Awards on Sunday, I was particularly impressed by the dazzling stage horses of War Horse. It reminded me of when I lived in New York and directed a visiting aunt and her family to Avenue Q. I knew it was a risky suggestion, but when I talked to her after the musical, […]
I, like many people, am interested in the fate of Jared L. Loughner, who attempted to assassinate Gabrielle Giffords and succeeded in killing six others. Recently, a federal court deemed Loughner mentally incompetent to stand trial. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/26/us/26loughner.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp As a human-being, I’m of course appalled at the idea that this man shouldn’t receive some […]
Today’s discussion regarding color blind casting reminded me of the famous recast of one of my favorite plays, August: Osage County. In the play’s second full year on Broadway, in an effort presumably to bring a new audience to AOC, the producers brought in Phylicia Rashad to play the role of Violet Weston. I remember telling […]
These are two of my favorite actresses. I first saw them in film: Linney in You Can Count on Me and Blanchett in Elizabeth. But I didn’t really understand the enormity of their talent until I saw them onstage. I saw Linney in The Crucible, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Sight Unseen and Time Stands Still. I saw Blanchett only once […]
This spring I taught an Intro to Creative Writing course. In the beginning, I asked my students how many had seen a play in the last three years. An alarming number kept their hands down. By the end of the course, however, I was surprised when three of my very best writers told me how much they preferred playwriting to […]
I’m an unlikely source to post anything about love (much less a love poem), but I’m getting married in about a week and was charged with choosing the readings for the ceremony. After slogging through the obligatory Biblical passages (I’m Catholic and my fiancee is Episcopal, which is kind of like Diet Catholic), I was […]
My best friend’s house was struck by lightning. Twice. In the same year. The recent storms in the south and midwest gave me occasion to remember this. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/26/us/26storm.html?hp I grew up in a small town in Texas, close to the Gulf of Mexico, so neither my best friend nor I am a stranger to severe […]
