Southern Bookman

Iranian Pulitzer-winning playwright Sanaz Toossi discusses immigrant experience, why she turned to TV

Sanaz Toossi, who won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize this week for her play "English," can't make a living as a playwright despite a burst of success in the theater.

The 31-year-old Iranian-American writer said in a New York Times interview Thursday that she supports herself by writing for television, which allowed her to buy health insurance.

Toossi's now on strike along with other members of the Hollywood writers' union seeking increased pay and benefits from TV streaming. But media landscape changes threaten the abundant era for TV writers that has prevailed for more than a decade.

As cable TV channels and streaming services like Netflix expanded, successful playwrights turned to TV writing to earn lucrative livelihoods.

Yet changes in media technology and audience fragmentation brought reduced compensation for writers in recent years, culminating in the walkout. As the strike continues, TV production has ground to a halt.

Playwright and TV screenwriter Alena Smith in a revealing article for the Los Angeles Review of Books mourns the lack of sustaining theater income for American playwrights.

But TV opportunities for writers have also eroded, as the strike exposes. Smith in a sobering assessment of the future says that the Internet and decline of cable will disrupt the TV landscape.

Smith, a Yale Drama School MFA graduate, said she earned only $13,000 as a playwright over six years, including a federal grant. She supplemented her income with odd jobs before heading to Hollywood, where she created the popular Apple TV+ series "Dickinson."

Broadway and the New York theater once sustained American playwrights like Eugene O'Neil, Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams.

From 1920 to 1940, 130 new plays were produced on Broadway each year, Smith discloses. From 1980 to 2014, the number of new productions plummeted to 14 a year, and will fall even lower as revivals, musicals and juke-box confections vie for declining audiences.

Smith foresees a similar bleak ice age for writers as the TV landscape fragments.

Toossi, the single child of Iranian immigrants, has enjoyed a meteoric rise in the theater, capped by the Pulitzer.

"English," in which four Iranians take English lessons at a storefront school outside of Tehran in order to pass a language proficiency exam, premiered in 2022 at the off-Broadway Atlantic Theater Co.  Before capturing the Pulitzer, Toossi won the Lucille Lortel Award for outstanding Off-Broadway drama.

The play is frequently produced around the country, and Toossi has received commissions from several local theater companies. Her second play, "Wish You Were Here," a comedy about Iranian women's travails in America, was produced in 2022 by the off-Broadway Playwrights Horizon Theater.

But like other playwrights whose first love is the theater, she's turned to TV to survive.

Now that sanctuary is closing too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

United Talent Agency's arts exhibit space elevates Atlanta's cultural scene

Atlanta's receiving a burst of attention as a fine-arts center.

The United Talent Agency, which represents actors, comedians, screenwriters, musicians and artists, recently opened a fine arts exhibit space at its Atlanta office in Midtown.

That's a significant boost for the Atlanta arts scene. The Atlanta gallery is only UTA's second, following an earlier one in Beverly Hills.

The new gallery gives Atlanta artists fresh hopes that they no longer have to go elsewhere to find success.

Yet an article Wednesday in The New York Times Arts section raised doubts about whether the UTA space will benefit Atlanta and Southern artists, or mainly represent those with already established international reputations in New York or Los Angeles.

Writer Tariro Mzezewa's feature titled "Can a Global Talent Agency Make Atlanta an Arts Destination" expressed local arts boosters' expectations that regional artists will find the UTA a nurturing home. 

Displaying a regional awareness, the new gallery opened with Atlanta artist and musician Lonnie Holley's exhibit "The Eyes Were Always on Us," which continues through the end of April.

The black Birmingham native's works examine racial violence in the South, the struggle for civil rights and the perseverance of black culture.

While the new gallery should aspire to encourage regional talent, a mixture of international exhibitions will boost Atlanta's global stature, moving away from from the city's long-established provincialism. As a major international presence, the UTA center can accomplish multiple objectives.

UTA's arts gallery is another jewel for Atlanta's Peachtree cultural corridor, encompassing the Woodruff Arts Center, the Museum of Design Atlanta and the Peachtree branch of the Fulton County Library.

The Fox Theater rises a few blocks south, near the Atlanta History Center's Margaret Mitchell House, which has not yet reopened after shutting down during the Covid epidemic.

While Atlanta's fine arts and entertainment scenes flourish, the city's theater community suffers from declining audiences and funding.

As the city's movie lovers welcomed the imminent reopening of the Tara Theater, the Lyric Theater announced its closure after 42 seasons.

