Theater – On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch

Recognizing Female Genius by Dr. Rosanne Welch

I was doing editor rewrites on a chapter titled “Dorothy Parker: The Creative Genius Behind Film Franchise A STAR IS BORN.” To the note asking me to consider a “less hagiographic title,” I said “No”.

A quick check showed me that many, many, many male writers are called geniuses – but few women.

For instance, this article, Genius – still a country for white, middle class, heterosexual men*, notes:

“Try a quick google search of the terms “literary genius”. The same names keep appearing: William Shakespeare, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Henry James, William Chaucer, Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemingway, Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, Jane Austen, Mark Twain, J.D. Salinger, and so on.”

But I would object to J.D. Salinger. Catcher in the Rye did not move me at all – but S. E. (Susan Elizabeth) Hinton’s The Outsiders moved me and all the generations from mine through my son’s Millennial group and into the folks watching the musical on Broadway right now – while teaching us all to love the poetry of another male genius – Robert Frost. See, I’m willing to use the adjective on men when they deserve it.

So the lesson of the day is that if any writer deserves to be called genius, it’s Dorothy Parker.

Own your genius. And use it to describe other female creatives. And maybe refrain from using it on less men for once.

* Genius – still a country for white, middle class, heterosexual men, Natalie Kon-yu, The Conversation

My Reading Vacation over Winter Break

When a semester ends – even before grades are finished and posted – I dive into reading books I’ve been hoarding. While I love to physically travel on a break, one can’t travel across the WHOLE break, so books became my in-chair vacations.

This week I found myself immersed in two books that can best be described as biographies of books as much as they are biographies of writers. I’m not even a huge fan of The Great Gatsby but I found myself fascinated by the idea that Maureen Corrigan based a whole book on “How The Great Gatsby Came to Be and Why it Endures.”

So for my first trip I visited 1920s New York and the life and (sad) times of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. Again, not a fan of the actual Gatsby, but now a big fan of the book about the book. You can’t get much more meta than that.

I followed that up with Imani Perry’s Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry (author of the play A Raisin in the Sun).

There I visited 1950s Harlem to find her and her circle of Black poets and writers and activists who truly did change the country through pacifist protests – and art. While most people recognize Hansberry as the author of the play, many don’t know that she also wrote the screenplay for the film. That’s catalogued in yet another book that I had already read: A Raisin in the Sun: The Unfilmed Original Screenplay which has a forward by Spike Lee.

Hope you’re finding some fun books to tuck into over this holiday season. You’ve probably heard about the Icelandic tradition of Jolabokaflod, which translates into “Christmas Book Flood.”

The tradition is to give or receive new books on Christmas Eve and then read them late into the night. I’ve always read before bed. It helps me fall asleep so I’m not sure I could read all night long – but I’m more than happy to read all DAY long. THAT’s what I call a vacation.

Reading Leads to 6 Degree Games with Famous Names

Reading Leads to 6 Degree Games with Famous Names by Dr. Rosanne Welch

A funny thing happens when you read a lot of biographies – sometimes names you never heard of turn up in the lives of people who never met and you’re reminded that the 6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon game could be played in generations in the past (with different names of course).

Rachel Carson By U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service – This image originates from the National Digital Library of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service at this page This tag does not indicate the copyright status of the attached work. A normal copyright tag is still required. See Commons:Licensing. See Category:Images from the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. http://training.fws.gov/history/carson/carson.html, Public Domain, Link

That’s what happened when I picked up William Souder’s biography of Rachel Carson On a Farther Shore. I had taught her book Silent Spring which reinvigorated the environmental movement in the 1960s so I wanted to know how she became a writer. As I was reading one of her influences was Hendrik Willem van Loon, a Dutch-American children’s book author, historian, and journalist (like Carson). He wrote The Story of Mankind in 1921 as a history of the world for children and won the first Newbery Medal in 1922. I’ve been reading Newberry Award winners all my life so it was fun to learn he won the first, but that’s not why I remembered his name.

Hendrik Willem van Loon By Underwood & Underwood – This image is available from the United States Library of Congress‘s Prints and Photographs division under the digital ID cph.3a02154. This tag does not indicate the copyright status of the attached work. A normal copyright tag is still required. See Commons:Licensing for more information., Public Domain, Link

That knowledge came from another biography I had delved into several years ago when I started teaching the History of Screenwriting. There I ‘met’ Frances Goodrich Hackett, co-screenwriter with her husband Albert of several classics including The Thin Man, Father of the Bride, It’s a Wonderful Life before winning both the Tony and Pulitzer Prize for the stage version of The Diary of Anne Frank. Then they adapted it into a film. Turns out Von Loon had been Goodrich’s second husband (Albert was her third and final since their marriage and writing partnership lasted over 50 years).

Frances Goodrich Hackett, By not known Fair use , Link

I love accidental finds like that. Carson was influenced by Von Loon to become a writer and Frances became one after she left him. Interesting that both of these women and their writings are now more well-known than he or his works when, at the time, he was the more famous.

