Interested to learn what plays influenced such noted theatre writers as Jon Robin Baitz, Nilo Cruz, Christopher Durang, Horton Foote, Lynn Nottage, Suzan-Lori Parks and John Patrick Shanley?
If so, be sure to pick up a copy of the new Applause Theatre & Cinema book, "The American Theatre Wing presents The Play That Changed My Life: America’s Foremost Playwrights on the Plays that Influenced Them," which is due in October 2009.
Featuring an introduction by Paula Vogel, the 224-page paperback boasts essays from 19 playwrights. Ben Hodges is the editor.
A preview . . . Edward Albee was influenced by a 1935 visit to New York’s Hippodrome Theatre to see Jimmy Durante (and an elephant) in Rodgers and Hart’s Jumbo ; Diana Son recalls her twelfth-grade field trip in 1983 to see Diane Venora play Hamlet at The Public Theater; David Henry Hwang was influenced by a San Francisco production of Equus; and Beth Henley’s epiphany was seeing her mother in a “Green Bean Man costume."