The Lyric's shutdown mobilized the Atlanta theater community, which issued an emergency letter calling for more financial support from corporations, business leaders and local and state government.

Atlanta's theaters are spread across the metro area. The failure of a campaign to build a grand opera house at the Woodruff Arts Center led to the Atlanta Opera Company joining the Braves in moving to Cobb County. The Atlanta Ballet Company also performs outside the city.

While suburban theaters have done admirable work through the years, Midtown's art district needs more live theater along with the Woodruff's Alliance and the Atlanta Shakespeare Tavern.

A new professional company on Peachtree would showcase the original work of regional playwrights, as well as perform worthy plays from elsewhere. Midtown also needs a new music venue for classical, operatic and popular performances

The UTA gallery is only one step in Atlanta fulfilling its artistic dreams.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

400th anniversary of Shakespeare's First Folio celebrated

Shakespeare lovers are marking the 400th anniversary of the playwright's First Folio.

The First Folio, compiled by Shakespeare's fellow King's Men actors John Heminges and Henry Condell, was published in 1623, seven years after Shakespeare's death at age 52

One of Western civilization's central treasures, the First Folio preserved 36 of Shakespeare's plays, 18 of them printed for the first time, including "The Tempest," "12th Night," "Antony and Cleopatra," "Julius Caesar," "The Winter's Tale" and "Macbeth."

Heminges and Condell also established dividing the plays into histories, tragedies and comedies.

Artist Martin Droeshout's famous portrait of Shakespeare appears on the title page, along with a poem by Shakespeare's fellow poet and playwright Ben Jonson. Another Jonson poem calls Shakespeare the "Sweet Swan of Avon."

A total of 235 copies of the First Folio remain, five in the British Library. The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., owns 82, the world's largest collection.

The First Folio set the standard for further editions of Shakespeare's collected plays. The texts, some of them from "foul copies" and production notes, are considered reliable, unlike some of the earlier "quarto" editions.

Mostly unknown workers in London's early printing industry produced one of the world's great masterpieces. Heminges and Condell preserved Shakespeare plays that audiences throughout the world still revere.  

 

 

Discovering Woody Allen's "Interiors"

Fruitlessly searching through streaming land for the Robert Gottlieb-Robert Caro documentary "Turn Every Page," I instead clicked upon "Interiors," Woody Allen's first "serious" drama.

Allen wrote and directed the moody 1978 film, not appearing in the production as he had in his previous comedies. The movie mixes Ingmar Bergman-flavored angst and New York intellectual despair. Not a lot of laughs, except for the unconscious self-mockery of the self-indulgent characters.

The film like Allen's later "Hannah and Her Sisters" explores the wounded love of sisters. Allen's wonderful cast mirrors the generational family dynamics: Maureen Stapleton, Geraldine Page and E.G. Marshall from the old guard and the then new generation of Diane Keaton, Mary Beth Hurt, Kristin Griffith, Richard Jordan and Sam Waterston.

Stapleton's appearance late in the movie as the raucous, earthy Pearl brings a welcome shot of energy to the film after long stretches of pretentious New York intellectual dialogue.

Marshall as the patriarch of the family, a successful New York attorney ready for an adventurous retirement, and Page as his mentally fragile ex-wife, an interior designer, give a masterful performance. Keaton, Hurt, Griffith, Jordan and Waterston rise to match their classical acting. .

Keaton, Allen's paramour and muse, stands out as the reflective Renata, perhaps named in homage to the New Yorker film critic Renata Adler. Her implausible success as a poet contrast with the career disappointments of her sister, Joey, played by Hurt, who resembles another winsome star of the time, Carrie Snodgress. Their conflicted relationship is the film's main dramatic fulcrum.

Waterston's performance as a long-haired counterculture radical amusingly displays the same mannerisms and vocal inflections exhibited in in his long-running role as the district attorney Jack McCoy in "Law and Order." Now 82, Waterston is again playing McCoy in a revived "Law and Order."

After unveiling the film's human relationships with dialogue and restricted settings, Allen impressively shifts to film's visual power with images of the sea, a homage to Bergman. Allen's imagery - a vase, flowers, the beach - complements his theatrical language.

The film ends with Keaton and her sisters looking out the window of their childhood home to a calm sea. They are at last ready to move on with their lives.

Allen was more European than other Hollywood directors. "Interiors" opens a different path for American cinema, sadly rarely followed.

 

 

 

 

Serious drama in spotlight for Broadway's fall season

Broadway makes an exciting comeback this fall with the strongest lineup of serious drama in years.

