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In Kindergarten with the Author of WIT

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In Kindergarten with the Author of WIT re p resenting the american theatre DRAMATISTS by publishing and licensing the works PLAY SERVICE, INC. of new and established playwrights. atpIssuel 4,aFall 1999 y In Kindergarten with the Author of WIT aggie Edson — the celebrated playwright who is so far Off- Broadway, she’s below the Mason-Dixon line — is performing a Mdaily ritual known as Wiggle Down. " Tapping my toe, just tapping my toe" she sings, to the tune of "Singin' in the Rain," before a crowd of kindergarteners at a downtown elementary school in Atlanta. "What a glorious feeling, I'm — nodding my head!" The kids gleefully tap their toes and nod themselves silly as they sing along. "Give yourselves a standing O!" Ms. Edson cries, when the song ends. Her charges scramble to their feet and clap their hands, sending their arms arcing overhead in a giant "O." This willowy 37-year-old woman with tousled brown hair and a big grin couldn't seem more different from Dr. Vivian Bearing, the brilliant, emotionally remote English professor who is the heroine of her play WIT — which has won such unanimous critical acclaim in its small Off- Broadway production. Vivian is a 50-year-old scholar who has devoted her life to the study of John Donne's "Holy Sonnets." When we meet her, she is dying of very placement of a comma crystallizing mysteries of life and death for ovarian cancer. Bald from chemotherapy, she makes her entrance clad Vivian and her audience. For this feat, one critic demanded that Ms. Edson in a hospital gown, dragging an IV pole. "It is not my intention to give be handed the Harvard English department. away the plot," Vivian tells the audience, "but I think I die at the end." But she'd never take it. Kindergarten is where the action is. In this fierce, funny and unforgettable play, the uncompromising "Learning to read — that's the biggest thing you learn in your whole scholar becomes herself an object of study, as her doctors put her life," she says over dinner after a long day of teaching and lesson-planning. through a grueling course of experimental treatments. In scenes in the "Alphabet letters represent sound, text maps speech — once you learn that, hospital and flashbacks to her past, we watch wry, caustic Vivian strug- that's the hardest thing. It's the thing that opens your mind the most, that gle with her ultimate lesson: how to face her own death. "I know all about gives you the most power." life and death," she tells us. "I am, after all, a scholar of Donne's 'Holy Ms. Edson — Miss Edson, to her students — grew up in Wa s h i n g t o n , Sonnets,' which explore mortality in greater depth than any other body of D.C., and studied history at Smith College in Northampton, Mass. After work in the English language." It is one of WIT’s triumphs that Vivian graduation, she worked in an Iowa bar pouring drinks for hog farmers, makes us see exactly what she means. Caught in this play's powerful then spent a year living in a Dominican convent in Rome. Back home searchlight, poems such as "Death be not proud" spring to life — with the in Washington, she got a job in the oncology/AIDS unit of a research continued on page 5 co n g r a t u l a t i o n s Tony Winner Warren Leight, WI T Side Man No Longer by Margaret Edson 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Drama arren Leight's Tony-winning play, BEST PLAY SIDE MAN, is autobiographical in NY Drama Desk Award W more ways than one. It's well known NY Drama Critics Circle Award by now that Leight drew upon the life of his NY Outer Critics Circle Award NY Drama League Award unsung trumpeter father to pen his paean to the Lucille Lortel Award lost world of jazz journeymen. But change the play's characters from musicians to writers, and SIDE MAN SIDE MAN could be the story of its author. by Warren Leight Before SIDE MAN made its unlikely fairy-tale 1999 Tony Award, Best Play journey to Broadway, Leight was something of a side man himself: writing screenplays, night club DE A TH OF A SALESMAN ac t s , one-acts — anything to make a living. Even by Arthur Miller at this late date, Leight hasn't forgotten those 1999 Tony Award, Best Revival days. He spoke to Playbill On-Line about the great chasm which separates a gig at Starbuck's THE WEIR from a lunch with Christian Slater. the same lines. I got $10 an hour; that was my by Conor