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100 Essays I Don't Have Time to Write: On Umbrellas and Sword Fights, Parades and Dogs, Fire Alarms, Children, and Theater
100 Essays I Don't Have Time to Write is an incisive, idiosyncratic collection on life and theater from major American playwright Sarah Ruhl. This is a book in which chimpanzees, Chekhov, and child care are equally at home. A vibrant, provocative examination of the possibilities of the theater, it is also a map to a very particular artistic sensibility, and an unexpected guide for anyone who has chosen an artist's life. Sarah Ruhl is a mother of three and one of America's best-known playwrights. She has written a stunningly original book of essays whose concerns range from the most minimal and personal subjects to the most encompassing matters of art and culture. The titles themselves speak to the volume's "On lice," "On sleeping in the theater," "On motherhood and stools (the furniture kind)," "Greek masks and Bell's palsy."
241 pages, Kindle Edition
First published December 11, 2012
163 people are currently reading
5168 people want to read
About the author
Sarah Ruhl
42 books572 followersSarah Ruhl (born 1974) is an American playwright. She is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship and the PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater Award for a distinguished American playwright in mid-career.
Originally, she intended to be a poet. However, after she studied under Paula Vogel at Brown University (A.B., 1997; M.F.A., 2001), she was persuaded to switch to playwriting. Her first play was The Dog Play, written in 1995 for one of Vogel's classes. Her roots in poetry can be seen in the way she uses language in her plays. She also did graduate work at Pembroke College, Oxford.
In September 2006, she received a MacArthur Fellowship. The announcement of that award stated: "Sarah Ruhl, 32, playwright, New York City. Playwright creating vivid and adventurous theatrical works that poignantly juxtapose the mundane aspects of daily life with mythic themes of love and war."
Originally, she intended to be a poet. However, after she studied under Paula Vogel at Brown University (A.B., 1997; M.F.A., 2001), she was persuaded to switch to playwriting. Her first play was The Dog Play, written in 1995 for one of Vogel's classes. Her roots in poetry can be seen in the way she uses language in her plays. She also did graduate work at Pembroke College, Oxford.
In September 2006, she received a MacArthur Fellowship. The announcement of that award stated: "Sarah Ruhl, 32, playwright, New York City. Playwright creating vivid and adventurous theatrical works that poignantly juxtapose the mundane aspects of daily life with mythic themes of love and war."
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 323 reviews
May 31, 2021
Brief essays on playwriting and craft that are also essays on motherhood, creativity, art, the stage, and contemporary theatre. As a non-playwright I found a lot to think about, applying these ideas to fiction and nonfiction and memoir.
September 22, 2014
I loved this book so much that it is hard to write about it. Also, so much of it spoke to me so deeply that I kept thinking of people in my life I should buy it for. And I'm tempted to buy my own copy (I borrowed it from the library) and to carry it around in my purse to pull out in moments requiring succor, laughter, or simply elegantly phrased insight.
It's funny that right now I am also reading David Mitchell's The Bone Clocks, which is such a ginormous tome and a self-conscious attempt to write a Great Contemporary Novel (in spite of his wacky science fiction subplots and persistent and sometimes even scatological humor), and yet that novel has left me tired, feeling like much of it is a slog, while this slender volume of essays, as brief as they are, has uplifted me (and not in the conventional didactic or sentimental sense, though they are certainly teacherly, and they appealed to my emotions as well as my intelligence). The title's implication of rushed, scribbled cast-off thoughts gives the book a certain energy and iconoclasm, but each tiny essay is so beautifully crafted that it belies the suggestion that this book came from jottings in a notebook that never quite became fleshed out. These essays--on the theatre, on illusion and play, on the importance of teachers, on the desires of children--are perfect as they are, entire, like the umbrella that Ruhl argues onstage gives the impression of a whole cosmos above.
This book left me wishing that I was close friends with its writer. She gave me much to think about regarding my own relationship to parenting, play, art, and writing. And there's even an essay in here on lice! (As a toddler parent, I know from lice.) Beautiful, funny, smart, serious and well-considered yet never self-serious. A special, eloquent book.