Pulitzer Prize winners abound. Along with Broadway premieres of Tom Stoppard's "Leopoldstadt"and Martyna Majok's "Cost of Living," the season offers revivals of Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman," August Wilson's "The Piano Lesson," Suzan Lori-Park's "Top Dog Under Dog," Lorraine Hansberry's "A Raisin in the Sun" and Stephen Adlay Guirguis' "Between Riverside and Crazy."

Classic theater will have a moment in the lights with productions of Ibsen's "Hedda Gabbler" and Shakespeare's "The Winter's Tale." 

Musical fans won't be disappointed: Along with a show based on Cameron Crowe's "Almost Famous" and a production of Neil Diamond hits, "1776" will be restaged, giving a colonial-flavored alternative to the long-running "Hamilton."

While Stoppard's examination of his long-ignored Jewish ancestry will be a major Broadway event, I'm most hoping to see "Death of a Salesman" starring Wendell Pierce as the tragic Willy Loman and Sharon D. Clarke as his long-suffering wife. The Broadway production follows Pierce and Clarke's acclaimed performances in the play at London's Young Vic and West End.

With vivid memories of seeing Denzel Washington and Viola Davis in "Fences" on Broadway, I also would love to head to New York for "The Piano Lesson," starring Washington's son, John David Washington as Boy Willie. The star power will reach full illumination with Samuel L. Jackson as Doaker Charles and Danielle Brooks as Berniece. Jackson's wife, the noted actress LaTanya Richardson Jackson, will direct the play.

For years, critics have bemoaned Broadway's domination by shows offering unchallenging entertainment to tourists. This season, serious drama takes the top billing on the Great White Way.

 

 

Farewell, Paul Sorvino

Paul Sorvino in a long and distinguished career never played a movie's leading character.

He was always the passenger on the bus rather than the driver, as he told Charlie Rose.

But Sorvino's characters always exerted a memorable presence.

One of America's most versatile character actors, Sorvino died Monday at age 83 of natural causes at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, according to media reports.

During Sorvino's career, his roles ranged from mobsters and detectives to drug addicts. He even played Henry Kissinger, in the film "Nixon."

Sorvino stood out among a stellar cast in Martin Scorsese's "Goodfellas," giving his mob boss Paulie Cicero an urbane sophistication and fatherly calm lacking in the other crime figures.

He gave the same qualities to New York City detective Phil Cerretta in one season of "Law and Order." He quit, claiming poor communications and working conditions.

Ironically, he was replaced by Jerry Orbach, who portrayed the cynical wisecracking Lenny Briscoe for multiple seasons.

Like Orbach, Sorvino had a distinguished stage career, known for a memorable performance as the unscrupulous Phil Romano in 'That Championship Season."

He also shared with Orbach a musical background; Orbach was famed for performing "Try to Remember" in "Fantasticks" while Sorvino was trained as an opera singer and starred in several musicals and operas.

Sorvino also co-starred with Al Pacino in "Panic in Needle Park," co-written by Joan Didion and her husband, John Gregory Dunne.

The father of Academy Award-winning actress Mira Sorvino, Sorvino was one of those special performers who brought a fatherly authority to his roles.

Alan Bennett gives annual new year's chronicle in London Review of Books

The arrival of Alan Bennett's diary in the London Review of Books brightens my new year each January.

Bennett's annual chronicle of the year before is like a letter from an old friend, filled with London literary gossip, accounts of his quiet dilettante's life in Yorkshire, political commentary and vignettes about his growing up in World War II-era Britain.

With the departure of longtime LRB editor Mary Kay Wilmers, the 87-year-old Bennett this year looks back on the publication's early days and his battles with former editor Karl Miller, whom Bennett says tried to remove his jokes. Bennett laments that Miller and other founding editors withheld praise from writers. His score-settling after so many years seems more quaint and plainitive than vindictive, a glimpse into a vanished literary world.

Also of interest to followers of British journalism is Bennett's oblique account of his partner, Rupert Thomas, leaving the editorship of the Conde Nast magazine World of Interiors, which runs features on lavish British country homes. After more than 20 years running the upscale magazine, Thomas was the latest victim of the digital devastation of print publications.

Bennett also gives an amusing critique of Blake Bailey's troubled biography of Philip Roth, grumbling about the book's size rather than engaging with the sexual abuse allegations against Bailey that led to W.W. Norton canceling the book.

The famed British playwright, comic and movie writer notes his delight at the book's mentioning a dinner party he attended with Roth at the home of theater director Jonathan Miller. Bennett expresses unqualified admiration for Roth as a writer.

