Fifteen years ago I got fed up with hearing myself blabber about how I planned to write a play and actually sat my butt down and wrote my first script. An important impetus for my shift from fantasy to reality, from wannabe to doing it, was the 1959 memoir Act [...] Continue reading »
Kafka Meets Seattle History
Kafka’s famous 1914 novel The Trial has been adapted into a disturbing play by Oregon Shakespeare Festival stalwart Kenneth Albers, and the small and intrepid New Century Theatre Company (NCTC) is currently giving it a memorable world premiere. It’s rare for the venue of a play to loom as large as the [...] Continue reading »
‘Old Hats’ by Two Old Pros
What I am about to say would be heresy for many writers: I saw nine plays in New York last week and my favorite was the one with the least dialog. In fact if you typed that show’s dialog in traditional script format I doubt you would need more than [...] Continue reading »
Seinfeld, with Friends, Getting Coffee
In a recent post I wrote about Jerry Seinfeld’s devotion to the craft of comedy writing and delivery. As I was researching that post I learned about Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, an innovative, understated Web series that Seinfeld created and produced last year. His framing device is to drive a [...] Continue reading »
‘Seagull’ Soars at ACT Theatre
I revere Anton Chekhov (1860-1904). I have studied all his plays and seen many productions of his “big four”: The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard. Because I place his scripts, along with Stratfordian Willie’s, at the pinnacle of dramatic writing, I always take my seat with more [...] Continue reading »
The Dues Artists Pay
Perseverance is the most important trait in an artist’s toolbox. A close second, and closely related, is resilience. Picture the boxer in the late rounds, somehow lifting himself up from the mat while aware that the next punch that snaps his head back might knock him out. Last summer in [...] Continue reading »
Bill Murray’s SavvyShack
The New York Times recently published an insightful interview with the actor Bill Murray. Part of the publicity surrounding the release of his latest film, “Hyde Park on Hudson,” the interview ranged far wider. The 62-year-old actor appears blessed (though it can at times also be a curse) with a [...] Continue reading »
John Lahr Exits ‘The New Yorker’ after 20 Years
Theatre critics and playwrights – make that critics and artists in general – can sometimes look like cocks warily lunging at each other while entertaining onlookers. I find critics, the better ones anyway, to be more teacher and guide than adversary. But perhaps that’s easy for me to say; I [...] Continue reading »
LBJ Looms Large on Ashland Stage
Robert Schenkkan, Seattle playwright and Pulitzer Prize winner (The Kentucky Cycle, 1992), has written a gripping new play about the first year of Lyndon Baines Johnson’s presidency. The play, titled All the Way, begins with the assassination of President Kennedy and takes us through the 1964 Democratic convention. (Later [...] Continue reading »
Dramatic Economics
How much should playwrights worry about cast size when they write a script? This unsavory question is driven by the economic mess that has imperiled nonprofit theatres in recent decades. Writers are advised to keep casts small. The smaller the cast, the less production expense, the better chance of getting [...] Continue reading »