Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been categorized as “Blog”
Sir Tom Stoppard is another of my favorite (or should I spell it “favourite?”) playwrights. I adore his wordplay, his puns, his theatricality. In a 1999 interview, Sir Tom summarised: “I think theater ought to be theatrical … you know, shuffling the pack in different ways so that it’s — there’s always some kind of ambush involved in the experience. …
I came across this wonderful piece by Mary Ruefle on Granta. The topic is menopause, for which women are inadequately prepared, in my opinion. It rings true. “Menopause is adolescence all over again, only you are an adult and have to go out into the world every day in ways you did not have to when you were in school, …
Theresa Rebeck’s career is a case study in being fearless. I came across this interview with her where she discusses just that: “Go Back and Reread Machiavelli” Rebeck has never been one to shy away from a challenge, and it shows. In addition to being an award-winning writer, she was named one of Newsweek’s “150 Fearless Women in the World” …
I’m reading Soraya Chemaly’s new book as part of my research for “Bystanders.” In “Bystanders,” two very angry women disagree on the appropriate response to a school shooting that has devastated them both. I’m going to quote from the book: “Anger is an assertion of rights and worth. It is communication, equality, and knowledge. It is intimacy, acceptance, fearlessness, embodiment, …
An LA Times interview with playwright Rajiv Joseph, author of “Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo,” yields his very interesting thoughts on playwriting as translation. The following is an excerpt: “Writing, it seems to me, can translate the unknown into the known, the mysterious into the lucid, the abstract into the concrete. And even if it doesn’t, a writer can …
Tennessee Williams is one of my favorite playwrights, and is one of America’s best-loved and most-performed playwrights. I especially admire his facility with metaphor and his titles, which are at once evocative, provocative and intriguing: the exact combination you want in a play title. Over at Poetry Foundation, I found a poem by Williams, read by the author. Titled, “On …
I think a lot about how much I love theatre, and why that is. Playwright Jiehae Park gets at one of the big reasons: the audience’s requirement to be present. “Being in the life that I lead, I think I can be sort of half present. I’ll be watching TV and on my laptop at the same time. Or at …
In doing research for “Bystanders,” I’ve come across some interesting thought pieces. Consider the question: How can a first person shooter consider himself a victim? That topic is addressed over on Aeon, and I’m republishing the essay with permission here: A lot of terrible things happen to video-game characters. In the early days of the form, Italian plumbers were squashed …
As I finish up my latest draft of The Law of Attraction, I’ve been thinking a lot about comedy. Here is a list of almost a dozen ways to be funny, culled from UnCabaret Free Range Comedy in Southern California: 1) JOKES – Jokes are great if your mind works that way. But if it doesn’t, don’t panic. There are …
“I don’t believe in it (writer’s block). All writing is difficult. The most you can hope for is a day when it goes reasonably easily. Plumbers don’t get plumber’s block, and doctors don’t get doctor’s block; why should writers be the only profession that gives a special name to the difficulty of working, and then expects sympathy for it?” ~Philip …