It's funny that right now I am also reading David Mitchell's The Bone Clocks, which is such a ginormous tome and a self-conscious attempt to write a Great Contemporary Novel (in spite of his wacky science fiction subplots and persistent and sometimes even scatological humor), and yet that novel has left me tired, feeling like much of it is a slog, while this slender volume of essays, as brief as they are, has uplifted me (and not in the conventional didactic or sentimental sense, though they are certainly teacherly, and they appealed to my emotions as well as my intelligence). The title's implication of rushed, scribbled cast-off thoughts gives the book a certain energy and iconoclasm, but each tiny essay is so beautifully crafted that it belies the suggestion that this book came from jottings in a notebook that never quite became fleshed out. These essays--on the theatre, on illusion and play, on the importance of teachers, on the desires of children--are perfect as they are, entire, like the umbrella that Ruhl argues onstage gives the impression of a whole cosmos above.
This book left me wishing that I was close friends with its writer. She gave me much to think about regarding my own relationship to parenting, play, art, and writing. And there's even an essay in here on lice! (As a toddler parent, I know from lice.) Beautiful, funny, smart, serious and well-considered yet never self-serious. A special, eloquent book.
May 3, 2020
Initially I thought Ruhl's concept was brilliant - but after a couple dozen of these I started wishing she had written fully formed essays instead of 1-2 page sketches. And after reading about 50 of these abbreviated essays they started to feel tedious.
December 27, 2014
This book was only three stars to me because it was not what I expected. However, if you are a theatre person, I have full confidence this will be a four or five star book to you.
I read this book on a whim, and thought it would be a series of 100 thoughts on random things like, well, umbrellas and sword fights. While these objects were briefly commented upon in the beginning, the book was not about ordinary things as much as it was about the author's thoughts on how plays should be conducted and the relationship between writing and motherhood. While I loved the short interjections about her children and meaningful musings on life, I was a bit bored by the other stuff-- the stuff about actors and audiences and writing styles and technicalities. That being said, I also did not see or read most of the plays she talked about (and I did not like Waiting for Godot), so another reader may have a completely different reaction. I liked the ending a lot, though. I turn to fiction as an escape from loneliness, and the idea that identity is fluid is nice, albeit limited.
Although this book was not for me, I recommend that you give it a try. As the author's children pointed out, you can appreciate that something is beautiful even if you don't like it.
I read this book on a whim, and thought it would be a series of 100 thoughts on random things like, well, umbrellas and sword fights. While these objects were briefly commented upon in the beginning, the book was not about ordinary things as much as it was about the author's thoughts on how plays should be conducted and the relationship between writing and motherhood. While I loved the short interjections about her children and meaningful musings on life, I was a bit bored by the other stuff-- the stuff about actors and audiences and writing styles and technicalities. That being said, I also did not see or read most of the plays she talked about (and I did not like Waiting for Godot), so another reader may have a completely different reaction. I liked the ending a lot, though. I turn to fiction as an escape from loneliness, and the idea that identity is fluid is nice, albeit limited.
Although this book was not for me, I recommend that you give it a try. As the author's children pointed out, you can appreciate that something is beautiful even if you don't like it.
February 17, 2015
The cover and title would make you think this book is light, goofy fare. Whoever's job this was failed -- the essays may only be 1-3 pages in length, but the majority of them are dense philosophical treatises on playwriting and the world of theater, and deserve a place in the college classroom.
On the one hand: I have never been curious enough about the playwriting process to warrant reading an entire book on it, and often throughout this book, I struggled to care about what Ruhl so passionately cares about. It even felt a little presumptuous at times: that I, a person who was drawn to a silly title and pencil-drawn cover, would want to carefully define the role and ethics of a dramaturg, or debate the implications of the stage set without a ceiling.
On the other hand, many of her observations and connections, while gleaned from the playwriting process, hold true for creating art in all sorts of mediums. And Ruhl's ability to express something profound in a concise paragraph can be breathtaking. Her essay on writing and waiting may have just changed my life -- way more than The Shins ever could have. I need to get off this internet, I've forgotten how to grieve.
