Conversations with Beth Henley / edited by Jackson R. Bryer and Mary C. Hartig.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Bryer, Jackson R., editor.

Hartig, Mary C., editor.

Series:

Literary conversations series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Henley, Beth--Interviews.

Henley, Beth.

Dramatists, American--Interviews.

Dramatists, American.

Playwriting.

Physical Description:

xxiv, 223 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Jackson : University Press of Mississippi, [2023]

Summary:

"With roots in the American South, Beth Henley (b. 1952) has for four decades been a working playwright and screenwriter. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1981 at the age of twenty-eight, Henley so far has written twenty-five produced plays that are always original, usually darkly comic, and often experimental. In these interviews, Henley speaks of the plays, from her early crowd-pleasers, Crimes of the Heart and The Miss Firecracker Contest, to her more experimental plays, including The Debutante Ball and Control Freaks, to her brilliant and time-bending play, The Jacksonian. Henley is a master at writing about the duality of human experience-the beautiful and the grotesque, the cruel and the loving. This duality provokes in Henley both amazement and compassion. She discusses here not only her admiration for Chekhov and other influences, but also her process of bringing a play from notebooks of images and bits of dialogues through rumination, writing, and rewriting to rehearsals and previews. The interviews range from 1981, just before she won the Pulitzer Prize, to 2020 and cover nearly forty years of a creative life, which, as Henley remarks in the most recent interview, is "such a life worth living: to be in tune with the creative process.""-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Introduction

Chronology

Beth Henley / John Griffin Jones

Beth Henley / Elizabeth Mullener

Beth Henley talks about her way of writing plays / Hilary DeVries

Life after the Pulitzer / Linda Sherbert

Beth Henley / Kathleen Betsko

Mississippi playwright downplays her success / Leslie R. Myers

Beth Henley / Beverly Walker

The eccentric genius of "Crimes of the heart" / Margy Rochlin

Beth Henley / Kevin Sessums

Beth Henley / Cynthia Wimmer-Moul

Beth Henley takes the director's chair for "Control freaks" / Hedy Weiss

Beth Henley / Mary Dellasega

Beth Henley: signature of a nonstop playwright / V. Cullum Rogers

Playing dollhouse on a huge scale: an interview with Beth Henley / Bonnie Lyons

The mellowing of Miss Firecracker / Pamela Renner

Stage-struck in Screen City / Don Shirley

Beth Henley / Alexis Greene

Expressing "The misery and confusion truthfully": an interview with Beth Henley / Jackson R. Bryer

An interview with Beth Henley / Dan O'Brien

"Ridiculous fraud" and "The Jacksonian"

Beth Henley's new plays about the South: an interview / Verna A. Foster

Beth Henley returns to New York and her Southern roots with gothic black comedy "The Jacksonian" / TheaterMania

The long journey home: an interview with the playwright about her play "The Jacksonian" / Robert Falls

An interview with Beth Henley / Karen Carpenter

In conversation with Theresa Rebeck and Beth Henley / Theresa Rebeck

KP live ABCs: Beth Henley!!!!! / Samantha Barrios and Sam Gianfala

Index.

Notes:

Includes index.

Other Format:

Online version: Conversations with Beth Henley

ISBN:

9781496844293

1496844297

9781496844309

1496844300

OCLC:

1355801068