Each year, Bennett's diary records travails of his aging, and his continued delight at life's simple daily pleasures. His mind, and writing are a sharp as ever.  Best wishes to Mr. Bennett for another year.

 

Memorable moments from 2021

Here are a few of my favorite moments of 2021 that made the year not so dismal.

The Nashville Shakespeare Festival gave a memorable performance of "12th Night" at an outdoors theater in a Nashville office park. My daughter, wife and I enjoyed a picnic dinner before the show as a spirited audience gathered. With ebullient performances and country-flavored music well-matched to Shakespeare's words, the production brought out the contemporary relevance of the ancient comedy. The playwright himself would have loved the enthusiastic college students sitting on blankets spread upon the grass.

Trips to St. Simons Island, San Diego, Torrey Pines and La Jolla revealed the oceans' fragile beauty, besieged by humans.

Washington's 10th Street corridor, New York Avenue district and National Mall gave similar lessons about the nation's history, and the endangered republic.

A trip to Los Angeles brought visits to legendary places I'd long wanted to see, especially Dodger Stadium, USC and the LA Memorial Coliseum, Beverly Hills, downtown LA and other sights.

The Braves' World Series championship was a miraculous gift. Watching a World Series game with my son at Truist Park was unforgettable. My wife and I also saw our Braves win a crucial game at San Diego's Petco Park.

With all of the year's bad news, I'll remember those bright moments.

 

 

Christmas joy turns to despair

Only two weeks ago, a Wynton Marsalis concert at Symphony Hall heralded a return to normal life.

The audience wore masks, and proof of vaccination was required. But the seats were nearly full, and the music festive.

Now, New York City's shutting down. The Rockettes cancelled their Christmas shows at Radio City Music Hall. Broadway is dark.

Here in Atlanta, restaurants are closing because of staff shortages caused by the covid omicron variation. As in New York, lines are long in Atlanta  at covid testing sites. Everyone knows of loved ones and friends who've been infected.

The joyous Christmas expected at Thanksgiving has turned bleak. A desolate winter comes.

Come spring, let our omicrons be bygones.

 

 

Whitman, Lincoln seem present at Washington's historic 10th Street corridor

Walt Whitman Way runs off 10th Street in downtown Washington, D.C., a few blocks toward the National Mall from Ford's Theatre, where President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated on April 14, 1865.

Whitman often walked through the theater's neighborhood, and revered the slain president. Whitman's "Speciman Days" gives one of the best portraits of the rough U.S. capital during the Civil War, and he wrote the impassioned elegies to Lincoln, "Captain, Oh My Captain" and "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed."

The past, present and future come together in the corridor, filled with museums, historic buildings, monuments, government offices and modern commercial developments.

Whitman visited wounded soldiers who lay in cots crowded into the U.S. Patent Office, now the National Portrait Gallery. He sought to raise the young men's spirits, telling them jokes and stories and bringing them pencils, paper and candy.

At Ford's Theatre, the future is represented by school groups that line up to tour the downstairs museum, with extensive exhibits on Lincoln's presidency and the Civil War.

A gallery gives an in-depth rendering of John Wilkes Booth's chilling plot to kill the president and members of his cabinet. Booth's co-conspirators are represented by ghostly statues.  The single-shot derringer with which Booth killed the president gives stark witness to history.

The presidential booth, decorated with bunting as on the night of the assassination, rises above the stage where plays are still performed.

On that pleasant spring night several days after Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Courthouse in Virginia, Lincoln and his wife, Mary, attended the theater for a performance of  the comedy "Our American Cousin." Booth, a famous actor, gained entrance to the booth and shot Lincoln in the back of the head, leaping to the stage below and breaking his left leg. 

Lincoln was carried to the Peterson House across 10th street, and laid diagonally in a bed because of his height. He died at 7:22 the next morning. The house where the president died remains, but has been closed to the public because of the pandemic.

On nearby H Street, Booth co-conspirator Mary Surratt, executed by hanging, ran a boarding house. The street, leading to Chinatown and the Capital One Arena, pulses with bars, hotels and restaurants.

Lincoln, a Shakespeare admirer, would be happy that plays are still performed at Ford's Theatre. Along with books on the slain president, the site's gift shop honors the theater. I was pleased to find a copy of the Penguin Classics edition of Damon Runyon's "Guys and Dolls and Other Writings."

At the Ford Museum,  young students appeared enthralled by Lincoln's presidency and Civil War leadership. A salute to their teachers for bringing them to a place where history’s real.