"Dear Lord," it read, noting that God had taken the author's favorite actor, Patrick Swayze; favorite actress, Farrah Fawcett; favorite singer, Michael Jackson; and favorite salesman, Billy Mays.
"The Balcony" demands a production as audacious as the author's concept and actors who are equipped to handle the earthy, liturgical flights of dialogue and the physical demands of the characters.
This begins with the fact that, in disregard of the author's directive, the actors do not wear cothurni (high platform shoes used in classic tragedy) and heavily padded garments so as to raise little men above mundane reality.
Shaw and Ibsen marked the emergence of the "author's theatre," whereby an actor was judged on the fidelity with which he interpreted the vision and message of the playwright.
But, thanks to Rob Schmitz, the Shanghai bureau chief for American Public Media's Marketplace and the journalist who helped uncover the fabrications in author and actor Mike Daisey's story about Foxconn factory conditions, the world now has a better idea of what's going on behind Foxconn's closed doors.
Radio program "This American Life" (TAL) has retracted a "partially fabricated" story about author and actor Mike Daisey's visit to Foxconn factories in China.
That information was gleaned from Alec Guinness's "Blessings in Disguise," a delightful accounting of the author's life as a character actor (published in England by Hamish Hamilton Ltd., but not yet available in the United States).
The film, We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live, which takes its title from a Didion quote, is being made by the author's nephew, Griffin Dunne, an actor and film-maker who has teamed up with documentarian Susanne Rostock to tell his aunt's tale.
On this week's panel were author Danny Wallace, actor Rhys Thomas and Heat magazine editor Sam Delaney.
Mr. Wasserman's conceit — Cervantes, the author and actor, spinning his tale to keep menacing fellow prisoners at bay — engages both actors and audience in the creative process.
