Solitaire and the Solitary Writer
Julie White is known for her work on TV's Grace Under Fire and Six Feet Under and on stage in Dinner With Friends and Theresa Rebeck's plays
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When I was told that Broadway.com would like me to write down some thoughts about Fiction, I said "no problem." I am, after all, playing a lauded novelist in the play and have been sort of living that for the last month and a half, so how hard can it be to commit 700 words or so to paper on virtually any subject I choose?
It has taken me 20 minutes to write what you have just finished reading.
I have now remembered that I have a very hard time writing anything. I tend to turn on the computer, go to Payday Freecel Solitaire and say to myself "just one more game, and then I will start writing" for such an embarrassingly long time that when I finally begin whatever I am attempting to write I am filled with self-loathing. Today, for some reason, I cannot open Payday Freecel. Not that I haven't tried. I think my husband has so successfully blocked all pop-up ads on the computer that it won't let me play... so I have to write this. I have a friend in L.A. who is a successful screenwriter and confided to me that she also has to deal with this problem. Her solution is not to allow herself to wash her hair until she finishes what needs to get done. So finally her nasty head forces her to get on with it. I think the longest she lasted was a week.
Oh shoot. I was kind of on a roll there, but I got up and went to get a Diet Coke and then wandered out into the garden and began deadheading the Shasta daisies, which in turn lead to weeding a flowerbed, and then to sitting in a chair thinking about how I quit on this thing.
OK, I am writing this piece in order to make you the reader want to see Fiction at the Roundabout's new Laura Pels Theater. Please do. I assume if you are reading this you must be a person with at least a passing interest in the theater. I was thinking about some of the amazing experiences I've had watching plays. I just find it to be so crazy and immediate, so intrinsically different from any other experience. I was watching Much Ado About Nothing in the Park last Sunday night, and there is a moment when the Prince asks Beatrice to marry him, and she replies in a mocking tone and then realizes how sincere he was and how jaded and flip was her reply. Kristen Johnston just stopped my heart in that moment. I could not even tell you exactly what happened only that it happened so utterly that tears just sprang to my eyes and I actually gasped. What a great experience. I've had so many of those experiences in my 20 years of theatergoing: John Malkovich's entrance in Burn This; Laurie Metcalf 's monologue in Balm in Gilead; Joe Mantello's titanic self-loathing as Louis in Angels in America, that crazy moment in The Producers when Cady Huffman says "Now, Ulla belt!" and cranks out some amazing note that raises every hair on your head; Marian Seldes in just about anything. I guess I could go on and on, but you get the picture. I love seeing shows, and I love actors and what they do. Oh jeez, I just realized I'm probably preaching to the choir. Sorry.
I'm really resisting the temptation to count up how many words I have to see if I could possibly stop now.
I was about to write about Fiction and realized I really don't want to tell you anything because I think the play is so carefully crafted and a great part of the experience is figuring out who and what the characters are for yourself as the play unfolds. Please let no one edit that sentence because it should stand as a monument to the failure of the American public school system. Suffice to say that Tom Irwin, Emily Bergl and myself will be striving to tell the story in a great way and we would love for you to join us.