On the one hand: I have never been curious enough about the playwriting process to warrant reading an entire book on it, and often throughout this book, I struggled to care about what Ruhl so passionately cares about. It even felt a little presumptuous at times: that I, a person who was drawn to a silly title and pencil-drawn cover, would want to carefully define the role and ethics of a dramaturg, or debate the implications of the stage set without a ceiling.
On the other hand, many of her observations and connections, while gleaned from the playwriting process, hold true for creating art in all sorts of mediums. And Ruhl's ability to express something profound in a concise paragraph can be breathtaking. Her essay on writing and waiting may have just changed my life -- way more than The Shins ever could have. I need to get off this internet, I've forgotten how to grieve.
January 16, 2021
Sarah Ruhl writes essays about the things she knows best: the stage, her children, writing plays. Writing for the stage is the main focus of these pieces, but her look at writing for the stage comes from the edges---privacy, the place of rhyme in plays, the reversal of nobodies and somebodies (you have to read the book if you are curious about this), the decline in cast sizes, the audience. Ruhl addresses some questions no one else thought to ask: Is one person an audience? Is there an objective standard of taste? (Author's answer, by the way, is one word: No.) Is it bad when comedies make people laugh? along with the occasional motherhood question: Must one enjoy one's children?
I'm pretty sure Ruhl could take any thought and somehow relate it to playwriting and make it completely wonderful to read, even if one, like me, knows nothing about writing plays.
I'm pretty sure Ruhl could take any thought and somehow relate it to playwriting and make it completely wonderful to read, even if one, like me, knows nothing about writing plays.
July 24, 2015
Sarah Ruhl writes in one of her essays here that she hates the words "whimsical" and "quirky" as they are used to describe works of art, especially works of art accomplished by women. They are dismissive words. Maybe even the word "funny" might be included in this list of words dismissive of women playwrights. Now, I have heard Ruhl does not read reviews of her work, but she must know these words are used to describe her plays, her world of ideas. And to call them quirky and whimsical and merely "funny" could well be dismissive of them. Same goes for these short essays (or since she admits she doesn't have time to write them, they are essays that want to be written…). Use the word delightful, amazing, insightful. Even strange, she might accept. Certainly original would describe her work in almost every sense. And I will call them essays, Short short essays. Pithy. Sometimes with punchlines. More along the lines of poems (Ruhl's province, where she started) than longer, more "developed" essays. But as the short short story captures the "essence" of a story, so does the short short essay here capture the idea of an essay, a reflection on or exploration of an issue.
The essays are short, sometimes a word or sentence or paragraph or a page or couple pages long, and I heard they were written because she is a mother of three, and this is basically often the length of what she could write during this time when they were small. Ruhl had written many great plays already, and was suddenly going to have to slow down a bit to be a mother. And these essays, which are a kind of series of love letters to the theater, are also love letters about being a mother, and the book is dedicated to her own mother, Kathy, a Chicago actress… and it has lots of references to playwright mothers and stage mothers and one essay is about watching her own mother die on stage, using those memories to reflect on stage vs real life grief (which,as it turns out from research, she tells me) is physiologically no different!).
I like short short stories (also called flash fiction), and prose poems. I have recently read the collected short short stories of Lydia Davis. I am reminded of the short stories of Raymond Carver, which he explained in an essay were the only form he could write when he had several small children and was at the laundromat or had an hour still awake after they all went to bed.
As she writes, in her complete essay, "An Essay in Praise of Smallness": "I admire minimalism."
[My essay in response, entitled, "An Essay in Praise of Sarah Ruhl's "An Essay in Praise of Smallness": I also admire minimalism. (But I worry, is my essay merely derivative?!)]
