Pale Horse, Pale Rider

[greenfinch]

I WONDER WHAT I’M WRITING ABOUT FOR MY NEXT PLAY 

[greenfinch]

To create something beautiful about despair is for me the most life-affirming thing a person can do.

Sarah Kane, http://www.sierz.co.uk/writings/sarah-kane-an-interview/

[fiftysevenacademics]

Thank you, Tumblr, for the 3 mb gif limit.

[greenfinch]

hated everything about this production other than Aumerle/Richard <3 

[elflady]

So usually the congress-edits bot shows people from Congress IPs editing government-related articles, but this person helpfully added to JRB’s page:

[Honeymoon in Vegas… opened on Jan 15…] “before closing on April 5, 2015, due to insufficient ticket sales.”

thank you anonymous Congressional staff member!

[theosondheim]

Imagine if this had fucking happened. Unreal. My mind blows with the possibilities of Pacific Overtures being staged all around the Winter Garden. 

- from The Theatre Art of Boris Aronson

[staylorellis]

[“The Miller’s Son”] is about how you waste time through flirtation. […] The Bergman film ends with Petra and Frid fucking in the grass!

Stephen Sondheim in Conversation, Segerstrom Center for the Arts, 7/13/12

Sondheim’s response to why “The Miller’s Son” feels out of place to some critics, but is actually central to A Little Night Music. This is absolutely going in the dissertation.

(via staylorellis)

[sweetcharity-archive-deactivate]

“How Georges looks, he could look forever.”

[fyeahbroadway]

Gloria Swanson in the ruins of the Roxy, inspiration for Follies.

[greenfinch]

now maybe I can have confidence in myself without losing 15 pounds and having a dick inside me because I’m a bad-ass bitch who’s really good at what I do and don’t need to be a size 2 or a fuck-toy to feel awesome (obvi both those things are fine but I’m overly fixated on them for unhealthy reasons that have to do with trauma and my ED etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.) so yeah maybe I will become confident now, also it would be great to start working out again for the sake of working out just cuz endorphins, happy people don’t shoot their husbands, etc. 

[greenfinch]

I’M SO LEGIT

[ink-piss]

Different plays have different shapes – spheres, rectangles, wavy lines, and of course the ever-discusses and ubiquitous arc. How will we find our own natural forms in the sense of the elemental, and when should we be suspicious of the word natural?…Aristotle thought form was natural, but he thought the natural form was always an arc. I remember once hearing a young male student describe the structure of his play. He said, ‘Well, first it starts out, then it speeds up, and it’s going and it’s going, and then bam, it’s over.’ And I thought, Do we think the arc is a natural structure because of the structure of the male orgasm?

“On Andy Goldsworthy, theatrical structure, and the male orgasm” 100 Essays I Don’t Have Time to Write by Sarah Ruhl (via ink-piss)

[greenfinch]

When one of van Hove’s teachers taught a class about the atomic bomb, he did so not by showing pictures of atrocities but by explaining how an atomic bomb worked. 'I didn’t sleep for three nights,' van Hove said. 'In my fantasy, I could imagine it.' From this, he learned that 'you don’t have to show everything in a graphic way.'

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/10/26/theatre-laid-bare

[greenfinch]

Van Hove coughed. 'It’s these fucking sheep,' he said. 'I don’t really hate animals. I just cannot communicate with them, really.'

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/10/26/theatre-laid-bare

[greenfinch]

all writers are dependent on the vagaries of whoever runs theatres, except it’s often the vagaries of men because men still really do run theatres.

April de Angelis, p. 59, from Rage and Reason: Female Playwrights on Playwriting

[greenfinch]

Sometimes we have to descend into hell imaginatively in order to avoid going there in reality. If we can experience something through art, we might be able to change our future.

Sarah Kane (quoted in Elaine Aston’s ‘Feminist Views on the English Stage’)

[writerswritecompany]

Narrative art must be clear, but it must also be mysterious. Something should remain unsaid, something just beyond our understanding, a secret. If it’s only clear, it’s kitsch; if it’s only mysterious (a much easier path), it’s condescending and pretentious and soon monotonous.

Stephen Sondheim (via amandaonwriting)

[clementinevonradics]

I have found it easier to identify with the characters who verge upon hysteria, who were frightened of life, who were desperate to reach out to another person. But these seemingly fragile people are the strong people really.

Tennessee Williams (via saulberenson)