January 2012
8 posts
Me: You're getting a haircut?
Adrian: Danielle, for a bleeding heart Democrat it's amazing how much you hate change.
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Passing the Bechdel Test
Me: Alison, I'm sorry, but I'm really enjoying Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. A lot.
Alison: That's okay.
Me: But you hated it.
Alison: Well, I read it in the worst class I've ever taken.
Elena: I really want you to read The Marriage Plot. That way we can talk about it.
Me: Okay, I'll read it next. I'll read it next even though I have two books waiting for me at the library.
Alison: Have you read Devil in the White City yet?
Me: Not yet. It's in my stack. I think Elena's going to borrow it from you before I read it, though. Elena, do you want it right now?
Elena: No.
Me: Oh, that's right, you're reading something. You're reading Plato's Republic.
Alison: Oh. We're reading Plato's Republic now, are we?
fieldtriptheatre:
“Stopgap” was mentioned in New Play Daily on Thursday. We’re honored to be included in the same breath as Woolly Mammoth and Jason Grote.
Field Trip Theatre is so awesome, guys.
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Field Trip Theatre: Inciting Incident →
Read about the origins of my play “Stopgap” on the Field Trip Theatre blog.
fieldtriptheatre:
By Danielle Mohlman
This play started as a joke. It’s jarring to look at that sentence and then see where the play is today. But it’s something that I have to face. Because it’s the truth.
I started toying around with May and Robert as characters in July of 2010. I had just finished...
Field Trip Theatre: Tangible Connections →
Director Elena Hight writes about my play “Stopgap.” I love dramaturgy.
fieldtriptheatre:
By Elena Hight
When I first read Stopgap, I remembering thinking how refreshing it was to read a play about same-sex marriage that wasn’t just about equality. Instead, it attempts to track how love constantly binds people together in strange and unconventional ways. Not only that, but...
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I went to Panera to get out of the house and work on this. But there aren’t any outlets for me to plug in my laptop and my computer is dangerously close to running out of battery and I really haven’t gotten much done on this at all since I arrived. Because this nerd thinks that chain coffee shops like Panera want you to write the next great whatever at their establishment....
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This is from an advertisement for the premiere of “Smash.” In what universe does the target audience of this show know when the Super Bowl is?
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#52: "And Baby Makes Seven" by Paula Vogel
Okay, I have a confession to make. I actually read this play back in February. And the only reason I read it (aside from the fact that I love Paula Vogel; teach me your ways, Paula!) was because I was afraid that I was writing the same play. I thought that I was stealing her premise without ever having read a word. Fortunately, that was not the case.
This surreal (yet pseudo-naturalistic)...
December 2011
18 posts
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#51: "Jeffrey" by Paul Rudnick
“Jeffrey” is the AIDS play that I didn’t know I was missing. Coming in just after gay Catholic plays, plays that deal with the AIDS epidemic are my favorite genre of drama. That sounds flippant; I should explain. I’ve devoured and analyzed “Angels in America,” “The Baltimore Waltz,” and “The Normal Heart.” I genuinely believe that...
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#50: "Good People" by David Lindsay-Abaire
I love a good hometown hero. Especially of the playwright variety. Sam Shepherd is my hometown hero; those coyotes he described in the stage directions of “True West” were practically in my backyard growing up. David Lindsay-Abaire is my adopted-home hero. A Boston boy. Or, as he says in this play “a mouthie from Southie.”
I felt like I knew these characters....
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#49: "The Seafarer" by Connor McPherson
While this publication of the play has a pretty cool cover, featuring a card that is on fire, this drama wasn’t engaging. It was the kind of play that I really wanted to enjoy. In fact, I was trying to will myself to be invested in the witty Irish bar talk. But that’s all that this play was to me. Irish bar talk.
Perhaps it was the dialogue (all of the characters sounded the...
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#48: "Doubt" by John Patrick Shanley
I bought a copy of this play when my Borders was going out of business. I was a fan of this play in theory before I even started reading it. First off, it was about Catholics. A lapsed one myself, I love a good play about Catholics. Second of all, I had seen the movie. I know, I’m one of those people. But for whatever reason, it took me a long while to get around to reading this...
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Are you following Field Trip Theatre on tumblr? You should.
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Me: Now that I know that [name withheld] is straight, I have to stop flirting with him.
Jamila: No, I think you have to stop flirting with him because he has a girlfriend.
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#47: "Mary" by Thomas Bradshaw
In an attempt to make my 52 books goal again this year, I’m breaking my 2011 rule: I’m reviewing the last six plays that I read this year. I know it’s not the same, but come on, I’m a playwright. This is my world, an extension of my education. So I’m sharing some of that with you all.
I picked up this play at a sidewalk sale last summer at The Studio Theatre....
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#46: "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell
I borrowed this book from my Malcolm Gladwell-loving friend Jenn. While I enjoyed the intelligent yet conversational tone that Gladwell has perfected, I wasn’t as drawn in by this book as the last book of his I read. It wasn’t “Blink.”
But then again, I’m much more interested in neuroscience and decision making than I am in explanations of success in...
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#45: "The New York Regional Mormon Singles...