Ruhl is delightful and straightforward, fantastical (in Eurydice it is raining in an elevator) and unique and insightful and inventive. She prizes honesty (i.e., she hates "the Chekhov" accent actors invent) and engagement but also likes play, invention, intuition, surprise. In "The Language of Clear Steps," she speaks against "clear steps" of motivation, (and elsewhere dislikes asking what characters "want" as motivation for stage actions). Maybe key to her work is a phrase in that essay: ". . . theater artists are meant to challenge the inexplicable." That's what I think of Ruhl's work, such is in some of my favorites of her plays, Clean House, Eurydice, Dead Man's Cell Phone."
I had intended to read these essays slowly, over time as I was reading other things, but I ended up reading them all in one sitting. They are that good. But trust me, I will read them again.
Full disclosure as a kind of bragging: Kathy Ruhl, the playwright's mom, is a dear friend of mine, who I have seen many times on the stage and with whom I have seen a few plays. I've met Sarah in the company of Kathy a few times, and I've been to the Piven Theater (where Sarah grew up in the theater, with Kathy) in Evanston several times. Those facts may have increased the delight I got out of these short essays, but I bet anyone who is a writer and theater person and mother and lover of good writing would like them a lot.
The essays are short, sometimes a word or sentence or paragraph or a page or couple pages long, and I heard they were written because she is a mother of three, and this is basically often the length of what she could write during this time when they were small. Ruhl had written many great plays already, and was suddenly going to have to slow down a bit to be a mother. And these essays, which are a kind of series of love letters to the theater, are also love letters about being a mother, and the book is dedicated to her own mother, Kathy, a Chicago actress… and it has lots of references to playwright mothers and stage mothers and one essay is about watching her own mother die on stage, using those memories to reflect on stage vs real life grief (which,as it turns out from research, she tells me) is physiologically no different!).
I like short short stories (also called flash fiction), and prose poems. I have recently read the collected short short stories of Lydia Davis. I am reminded of the short stories of Raymond Carver, which he explained in an essay were the only form he could write when he had several small children and was at the laundromat or had an hour still awake after they all went to bed.
As she writes, in her complete essay, "An Essay in Praise of Smallness": "I admire minimalism."
[My essay in response, entitled, "An Essay in Praise of Sarah Ruhl's "An Essay in Praise of Smallness": I also admire minimalism. (But I worry, is my essay merely derivative?!)]
Ruhl is delightful and straightforward, fantastical (in Eurydice it is raining in an elevator) and unique and insightful and inventive. She prizes honesty (i.e., she hates "the Chekhov" accent actors invent) and engagement but also likes play, invention, intuition, surprise. In "The Language of Clear Steps," she speaks against "clear steps" of motivation, (and elsewhere dislikes asking what characters "want" as motivation for stage actions). Maybe key to her work is a phrase in that essay: ". . . theater artists are meant to challenge the inexplicable." That's what I think of Ruhl's work, such is in some of my favorites of her plays, Clean House, Eurydice, Dead Man's Cell Phone."
I had intended to read these essays slowly, over time as I was reading other things, but I ended up reading them all in one sitting. They are that good. But trust me, I will read them again.
Full disclosure as a kind of bragging: Kathy Ruhl, the playwright's mom, is a dear friend of mine, who I have seen many times on the stage and with whom I have seen a few plays. I've met Sarah in the company of Kathy a few times, and I've been to the Piven Theater (where Sarah grew up in the theater, with Kathy) in Evanston several times. Those facts may have increased the delight I got out of these short essays, but I bet anyone who is a writer and theater person and mother and lover of good writing would like them a lot.
did-not-finish
June 3, 2015I’m giving up on this about halfway through. I’m bored and can tell it will be just more of the same for the next 100+ pages. The title is a bit misleading, as has been noted elsewhere. Most of these very short pieces (I hesitate to call them essays) are about or connected in some way to the world of theater – playwriting, acting, audience/actor relationships or some other aspect of that field – which I have little experience with and too little interest in to become engaged. There are also a few about toddlers, with the same limitations and results.
These writings do not seem like essays to me. Most of them are under two pages, many are only two or three paragraphs, and are rather observations or opinions. I consider an essay something that takes an idea and develops it to a certain extent, looks at it from different angles, makes connections and perhaps, but not necessarily, conclusions. These were merely musings. Any attempts to connect these ruminations about theater to larger generalizations about art and life seemed to me to be too tenuous and simplistic to be convincing.
