It's the Intermission
A Creative Coffee Break

Why are my children so different? So odd? So hard to shop for?

Helene
The New Century
by Paul Rudnick

Stay awake and together we’ll face a new day.

Tilly as played by Vera Stark
By the Way, Meet Vera Stark
by Lynn Nottage

The hermit was placed in the landscape exactly as one might place a pottery gnome. And there he lived out his life as a garden ornament.

Hannah
Arcadia
by Tom Stoppard

You think your life is a TV special?

Agent Carl Hanratty
Catch Me If You Can
Book by Terrance McNally
Music and Lyrics by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman

I periodically have to return to the South to renew my sense of horror.

Carson
Carson McCullers Talks About Love
by
Suzanne Vega

I’m so glad I came.

Sally
Follies
Book by James Goldman
Music and Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim

August 1, 1925—May 13, 2011

DAVID: I’ll never forget it. You’re a heroine, Mrs. Pedersen.

DEBORAH: No, I’m not, it was totally hysterical, and don’t you ever, ever be so foolish as to—

DAVID: One look at you and they all put down their guns. You must have an amazing power—

DEBORAH: Yes, money! I was carrying travellers’ cheques, why else do you think they co-operated?

Act 2, Scene 3
Deborah’s Daughter
by
Pam Gems

And the irony is, all theatre is political in a profound way. Why? Because it is subversive. It can, without resort to the vote or the gun, alter climate, change opinion, laugh prejudice out the door, soften hearts, awaken perception. Of course it can, because humans learn not by precept (the exhortations of so much political theatre) but by imprinting. Yell at a child to be quiet and you are teaching him to yell.

Not in Our Name, by Pam Gems, The Guardian, May 17, 2003

You can’t play a part that’s yet to be written.

Joy in
Chasing Ophelia
by Doug Schutte

The missing ingredient was the way to get Rose in as Rose. Easy if you know Rose…From the front of the house. Once in, once down the aisle, where else would she do battle? On the ground she wanted as her own: the stage…I loved the theatricality of that entrance. I looked for other places to use it in Gypsy—not that I believe in theatricality for its own sake any more than I believed in style for style’s sake. Content determines form, theatricality highlights a purpose. Louise is never seen in anything but pants until the moment she puts on a dress to become Gypsy Rose Lee. That’s a theatrical moment but the reason she has only been in pants until then is that, until then, she hasn’t existed as a daughter Rose can use.

Original Story
by Arthur Laurents

Security is a kind of death, I think, and it can come to you in a storm of royalty checks beside a kidney-shaped pool in Beverly Hills or anywhere at all that is removed from the conditions that made you an artist, if that’s what you are or were or intended to be.

The Catastrophe of Success
by Tennessee Williams