Intermission
a creative coffee break from writing the play

Carson McCullers
Columbus, Georgia, U.S.A.
February 19, 1917

There are all the family around and I can’t seem to tell them. I wish I had written it down on the typewriter beforehand. I try to tell them and the words just—die.

Frankie, p.96
Member of the Wedding
By Carson McCullers

Nancy Oliver
Syracuse, NY, U.S.A.
February 9, 1955

See…all I really want to do is read. All I’ve ever wanted to do is read. But nobody understands…Really. My mother practically strip-searched me tonight. I had to sneak this one in my underwear. Don’t you think that’s ridiculous?

Julie to Charisse, p.11
Social Life
by Nancy Oliver

Kathy Najimy
San Diego, CA, USA
February 6, 1957

… we thought we’ll write it and no one will like it but us, but then the only rule was that we have to really like it. We did it in very small little cabarets and clubs and theaters in San Diego. People seemed to really like it. We kept extending and extending. So then – I was working for the phone company at the time. For AT&T. I put in for a transfer to New York. It came through and I said to Mo, we’re going to New York.

Kathy Najimy
on writing The Kathy and Mo Show
Interview PopEntertainment.com, Feb 11, 2007.

Sarah Kane
Brentwood, Essex, U.K.
February 3, 1971
(Left us: Feb 20, 1999)

You can’t second-guess audiences and you can’t control how they will respond to any given theatrical experience. I wouldn’t want to try to create a reaction, but you have to know what you want to do to them. What I think about when writing is how I want it to affect me and the best way to achieve that.

Sarah Kane
Rage and Reason: Women Playwrights on Playwriting, Methuen Drama, 1997.

Anton Chekhov
Jan 29, 1860
Taganrog, Rostov Oblast, Russia

I have written a play on four sheets of paper. It will take fifteen to twenty minutes to act….It is much better to write small things than big ones: they are unpretentious and successful…. What more would you have? I wrote my play in an hour and five minutes.

Letter from Anton Chekhov
to Madame M.V. Kiselyov
January 14, 1887

That’s why I wrote the play – for myself – to be inspired in some way. You know, to pick garbage up off the road, go to Rwanda to write a play about the genocide, to continuously do things that not only improve myself but improve the world. That’s why I write and I just hope that people in the theatre coming to see the play will be inspired to do whatever they feel they need to do to improve themselves and the world. I just truly hope it moves and challenges and inspires other people to do better.

Playwright Katori Hall
from an interview about her play
The Mountaintop
Whatsonstage.com, August 10, 2009

Replying has really become a lost art.

Jordon to Jessica
in
Post Wave Spectacular
by Diana Grisanti

Of over 200 playwrights’ birthdays posted on Intermission in 2009 only seven contained the birthdays of women playwrights. That’s ridiculous, isn’t it? The list I have been using clearly skews in one direction and so I’m committing 2010 to balancing out that list. It’s not as easy as it sounds because playwrights, especially those who are women, are not always wiki’d along with their birthdays. Hmmm….

We start off with the first known woman dramatist:

Hrotsvith von Gandersheim
Germany
c935 – 973 (precise dates unknown)

According to the Bloomsbury Guide to Women’s Literature she was “best-known for her six plays: Gallicanus; Dulcititius; Callimachus; Abrahm; Paphnutius; and Sapientia (translated as The Plays, 1923, and The Plays of Hrotswitha of Gandersheim, 1970).

Also known as Hrotsvitah, Hroswitha, Hrosvit, Roswitha. She wrote in Latin.

I did not dare lay bare my impulse and intention to any of the wise by asking for advice, lest I be forbidden to write because of my clownishness. So in complete secrecy, as it were furtively…I tried as best I might to produce a text of even the slightest use.

Hrosvitha
as translated and quoted in
Pythagoras’s Trousers

• Ulrich Becher
  January 2, 1910
  Berlin, Germany
• Caspar MB “Cas” Bass
  January 6, 1818
  Netherlands
• Peter Barnes
  January 10, 1931
  Bow, London, U.K.
• Christopher Hampton
  January 26, 1946
  Faial, Azores
• Ken Hill
  January 28, 1948
  Birmingham, England, U.K.

Yes. Apparently he defeats all comers with an impregnable combination of tediousness and avarace. It is darkly rumoured that he cannot resist rifling the pockets of those who fall unconscious at the monotony of his anecdotes.

Rimbaud, Total Eclipse, p.15
by Christopher Hampton

Christopher Durang
January 2, 1949
Montclair, New Jersey, USA

Having intelligence allows one to analyze problems and to make sense of one’s life. This is difficult to achieve but with perserverance and persistence it is possible…not even to get out of bed i the morning. To sleep. To sleep, perchance to dream, to take thephone off the book and simply be unreachable. This is less dramatic than suicide, but more reversible.

Matt, The Marriage of Betty and Boo, p.361
by Christopher Durang

(Smith & Kraus, Complete Full-Length Plays, 1975-1995, ISBN 1-67525-017-9)

• Ossie Davis
  December 18, 1917
  Cogdell, Georgia, USA
• Christopher Fry
  December 18, 1907
  Bristol, England, UK
• Jean Racine
  December 22, 1639
  La Ferté-Milon, France

La douleur qui se tait n’en est que plus funeste.

Andromaque (III, 3)
by Jean Racine

Noel Coward
December 16, 1899
Teddington, London, United Kingdom

I was trained when I was very young as a show-off, and I’ve continued triumphantly until this moment.

Noel Coward talks to Patrick Garland, BBC1, December 7, 1969.