The thing that I really enjoyed about this book was that Elna Baker never traded her own values for a laugh. I’m not religious in the slightest (sorry, Catholic family members!) so the fact that Baker’s humorous memoir is about her 20s as a single Mormon woman doesn’t particularly register on my theology scale. But I’m a big advocate of being proud of your quirks and...
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#44: "Wendy and the Lost Boys" by Julie Salamon
Remember when I said that “Free for All” was the best book I’ve read in a long time? (And, if I’ve spoken to you about it in person, how it’s the best book about theatre I’ve ever read?) Well, this biography is now taking good ol’ Joe Papp’s place.
Once I got past the uninteresting (for me) chapter about Wendy’s grandparents and parents...
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#43: "Peter Pan" by J.M. Barrie
I decided to read this book because I’m in the midst of writing a play adaptation of the Peter Pan story. Up until this point, I had been writing based on the memory of the story. My repeated exposure to the Mary Martin musical and the Disney cartoon as a child had impressed the boy-meets-girl-boy-defeats-pirates story into my subconscious. The idea of Never Growing Up carried into my...
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#42: "The Hours" by Michael Cunningham
I don’t know why, but I wasn’t expecting a whole lot out of this book. I picked it up at a library used book sale and bought it because 1) it had the coveted “Winner of the Pulitzer Prize” imprint and 2) my friend Megan has repeatedly listed it among her favorite books. So I feel like I should have had high expectations going in. Instead, I grabbed it as an...
The Books They Gave Me: Capote. →
thebookstheygaveme:
Nessa and I bonded during our junior year of high school over books (we couldn’t keep our noses out of them) and shared dislike of our boring rest-stop of a town (a dozen gas stations and fast food joints split in two by a rushing freeway). Every day on the bus we’d talk about the books we…
November 2011
13 posts
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#41: "Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me (And...
I can’t remember the last time I paid full price for a book. I gave up buying books about a year and a half ago, while I was still an employee of Barnes & Noble. The temptation was too much for my wallet — 35% off is not as good as it seems when you can get it for free at the library. I now only buy books used, after much deliberation and usually only when there’s a...
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#40: "Blink" by Malcolm Gladwell
I read this book in three days. My friend Jenn loaned it to me when she saw “How We Decide” on my desk with the caveat, “That book is good. This one’s better.” I hate when people do that.
She was right.
While I would love for someone to write a book about how we make large decisions (if a good one exists, please tell me about it), both Lehrer and Gladwell...
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#39: "Prime Green: Remembering the Sixties" by...
This book was good, but not as good as its reviews.
“If Hemingway had lived through the sixties he might have written this book.” - Wall Street Journal
“Stone makes a perfect guide to this tumultuous decade.” - Denver Post
And my personal favorite:
“Think A Moveable Feast on acid.” - Men’s Vogue
But the main reason I wanted to read this book was...
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#38: "How We Decide" by Jonah Lehrer
I started reading this book because I have a celebrity crush on Jonah Lehrer. (I mean, he’s technically not a celebrity, but I can’t call it a “writer crush” because I wasn’t terribly into his style.) The guy is a Rhodes Scholar. And he looks like this. I made the mistake of reading the acknowledgments before I finished the book and learned that he’s...
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“I don’t mean to sound elitist because people read what they want to read...”
– My librarian as she helped me request “The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao”
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Not quite Las Vegas.
Ten years ago my family made a pact: on November 11, 2011 we would all meet in Las Vegas. A reunion of sorts; we had calculated our future ages and knew we could be anywhere. I looked forward to it for years. And then completely forgot about it.
And now we’re here. An unexpected combination of circumstance and chance threw us all together. It’s not quite Las Vegas, that grimy...
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I’m now the proud owner of a Library of Congress reader card. My life is complete.
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WatchYes please.
October 2011
8 posts
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Sondheim nerd.
I’m seeing “Saturday Night” at Signature Theatre this afternoon. It’s Sondheim’s happiest show (that is, no one dies) but I’ll probably burst into tears anyway.
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WatchYes please.
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#37: "The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth" by...
I’d like to partially justify my steady decrease in book reviews and point out that I’ve been reading three books at once. This one, I finished this morning. But more on that later.
I’ve been wanting to read this book from the moment it was published. We received a shipment of them at my former place of employment and I remember thinking (and, let’s be honest,...
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#36: "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay"...
I was really worried that I was going to like this book simply for the sake of liking it. I have never had so many people applaud my reading choice unprompted. Or, for that matter, offer their uncensored opinion. (My friend Ryan called it “a guys’ book.” Twice.) I had a lot of trouble getting into it at the beginning, but that Pulitzer Prize kept me reading. I’m a...
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September 2011
12 posts
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#35: "Just Kids" by Patti Smith
I borrowed this book from a friend of mine who, when I told her I had finished it, said, “Didn’t you love it? Didn’t it make you feel like you weren’t a real artist?” I’ve never thought to draw that conclusion, to take pleasure in something that makes me feel like less than who I am. But in a way, she was right. I loved the book. It made me feel the...
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Molly Smith Metzler.
Ten years ago, when I was a student at Boston University, Lee Blessing visited our class and gave us some excellent advice: “Buy a hot tub,” he said. “The hardest thing about being a playwright isn’t the writing, it’s the thinking.” Well, I’m still not a hot tub owner, but I have found that a metaphorical “soak” is an invaluable thing for a writer to have.
- Molly Smith Metzler
This really...