| Description |
xiv, 218 pages ; 20 cm |
| Contents |
On interruptions -- Umbrellas on state -- On the loss of sword fights -- On titles - comedy and tragedy -- On titles with participles -- On titles and paintings -- On Andy Goldsworthy, theatrical structures and the male orgasm -- Don't send your characters to reform school -- Should characters have last names? -- People in plays -- An Essay in praise of smallness -- Plays of ideas -- The Drama of the sentence -- Investing in the character -- The Future, storytelling and secrets -- On Ovid -- Miller and Williams: or, morality and mystery plays -- Calvino and lightness -- Satyr plays inside tragedies -- On knowing -- The Necessary -- Can one stage privacy? -- On neologisms -- Bad poets make good playrights? -- The Place of rhyme in theater and is it banished forever? -- On nakedness and sight lines -- The Four humors: an esssay in four parts -- Greek masks and Bell's palsy -- Greek masks and star casting -- Subtext to the left of the work, not underneath the work -- On Maria Irene Fornes -- What do you want what do you want what do you want -- Non-adverbial acting -- Being in a pure state vs. playing an action -- Speech acts and the imagination -- Everyone is famous in a parade -- Conflict is drama? -- The Language of clear steps -- The Death of the ensemble -- The Decline of big families and the decline of cast sizes -- Color-blind casting; or, why are there so many white people on stage? -- Eurydice in Germany -- Eating what we see -- Dogs and children on stage -- On fire alarms. |
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On sleeping in the theater -- Wabi-sabi -- Is one person an audience? -- Chimpanzees and audiences -- On pleasure -- Reading aloud -- Buber and the stage -- God as audience: a non-syllogism -- Do playwrights love the audience and should they? -- Hungry ghosts, gardens, and doing plays in New York -- Advice to dead playwrights from contemporary experts -- What of aesthetic hatred, and is it useful? -- More failure and more bad plays -- It's beautiful, but I don't like it -- Is there an objective standard of taste? -- Why I hate the word whimsy. And why I hate the word quirky. -- A Scholarly treatise on the parents of writers -- William Hazlitt in an age of digital reproduction -- The Strange case of Cats -- Can you be avant-garde if you're dead?; or, the strange case of e.e. cummngs and Thornton Wilder -- The American play as audition for other genres -- O'Neill and Picasso -- Confessions of a twelve-year-old has-been -- Is there an ethics of comedy, and is it bad when comedies make people laugh? -- On writing plays for audiences who do not speak English -- The Age of commentary -- Writing and waiting -- Theater as a preparation for death -- Watching my mother die on stage -- On lice -- Mothers on stage -- On motherhood and stools (the furniture kind) -- Must one enjoy one's children? -- The Meaning of twins on stage -- Is playwriting teachable?: the example of Paula Vogel -- Bad plays and original sin -- A Love note to dramaturgs -- Children as dramaturgs -- Democracy and writing a play -- What about all that office space? -- Ceilings on stage -- Storms on stage -- Snow on stage -- Gobos, crickets, and false exits: three hobgoblins of false mimesis -- Oh the proscenium and oh the curtain -- Exits and entrances and oh the door -- Theatrical is a dirty word for architects -- Archaeology and erasers -- On standard dramatic formatting -- On the summer Olympics and moving at the same time -- The First day of rehearsal -- On watching Three Sisters in the dark -- The Audience is not a camera; or, how to protect your audience from death -- On endings -- On community theater. |
| Summary |
"One hundred incisive, idiosyncratic essays on life and theater from a major American playwright "Don't send your characters to reform school!" pleads Sarah Ruhl in one of her essays. With titles as varied as "On Lice" to "On Sleeping in Theaters" and "Motherhood and Stools (The Furniture Kind)," these essays are artful meditations on life in the arts and joyous jumbles of observations on everything in between. The pieces combine admonition, celebration, inquiry, jokes, assignments, entreaties, prayers, and advice: honest reflections distilled from years of working in the theater. They offer candid accounts of what it is like to be a mother and an artist, along with descriptions of how Ruhl's children's dreams, jokes, and songs work themselves into her writing. 100 Essays is not just a book about the theater. It is a map of a very particular artistic sensibility and a guide for anyone who has chosen an artist's life"--Provided by publisher. |
| Subject |
Essays.
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| Added Title |
One hundred essays I don't have time to write. |
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Hundred essays I don't have time to write. |
| ISBN |
9780865478145 (hardback) |
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0865478147 (hardback) |
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