on umbrellas and sword fights, parades and dogs, fire alarms, children, and theater
218 pages
English language
Published Jan. 6, 2016 by Faber and Faber, Inc., an affiliate of Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
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 uniqueness: "On lice," "On sleeping in the theater," "On motherhood and stools (the furniture kind)," "Greek masks and Bell's palsy."
Thoughts on young children, on theatre, often the prompt is enough to fill in the thought, or provides the structure she proceeds to erase, in probing our expectations.