Stephens College MFA Alumni Chase Thompson and Michael Burke Talk About Their MFA Experience on the Starcatcher Podcast [Audio Except]

In this clip from a recent Starcatcher podcast film professor (and MFA alum) and host – Chase Thompson – interviews Tech Theatre professor (and MFA alum) Michael Blake about their time as MFA candidates in our Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting program.

They both mention the great feedback they received from their writing mentors, which made me thankful for the dedication of the many marvelous mentors in our program. Then the part that made me smile the most… They each reflected on how important it was in the History of Screenwriting courses to learn about all the female screenwriters who founded Hollywood and how often those women were left out of mainstream histories of the era.

It’s a very powerful example of how history takes time — and deep research — or someone(s) will be left out.

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Join me for a conversation with Stephens College’s Director of Production, Michael Burke. A former graduate of the Stephens Theatre program, Michael talks about his path to production, his background, why Theatre majors are so good at saying thank you, and his predictions on where the road Theater is heading after the pandemic is over.

Listen to this excerpt

Listen to the entire Starcatcher Podcast Episode

Jule Selbo, Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting Program guest lecturer, garners great play reviews

Congratulations to Friend of the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting Program and frequent guest lecturer Jule Selbo (author of Film Genre for the Screenwriter – the topic on which she’ll lecture this January) for the great reviews her play BOXES has been garnering in its East Coast premiere.

The Good Theater’s production of Jule Selbo’s BOXES offers a taut psychological study of manipulation and longing, misconceptions about self and love, all carefully crafted into a thriller with rapid twists and turns that compels the audience’s attention for its brisk ninety-minutes. The boxes of the title are literal props used in a clinical psychological research study, but they are really metaphors for the constraints that shape our views of selfhood and for the inscrutable containers of dark secrets.

Read BWW Review: Containers of the Mind- East Coast Premiere of BOXES

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** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out!
† Available from the LA Public Library

Show Boat and the History of Screenwriting

Among the many films I have my History of Screenwriting students watch as we march through the chronological eras of that history from Silents to (what I call) Superhero Saturation, I include a couple of musicals to illustrate that genre. Among those musicals I include Show Boat for many reasons.

First, because they ought to know about Edna Ferber, who wrote the novel on which the show is based, had an interesting history with Hollywood in that she did not approve of selling off her IP (intellectual property) completely – so she leased novels to Hollywood (including the Pulitzer Prize-winning So Big, and the popular Giant (starring Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson and James Dean and adapted by Fred Guiol and Ivan Moffat).

Second, because they ought to know Paul Robeson who starred in the 1936 film adaptation after having played “Joe” in the London production and became synonymous with the song “Ol’ Man River”.

Third, because it was one of the earliest musicals to take a social justice stance and even handle the subject of miscegenation.

Fourth, because it’s a classic.

But, I recognize even being socially conscious for their times that there are moments in the portrayals of the African American characters that aren’t always comfortable for my students of color so I’m always on the lookout for ways to teach this. That’s why I was happy to come across this 2013 book by Todd Decker Show Boat: Performing Race in an American Musical where he focuses on how the story is really the story of how a white girl singer becomes famous on the riverboat by using a ‘black’ voice, making the story more a study of cultural appropriation. I’ve only begun reading it out of order (movie section first, stage play section second) but have found what I’ve read fascinating.

Check it out at your local library or find it here

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Also of interest is the various changes to the original lyrics of “Ol’ Man River” made by artists over the years.

* A portion of each sale from Amazon.com directly supports our blogs
** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out!
† Available from the LA Public Library

Memorial Day, Michener and South Pacific

I was missing the Memorial Day parades of my Cleveland, Ohio childhood until I realized I was engaging in an individual Memorial Day event without even planning such coordination.

Having taken my Mom to see a touring company of South Pacific for Mothers Day a few weekends back at the La Mirada Theatre, I had finally decided I ought to read the book from which the musical sprang so I ordered a copy of James Michener’s Tales of the South Pacific. I’ve been spending the day learning more about the men and women (remember there were nurses nearly wherever the soldiers were sent) who patrolled the Pacific in the early days of WWII. It’s a kind of double-major moment since it’s also allowing me the chance to consider which of the many tangential stories Oscar Hammerstein chose to include in the adaptation.

Review of the La Mirada Touring version of South Pacific

It’s also allowed me to recognize a part of my reader personality that I don’t think I had ever noticed – books hit me like the lightning bolt of Italian romantic myths. Tales of the South Pacific has always been available to me but it wasn’t until I had a reason to read it that suddenly I found a way to slide some reading time into my busy grading and writing schedule. And then I swallow that book I’ve been meaning to read in a couple of days – like taking a vacation from life and work for a few hours without the cost of fuel or lodging. Books – the world’s cheapest vacations!

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* A portion of each sale from Amazon.com directly supports our blogs
** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out!
† Available from the LA Public Library

Rosanne Welch and Peg Lamphier perform in The Vagina Monologues at Cal Poly Pomona

For our 3rd year participating in the Cal Poly Pomona Women’s Center’s production of The Vagina Monologues, Peg and I were given My Angry Vagina – and we milked it for all the laughs we could. What is it about college students who laugh every time a professor uses colorful language?