Stylistically the writing is fine, and for other people, the subject matter might be more interesting. It just wasn’t for me.
These writings do not seem like essays to me. Most of them are under two pages, many are only two or three paragraphs, and are rather observations or opinions. I consider an essay something that takes an idea and develops it to a certain extent, looks at it from different angles, makes connections and perhaps, but not necessarily, conclusions. These were merely musings. Any attempts to connect these ruminations about theater to larger generalizations about art and life seemed to me to be too tenuous and simplistic to be convincing.
Stylistically the writing is fine, and for other people, the subject matter might be more interesting. It just wasn’t for me.
February 3, 2025
In these essays, Sarah Ruhl loves language, kids and dogs, parades, storms and snow, doors, umbrellas, even community theatre… and having read a few of her plays, the book felt like an extended interview about her artistic palette, which I enjoyed. The essays occasionally get repetitive and overly nostalgic about bygone eras of the theatre, as she tends to deliver a bit of old-man-yelling-at-cloud energy at industry developments related to film, cameras, and technology. (I don’t necessarily disagree, but I was kinda like… so what DO you like about the theatre of today? I wonder what she thinks of companies like Manual Cinema?) I much preferred the moments when she wrote about her life. Unsurprisingly, she’s at her best when rather than sharing a take, she tells a story.
September 28, 2021
Sarah Ruhl finds that motherhood both teaches and challenges a writer. As she teaches her children about life as she considers plays and writing, they teach her back how writing, plays, and life interact.
As Ruhl shares her insights about plays in the short spans she has, from props to masks to dialectics to perfection imperfection to writing tips and much more. Many things threatrical, poetical, historical, contemporary, rhetorical, and more.
Anyone who loves a play from a non-academic perspective will find these essays both entertaining and enlightening.
As Ruhl shares her insights about plays in the short spans she has, from props to masks to dialectics to perfection imperfection to writing tips and much more. Many things threatrical, poetical, historical, contemporary, rhetorical, and more.
Anyone who loves a play from a non-academic perspective will find these essays both entertaining and enlightening.
April 29, 2016
Tried before to write about why I love this book so much and so fiercely, but failed then as I will likely fail now. I don't know Ruhl's plays at all (though I've since picked up a few to read), and I am not a playwright, but her essays here are wide-ranging and wonderful.
She writes about theater here, sure, but also about parenting, and sickness, and, hell, umbrellas, and about tons of minutely observed things that she opens out into a greater significance. Some of the essays are so short that they have a koan-like inspirational clarity to them; others are longer and more directly about the stage—though as with every piece in this collection, Ruhl's writing more about art and life, and the way the latter is indispensable to the former. Here's a taste: Early on, in an essay about how life makes the creation of art difficult, she closes, "At the end of the day, writing has very little to do with writing and much to do with life. And life, by definition, is not an intrusion."
Ain't that just spot on and wonderful? It is.
She writes about theater here, sure, but also about parenting, and sickness, and, hell, umbrellas, and about tons of minutely observed things that she opens out into a greater significance. Some of the essays are so short that they have a koan-like inspirational clarity to them; others are longer and more directly about the stage—though as with every piece in this collection, Ruhl's writing more about art and life, and the way the latter is indispensable to the former. Here's a taste: Early on, in an essay about how life makes the creation of art difficult, she closes, "At the end of the day, writing has very little to do with writing and much to do with life. And life, by definition, is not an intrusion."
Ain't that just spot on and wonderful? It is.
April 27, 2015
Loved it. It's a real mish-mash of the trivial and the profound, of the everyday and the extraordinary. Funny, sarcastic, winsome and bold. I felt like underlining nearly every page and will be returning to it, dipping in and re-reading.
December 19, 2015
Don't let the title get you. This book is first and foremost about theatre and everything connected to it. With a touch of parenting. And yeah, she mentions umbrellas and dogs at some point.
