Freedman's Question

One of the most important lessons writers can get was given more than 60 years ago by Harold Freedman, the legendary agent of playwrights such as Clifford Odets, Noel Coward, Thornton Wilder and Arthur Laurents. The first question Freeman asked a prospective new client was: "What kind of playwright do you want to be? Good or successful?" The answer, of course, was always "Both." But the agent would insist. "Good or successful? Which first?" It's worth finding an answer. What's your decision if the authentic and sellable are in conflict?

Talent

It would be an exaggeration to say that I don't believe in talent. Closer to the truth is that I think talent is generally overestimated. Everybody has some talent.  Some have a lot  and never accomplish anything, others have little and achieve much.  I don't think success has anything to do with talent.  It all depends what you do with your talent. Hard work,  the conviction that you are good at something, and most of all good luck are  what it takes. If you have a child never doubt his or her talent before you have created some interest.  How often have I heard someone say that he or she has no talent for math.  You soon find out that  there is not a lack of   talent, but absolutely no interest. How can you learn something you're not really interested in?  How can you become a good shoemaker if you're not interested in shoemaking?  And how can you be a good writer if you're not interested in people?

Stellar!

Today I received the just released book by Stella Adler on America's Master playwrights, edited by Barry Paris. Although I'm terribly busy I couldn't resist the temptation to start reading. The charm of the book: These are transcripts of Adler's lectures. When you read it you actually hear that theater legend talk. She addresses young actors. She tells them: " Your job is not to act. Your job is to interpret… Once the playwright has written the play and the play is here, he's done his job. It's closed… It is an extremely difficult literary form, that little play–so few pages. That's a difficult form and one that's not understood. He has done his job; then you come along. You say, what's my job? You don't know your job. You don't even know the name of your job… You can't just take the words. You have to take the soul… Understand your profession: interpretation means that I'm going to find the play and the playwright in me… Your profession is to interpret." O, how I wish Stella Adler could lecture today's directors of our German "Regie-Theater"!

Hitch1 (More to come!)

"The only position that leaves me with no cognitive dissonance is atheism. It is not a creed. Death is certain, replacing both the siren-song of Paradise and the dread of Hell. Life on this earth, with all its mystery and beauty and pain, is then to be lived far more intensely: we stumble and get up, we are sad, confident, insecure, feel loneliness and joy and love. There is nothing more; but I want nothing more."

Christopher Hitchens

The Blessing of the Theater Gods

In Far East countries they honor an old tradition at the theaters. Before every opening all people involved in the new production - actors, dancers, the leading team, stage hands and producers - gather to attend the so-called "ceremony". A make-shift altar is erected on the stage and, led by Buddhist or Hindu priests, everybody prays to the Gods to bless the show. I always found this a wonderful idea. You can hardly think of a better way to calm every one down before the rise of the curtain. Why be nervous when you can be sure that the Gods are with you? In Japan that ceremony is very serious and conservative. Everybody puts a green twig with a written note on the altar. In Korea they are less formal. There you have to give an offering to the Gods by putting a bill in the mouth of a pig's head. The goods Gods pass it on to the stage hands who make good use of it by buying drinks for the after opening party.

Why Aaron Sorkin is the best screenwriter in the world. Period.

Lotte in Seoul

The hotel I am usually staying at here in Seoul is called Hotel Lotte. The name sounds familiar to someone raised and educated in Germany. Nevertheless I was surprised to learn that its connotation was intended. The company who owns the hotel was established in Japan by Shin Kyuk-Ho, an ardent admirer of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. The corporate name Lotte originated from Charlotte, the heroine of Goethe's famous novel The Sorrows of Young Werther. According to the company's mission statement: "Just as Charlotte stole the hearts of many readers worldwide, Lotte strives to deeply move the hearts of each and every customer." I don't no any other hotel chain named after a literary character, and I have to admit that the Hotel Lotte in Seoul is one of the finest hotels I've been too. Maybe it's because I've never been to a hotel with so many books on display. The book shelves are everywhere here, even in the restaurants. How can a writer not be flattered and charmed by this.

Gangnam Style

LG-Theater, Gangnam District, Seoul/Korea, January 12, 2013

Ingenious Chutzpah

Thanks to Jad Abumrad's review of a new biography by John Glassie (A Man Of Misconceptions) in this week's NYT Book Review I got to know one of history’s more bizarre and largely forgotten thinkers, the 17th-century Jesuit priest Athanasius Kircher. He was, by turns, a mathematician; an Egyptologist; an astronomer; a geologist; a volcanologist; a Sinologist; a musicologist; a machinist; and the inventor of a speaking trumpet, the Aeolian harp and some say the notorious “cat piano,” which produced notes by pricking the tails of live cats. He was a master of optical illusions, a cryptographer, an early proponent of a universal symbolic language and arguably the first person to discover the germ theory of disease, possibly even the first person to ever use a microscope. To boot, he published over 30 “seat cushion size” tomes on nearly every topic under the sun and established what must have been the coolest museum in 17th-century Europe at the Collegio Romano, famous for a Christ figurine that could “walk” on water, as well as other wonders of “natural magic.” Subsequent generations of scholars have pegged Kircher as a Grade A charlatan. But you have to admire his sheer chutzpah. Who but Kircher would publish an enormous illustrated guide to China (arguing that the Chinese are secretly Christian) without ever setting foot in China? And you have to give him style points for titling a 916-page treatise “The Magnet; Or, The Art of Magnetics, in Three Parts, in Which the Universal Nature of the Magnet as Well as Its Use in All Arts and Sciences Is Explained by a New Method: In Addition, Here Are Revealed Through All Kinds of Physical, Medical, Chemical, and Mathematical Experiments Many Hitherto Unknown Secrets of Nature From the Powers and Prodigious Effects of Magnetic as Well as Other Concealed Motions of Nature in the Elements, Stones, Plants, Animals, and Elucescent Things.”

Swiss Stage

I spent the last three days in St. Gallen, a Swiss University town, attending early rehearsals for my latest show, Moses. It is no small miracle that this relatively small city has a theater staging first class musical productions. It is made possible by generous contributions of local sponsors. Such as the district bank that put up a giant billboard.