Frank Galati & Jon Michael Hill in The Tempest, photo by Michael Brosilow
Frank Galati, Dame Maggie Smith, Jessica Tandy, Matthew Broderick, & Robert Morse at the 1990 Tony Awards
How much more pressure was there in taking and adapting such an iconic classic to the stage? There was lots and it’s kind of a complicated story. I really admire the film and think it is gorgeous. It’s beautifully acted and the cinematography is incredible but it does a considerable disservice to the novel at the end of the film. Rose of Sharon does not lose her baby as she does in the novel. And that controversial scene in which she gives her breast to the starving man, Steinbeck’s publishers tried to get him to cut that, so he ended up going to another publisher. I thought to myself, “Who the hell am I to think that I’m going to take The Grapes of Wrath on stage after that magnificent film and this huge novel?” And I thought, “wait a second. It deserves to be told the way it was conceived. At the end with a Madonna giving suck to a starving man, as taboo as that whole idea is in many cultures, it is a pieta’ of grace and transcendence. It is spiritual. It lifts you up. Forget about the theater. It’s life. And that is what happened to the audience. It happened here when we did The Grapes of Wrath a couple a years ago in Michael Edward’s brilliant production. It happened every time that play was played where audiences realized at the end that they were bearing witness to something that was real. How did you first become associated with Asolo Rep? When I was teaching at the University of South Florida, I came down here a couple times to see shows. I was very aware of the high quality of work here going back to the 60s. After I retired from teaching at Northwestern, I moved to Miami and my partner and I were in Coconut Grove. The Coconut Grove Playhouse seemed like it would be a viable venue to occasionally work in, but it went belly up right when I got there. My partner Peter came over here to direct the one-person show, It’s A Wonderful Life, and that’s when I met Michael (Edwards). A year later he was going to do a co-production of 12 Angry Men with Maltz Jupiter Theatre and asked if I would be interested. So I did 12 Angry Men starting in Jupiter and then most of the cast came over to Asolo Rep where it was a smash.
Is there a creative mantra that you live by? Walter Kerr, who was drama critic for the New York Times for many years, wrote a book about playwriting titled How’s Your Second Act? One of the things that he says in the book is, “Cut every third laugh.” When I read that I thought, are you kidding? There is nothing more valuable in the theater than a laugh. Why would you want to cut a laugh? But it’s taken me years to realize that cutting and efficiently editing a disciplined reduction are essential. If I have a mantra, disciplined reduction would be it. Sometimes that can be so difficult, but as William Faulkner said, “In writing, you must kill all your darlings.” Yes, absolutely. The first performance of The Grapes of Wrath in Chicago was over four hours long. The next day I said to the cast, “I’m not coming to the performance. I’m staying at home and I’m going to work on the script and we’ve got to cut it.” I cut 25 minutes out of the show in one day. Tell me about your experience of writing with Lawrence Kasdan and earning an Oscar nomination for best adapted screenplay for The Accidental Tourist? I had no experience of working with him. I wrote a draft of a screenplay and my agent circulated it to a number of directors that included Lawrence Kasdan. He really loved it. He gave it the green light. And then he threw my script out (laughs) because he’s a very accomplished screenwriter as well. So then he did his own screenplay. Did any of your words survive the cut so to speak and make it into the film? Oh, yes, yes. That’s why I’m credited. We both were nominated for an Academy Award. I’m very proud of that and I am very happy to be finally connected with Lawrence Kasdan. What happened was they had a couple of readings and it kind of wasn’t working. So they went back to my script, and they February 2016
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