Intermission
a creative coffee break from writing the play

Caridad Svich
Philadelphia, PA, USA
Birthday Unknown

…I write for the body in space, and I write for the voice in space—so it’s not meant to be literary; you’re not supposed to get it in readings. You’re supposed to get it in performance. That’s what plays are supposed to be. They’re meant to be performed.

Cartography Lessons with Caridad Svich, by Justin Maxwell, American Theatre Magazine, July/August 2009

Other playwrights born in July include:

Aphra Behn
Wye, England
10 July 1640

Susan Keating Glaspell
Davenport, Iowa, USA
1 July 1876

Jean Kerr
Scranton, Pennsylvania, USA
10 July 1922

Ann Jellicoe
Middlesbrough, Yorkshire, England
15 July 1927

Nathalie Sarraute
Ivanovo-Voznesensk (near Moscow)
18 July 1902

Rosie Malek-Yonan
Tehran, Iran
4 July 1965

And someone else
who is
unknown to us.

Theresa Rebeck
Playwright
Birthday Unknown
Kenwood, Ohio, USA

…if I had spent the past 15 years being a writer, assuming that then when I got around to it I would suddenly become a doctor, most people would consider me delusional.

Free Fire Zone, by Theresa Rebeck, p.1

Lillian Hellman
Born: June 20, 1905
New Orleans, Louisiana, USA
Died: June 30, 1984
Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, USA

We’re going to be quoting Lillian Hellman every day this month in honor of her 105th birday!

FYI: This year a new award in honor of playwright Lillian Hellman was created by The Committee for Recognizing Women in Theatre: The Lilly Award. The first awards were presented May 24, 2010 at Playwrights Horizon and celebrated women playwrights, directors, designers and advocates in theatre.

She warned me it was going to be tough to be a woman working in the theater. She said I’d need to write like the devil and also act like one when necessary. She was right on all counts.

what Marsha Norman said Lillian Hellman told her on working in the theatre

The Plays

• Another Part of the Forest, 1946
• The Autumn Garden, 1951
• Candide, 1957 (Tony Nominee, Best Book Musical)
• The Children’s Hour, 1934
• Days to Come, 1936
• Lark, 1955 (adaptation)
• The Little Foxes, 1941
• Montserrat, 1950 (adaptation)
• My Mother, My Father and Me, 1960
• Regina, 1949
• The Searching Wind, 1944
• Toys in the Attic, 1960 (Tony Nominee, Best Play)
• Watch on the Rhine, 1941

Some of the Films

• The Chase, 1966 (based on Horton Foote’s play)
• The Children’s Hour, 1961 (based on her play)
• Dark Angel, 1935
• Dead End, 1937
• The Little Foxes, 1941 (based on her play; nominated for Oscar)
• The North Star, 1943 (nominated for Oscar)
• The Searching Wind, 1946 (based on her play)
• The Spanish Earth, 1937 (uncredited)
• These Three, 1936 (based on her play, The Children’s Hour)
• Watch on the Rhine, 1943 (based on her play)
• The Westerner, 1940 (uncredited)

Suzan Lori-Parks
Fort Knox, Kentucky
May 10, 1963

A play begins with characters. It never starts with an idea. I think some people say, “Oh, I have a great idea; I want to talk about the homeless problem.” And then they write a play about homelessness. But my plays never start with an idea about anything, and it is only way, way late in the game that I figure out the question: So what’s the play about? And not even then…I always start with characters, sometimes a word.

Interview with Suzan-Lori Parks
Callaloo, Vol. 19, No 2, Spring 1996, p.315

Clare Boothe Luce
April 10, 1903
New York, New York, USA

…I was afraid that if a new production went badly, the play would be officially buried. But it seems to have more vitality than I thought. Some things don’t change: People still have affairs; divorces still hurt; there are still women who lead empty, idle lives. I’m an old theatre girl, and I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

Clare Boothe Luce
April 22, 1973
On Harry, and Henry and Ike and Mr. Shaw
By Martha Weinman Lear
New York Times

Marguerite Duras
April 4, 1914
Gia-Dinh, French Indochina (now Vietnam)

Writing was the only thing that populated my life and made it magic. I did it. Writing never left me.

Writing
by
Marguerite Duras
(French translation by Mark Polizzotti)

Theresa Rebeck
Birthday Unknown
Kenwood, Ohio, USA

There is a Native American saying, “It takes a thousand voices to tell a single story.” And Walter Cronkite told us, “In seeking truth, you have to get both sides of the story.”

It’s time to hear both sides, to hear all voices, to build a culture where stories are told by both men and women. That is the way the planet is going to survive, and it’s the way we are going to survive.

Theresa Rebeck
from the annual
ART/NY Curtain Call presentation
Laura Pels Theater
March 15, 2010

Jane Chambers
Columbia, South Carolina, USA
March 27, 1937

I’ve come out of many experiences, and I want to write about all of them.

Jane Chambers
Play’s Theme: Lesbians With Out Apology,
New York Times, Feb 8, 1981

Stephen Sondheim
New York, New York, USA
March 22, 1930

Art, in itself, is an attempt to bring order out of chaos, and certainly puzzles. The nice thing about doing a crossword puzzle is you know there is a solution. I also like murder mysteries for the same reason. Again, the puzzle murder mysteries, the Agatha Christie kinds of things where you know that it’s all going to be neatly wound up at the end and everything’s going to make logical sense. I think that’s why murder mysteries are popular, is this defense against chaos.

Stephen Sondheim
Academy of Achievement
Interview July 5, 2005

Also don’t miss the American Theatre Wing Interview

Kylie Tennant
Manly, New South Wales, Australia
March 12, 1912

Tether your dragon, man. It’s breathing fire.

so Deakin said in
Tether a Dragon
by
Kylie Tennant

Anna Cora Ogden Mowatt Ritchie
Bordeaux, France
March 5, 1819

Get out of my house, you owdacious–you ruined–you abimi young woman! You will corrupt all my family. Good gracious! don’t touch me,–don’t come near me. Never let me see your face after to-morrow. Pack.

Mrs. Tiffany to Gertrude
Fashion (1845)
by
Anna Cora Ogden

Ketti Frings
Columbus, Ohio, U.S.A.
February 28, 1909

I was not too bruised by its lack of success. You can only learn from your mistakes.

Ketti Frings on the
cool reception of her play
Mr. Sycamore, 1942