Sharr White - His Background and Some Themes
A couple of things stand out to me about Sharr White’s own background as it relates to this show:
1. He is a very technical writer. Besides being a playwright and TV writer, White has also been a fashion advertising copywriter for many years, and he talks about how this career has had a big, positive impact on his writing:
It's taught me on a very technical level how to work with language, how to sharpen a sentence or how to soften it. It sounds nerdy, but what a front fricative will do versus a dental. Language has sounds that bring emotional impact, and I think what I've learned from copywriting is how to wield that more effectively. - from Playbill’s interview with White in 2013 about his career and the Broadway opening of The Other Place
He’s also very specific when he talks about the form of his plays, including this one:
What I wanted was for the structure to echo the theme. The structure had to say something about the play itself. It had to set the tone for the play. So, the opening is fast intercutting. What saved me was the feeling of the classic three-act play: Rapid intercutting followed by naturalism and a pastoral feeling, and a coda, which echoes the disorientation of the first part of the play. I found that people needed that naturalism. I wanted to give them fifteen minutes where they knew where they were and to gather strength for what’s coming next. - from an interview with Central Square Theater
2. Strong women and intelligent people. A couple of fun/poignant stories here, from a piece White wrote about The Other Place (read the full essay for more great stuff):
A particular feature of the very smart people in my life is that they think their sheer intelligence can protect them from all manner of harm. It’s a beautiful, yet very vulnerable form of arrogance. (A note to the very smart people I love whom I’m about to mention: I’m not calling you arrogant…just your sense of invulnerability).
My father, for instance, who is a professor of biophysics and physiology, often comforted my boyhood fears of the natural world with soothing scientific explanations, as if very real dangers could be rendered harmless simply by holding an enthusiastic understanding of them: lightning is just static electricity, he would tell me; or heat stroke is just a matter of the proteins in your brain becoming denatured—like fried egg whites; or my favorite, that fascinatingly, spider venom works by destroying the base structure of your cellular membranes, causing massive local hemorrhaging, thus allowing the insides of victims to be sucked out "like a milkshake." Nothing to be afraid of.
And then there’s my brother, with his degree in astrophysics from Berkeley, who often calmed my fears regarding his various adrenalized adventures by telling me that his years of studying how things move on a micro and macro level gave him an edge of safety when it came to things like, for instance, backcountry snowpack, fine ice crystals and gravity. (Yet all his knowledge did not grant him immunity from the laws of physics the day he was caught in an avalanche—yes, miraculously, he lived.)
And about his interest in writing strong female characters:
I have four sisters, so there is that influence. I think women are more complicated. Their experiences in society are more complicated because of all the “baggage” that goes along with being a woman. Just think about the use of the word “bitch,” for instance. There really is no male equivalent for that. Women can’t be both tough and likable. There are people who have said that Juliana is not a likable character–but really she’s a tough character that we love to watch. - from the Central Square interview
I also find women much more interesting to write for, especially powerful women or women who have a very decided point of view. Not because of necessarily who they are personally, but because smart women, women with strong personalities, definitive women are viewed so differently in society and carry a more complicated burden than men with the same nature. - from an interview with Alley Theatre in 2015
3. His ...obsession?... with the East Coast as a setting. White moved around quite a bit as a youth - although born in Frederick, Maryland he grew up primarily in Orange County and then Colorado. His wife is from Massachussets and they agree that White is fascinated by the otherness he finds in the setting:
I just sort of like old-school East Coast [White]
He’s sort of intrigued by that, because he isn’t of it. It’s the other that I represent, at least as far as geographical locations. [Evelyn Carr-White] - from an in-depth profile in the Boston Globe (2013)
