What is the responsibility of the writer?

“To speak from a place of genuine emotion, and to evoke in others a sense of humanness.” – Nathaniel Bellows, PEN America interview

Shouldn’t be that hard to do, yet …

It’s not logistically conceivable to take Mariah McCarthy’s class at this time, but I love this bit from her workshop pitch:

“Write the play you want to write.
It’s theatre. It’s already impractical. You might as well do what you want.
And the most resonant work comes from the heart, not from compromising your imagination before you’ve even begun.”

-ag

Inspired by the real life case of convicted and executed murderer Ruth Snyder, Sophie Treadwell’s 1928 play Machinal is on the list of plays under consideration for future production.

The 2014 Broadway revival received four Tony Award nominations, all for design. Here’s a clip – https://youtu.be/_RU63DBTMP4 from the Roundabout production and here is the entire show of a recent production at Savannah College of Art and Design, which at quick glance, appears unusually tolerable. https://youtu.be/obVRAoZkvxA

Here’s a .pdf of the script online: http://www.ciaranhinds.eu/pdf/machinal.pdf

-ag