McPherson rate. But that's not a great way to spend your 1999 Olivier Award, Best Play Playbill On-Line: The jazz world, which you capture life. Ultimately, that's pretty dispiriting. For London Evening Standard Award in SIDE MAN, the upcoming GLIMMER BROTHERS whatever reason, I couldn't crack one Off-Broad- for Outstanding New Playwright and a bit in STRAY CATS, is a rather neglected way theatre in New York; none of the not-for- London Critics Circle Award milieu in recent American drama. profit institutions. There were a few people who for Most Promising Playwright Warren Leight: I find it appalling. It is America's were looking out for me, but they were strug- CL O S E R only native art form, and completely neglected. gling: There was Alice's Fourth Floor, on Dyer by Patrick Marber There have been a few interesting things that have Avenue right by the tunnel; or John McCormick, 1999 NY Drama Critics Circle Award caught on, but if you compare the number of plays when he was at Naked Angels — he now runs All for Best Foreign Play about painting and painters to the number of plays Seasons Theatre; and the West Bank Cafe. But 1998 Olivier Award, Best Play about jazz musicians, it must be a hundred-to-one that was it. Every institution just seemed like a time magazine names top ten ratio, and you can't tell me it's any more exciting closed set. Apparently Margaret Edson sent WIT Three Dramatists Play Service titles were to watch a painter onstage than a musician. And around for eight years before she got a New named among the year’s ten best plays of even plays about writers, plays about dancers, plays York production. It did feel like there was no way 1999 by Time Magazine: THE BEAUTY QUEEN OF LEENANE by Martin McDonagh; CORPUS about actors; for some reason — partially racial — into New York theatre. I'd been doing one-acts CHRISTI by Terrence McNally; and WIT by jazz, in particular, has been [ignored]. I had a hard here and there for the last ten years and I'd get Margaret Edson. time getting a first production of SIDE MAN the occasional reading, but nobody would give playwrights honored because jazz was considered a bad topic for a play. even a workshop production of a full-length The American Theatre Critics Association pre- p l a y. I just wasn't in whatever their group or sented its top New Play Award this year to Were there any jazz-themed plays that influenced you? loop was. I didn't fit their profile or agenda, or I Lanford Wilson for BOOK OF DAYS. The award was presented during the 23rd annual Humana I wish there were. There were all those bad jazz just hadn't gone to college with them. I don't Festival of New American Plays in Louisville, movies when I was a kid, which I was very aware know what it was. I knew my father to be a KY . Also recognized for new works premiering of. Musicians hated them, whether it was "The beautiful trumpet player, and for whatever rea- outside of New York City were two other Dramatists Play Service authors: Donald Benny Goodman Story" or "The Glenn Miller Story" son, he didn't get asked to record as much as Margulies for DINNER WITH FRIENDS; a n d — a bunch of guys saying "Hey, man! Dig it!" At some other guys who, in retrospect, weren't any Lisa Loomer for EXPECTING ISABEL. New Play the age of eight, I knew that stuff to be "jive." I better or any worse than he was. I did begin to finalists were Steven Dietz for ROCKET MAN; Richard Greenberg for SAFE AS HOUSES; an d think Maynard G. Krebs was about as close as worry whether I'd get a shot at it, like a 34-year- Jon Klein for DI M L Y PERCEIVED THREATS TO America ever got to depicting jazz. old minor leaguer. "I swear if they let me up to THE SYSTEM. the bigs, I could hit .260." Congratulations to composer and Dramatists After years of knocking about, did you begin to Play Service board member Polly Pen, recipient of the Gilman & Gonzalez-Falla Theatre Foun- feel like a side man yourself? In all those years, you must have had some dation Award for promising composers and Yeah. I was able to make a living writing screen- interesting experiences as a playwright. What's lyricists creating American musical theatre. plays that didn't get made, or, if they did get the most embarrassing thing that ever happened Pen is the Obie Award-winning composer of BED AND SOFA, which she wrote with librettist made, were humiliating. There was a period in in connection to one of your productions? Laurence Klavan.
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