November 28, 2021
For a book primarily about theater, 100 Essays... was a satisfying read for someone with no ties to the stage. Ruhl is a lovely author, and her brief essays, as much about writing, art, love, and life, were delicious bite-sized meditations.
Quotes:
- "I found that life intruding on writing was, in fact, life. And that, tempting as it may be for a writer who is also a parent, one must not think of life as an intrusion. At the end of the day, writing has very little to do with writing, and much to do with life. And life, by definition, is not an intrusion."
"But where do we put all the asymmetrical people? The asymmetrical stories? Where do we put the crooked people? The people with one leg, lazy eyes, crooked grins? Do we write plays for them? Do we make theaters for them? If symmetry is beauty but life is asymmetrical, then how can art imitate life with an expression of formal beauty that is also true?" (p. 60)
- "In a perfect world the virtues of theater are similar to those of cultivating a garden - something living, something patient, something always growing." (p. 117)
Quotes:
- "I found that life intruding on writing was, in fact, life. And that, tempting as it may be for a writer who is also a parent, one must not think of life as an intrusion. At the end of the day, writing has very little to do with writing, and much to do with life. And life, by definition, is not an intrusion."
"But where do we put all the asymmetrical people? The asymmetrical stories? Where do we put the crooked people? The people with one leg, lazy eyes, crooked grins? Do we write plays for them? Do we make theaters for them? If symmetry is beauty but life is asymmetrical, then how can art imitate life with an expression of formal beauty that is also true?" (p. 60)
- "In a perfect world the virtues of theater are similar to those of cultivating a garden - something living, something patient, something always growing." (p. 117)
July 3, 2019
Finished: 03.07.2019
Genre: essays/musings
Rating: B+
Conclusion:
Officially only about 3 of the writings are 'real' essays.
The rest are Sarah Ruhl's short musings about plays, playwrights
motherhood and children.
I'm not complaining....this was an excellent
book to drag me out of my 'reading slump'.
Stepping into Ruhl's thoughts
through the pages of this book
…widens my appreciation of her craft...playwrighting.
Whether we choose to spend our time
with literary prizewinning essays or
...this light entertainment is irrelevant.
The book was still a delight!
Genre: essays/musings
Rating: B+
Conclusion:
Officially only about 3 of the writings are 'real' essays.
The rest are Sarah Ruhl's short musings about plays, playwrights
motherhood and children.
I'm not complaining....this was an excellent
book to drag me out of my 'reading slump'.
Stepping into Ruhl's thoughts
through the pages of this book
…widens my appreciation of her craft...playwrighting.
Whether we choose to spend our time
with literary prizewinning essays or
...this light entertainment is irrelevant.
The book was still a delight!
May 22, 2023
i was typing a review of this book while reflecting on the irony that, after reading ruhl’s essays that briefly discuss our world’s incessant need for instant commentary, i chose to comment anyways.
goodreads crashed and the short reflection erased itself. i think there’s something intentional about that, so:
these essays reminded me of what i love most about the art of creation. it makes me want to write about it. that’s all.
goodreads crashed and the short reflection erased itself. i think there’s something intentional about that, so:
these essays reminded me of what i love most about the art of creation. it makes me want to write about it. that’s all.
December 20, 2023
I'm glad this was a quick lil read because not a lot is gonna stick with me going forward. I enjoyed a few stories but most of this flew right over my head because of how specific it was to theater. Still feeling like a retired theater kid.
February 26, 2024
I never really recovered from the line “Will YouTube teach us how to die?” But I liked it nonetheless
November 9, 2021
Consider this a secular Bible for creative people who subscribe to the notion of theater as a religion. It's a lovely, heartfelt read, and Ruhl's beautiful essay on community theater resonates as 100% accurate.
December 10, 2018
It wasn't surprising to me when, halfway through this book, Sarah Ruhl mentioned she'd originally wanted to be a poet: each of these brief essays is like a poem itself. One of the things I love about reading poetry is the shock of recognizing yourself, feeling that the poet has said exactly what you would have, if you only had the words. There is plenty of that in these essays, along with a number of very smart observations about narrative, stagecraft, and child-rearing. Poetry mourns the loss of her, but she is a credit to the theater.
Read
January 8, 2018“But what if lightness is a philosophical choice to temper reality with strangesness, to temper the intellect with emotion, and to temper emotion with humor. Lightness is then a philsophical victory over heaviness. A reckoning with the humble and the small and the invisible.”p.36
January 23, 2016
This remarkable, gorgeous love letter to life as a theatrical artist has cleansed from me the muddied ambivalence towards theater with which Kenyon's drama department left me after four Aristotelian years.
November 22, 2014
I am so glad I read this. It was lovely, it made me think of things in so many different ways...it really feels like a book I'll come back to again and again.
April 3, 2015
What a delightful little collection. I'm happy I bought a hard copy, because I have a feeling I'll be flipping through this book, rereading it, and loaning my copy to friends for many years to come.
March 29, 2020
I can't explain why this book is so magical! I can only say it is, and hope you think so, too.
January 2, 2024
Can "delightful" and "academic" exist in the same review? Today they do. Enjoyed. (Read for work, but I also see myself as a theatre person.)
December 29, 2020
Like a kick line in a show or taking in a favorite album in a dark room, these essays triggered emotions, excitement, thoughts and questions. Sarah Ruhl doesn't force a viewpoint but tells great stories and prompts with questions left by those stories. Nothing reads like lessons-learned lectures. We are not having anything explained to us. Like good theater itself, we're told many brief stories and asked many whys and what ifs opening our minds to really consider so many aspects of creating something in the theater. It's a wonderful read, and I'm so grateful to have read this over the pandemic holidays. I've missed live theater in a box or under the stars. I've missed cast and crew parties on the lakeside terrace and sitting in an audience for the second or third time of a show's run because I just can't get enough of it before it's over. Highly recommend this read, for any reason, but particularly for folks who are missing the theater in these times. I could dogear nearly every page for one reason or another, so I won't attempt to give any quotes or spoilers. This will be re-read.
July 17, 2020
I've never read any of Sarah Ruhl's plays, but this essay collection has me intrigued. This book makes me think she would be a very interesting person to meet and have a conversation with. She sees things in such a nuanced way, and I appreciate her insight.
Here's one of the passages that stood out to me:
"A suspicion that lightness is not deeply serious (but instead whimsical) pervades aesthetic discourse, But what if lightness is a philosophical choice to temper reality with strangeness, to temper intellect with emotion, and to temper emotion with humor. Lightness is then a philosophical victory over heaviness. A reckoning with the humble and the same and the invisible."
Here's one of the passages that stood out to me:
"A suspicion that lightness is not deeply serious (but instead whimsical) pervades aesthetic discourse, But what if lightness is a philosophical choice to temper reality with strangeness, to temper intellect with emotion, and to temper emotion with humor. Lightness is then a philosophical victory over heaviness. A reckoning with the humble and the same and the invisible."
January 24, 2018
I liked some of these essays, and some of them were meh. It's a really small book though if your looking for a quick read. I liked all of the ones where she mentions her family. Those essays always had suprising little thoughts. Like just because you think everyone wants something materialistic doesn't make it true. This book is also by a playwright about (mostly) plays. Some topics I found interesting some not so much. I think I just like references I understand though and when I don't know who or what someone is referring to I read it but it won't stick with me.
May 16, 2020
Ruhl approaches musings on theatre, performance, and creation through an innately human lens. Reading this book, I was reminded of how often we shy away from reflecting life in our work, preferring to build castles and watch from afar, choosing instead to forgo the impulses at the root of play.
Some ideas simply felt outdated- or perhaps just out of my reach generationally- but nevertheless, the book felt present and current. I'm also a personal fan of the one page essay, makes me feel speedy and keeps my goldfish attention span in check.
Some ideas simply felt outdated- or perhaps just out of my reach generationally- but nevertheless, the book felt present and current. I'm also a personal fan of the one page essay, makes me feel speedy and keeps my goldfish attention span in check.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 323 reviews