Mainly on Directing by Arthur Laurents (read more books .TXT) 📕

here? I don't ask that. I have no answer; nor does anyone have an answer for me. Why am I gay? That isn't important to me, either; but it was and still is to too many others. Well, I was born gay. Why do I say that? I knew I was when I was seven. How? Sex. At seven? At seven, I knew I was attracted to boys sexually. How did I know? Take my word.

Does it influence me professionally? Not as a director. As a writer? To the same extent that being a Jew does: I often write about outsiders. Do I ever wish I weren't gay? How could I? I would never have had the life I had with Tom Hatcher if I hadn't been gay. What I try to bring to the theatre, both as a writer and as a director, comes from the gifts of that life.

Why did I write this book? The answer is typical: life has no respect for a straight, logical line; it always zigzags. Originally, an editor of a publishing house specializing in theatre books saw the huge pile of notes I had given Sam Mendes for the Gypsy he was directing with Bernadette Peters. The editor thought publishing those notes would be extremely informative; display in detail how the process of directing a musical really worked in real theatre life (if that isn't an oxymoron). I set about organizing the notes and providing a background for them, but as I did, the book seemed to be turning more and more into an attack on Sam Mendes, which was far from my intention. I stopped and was ready to quit when Tom stepped in. It wasn't that he didn't want any work to go to waste; rather, he knew he was on the way out and that a book would be something else to keep me busy and get me through the bad part. Why not pass on whatever I knew about directing musical theatre, based on my own experiences? There was a need for something about directing musical theatre—at least I thought so. But knew I was incapable of writing an academic text; inevitably, there would be digressional odds and ends on life and love that would come not only from my experiences directing musicals but from the experiences of my years with Tom.

Tom and theatre, that's what my life has been. And that's what this book is—an effort to say thank you by doing what I can to make the theatre indestructible and to keep Tom alive.

A NOTE ON THE TYPE

This book was set in Adobe Garamond. Designed for the Adobe Corporation by Robert Slimbach, the fonts are based on types first cut by Claude Garamond (c. 1480-1561). Garamond was a pupil of Geoffroy Tory and is believed to have followed the Venetian models, although he introduced a number of important differences, and it is to him that we owe the letter we now know as “old style.” He gave to his letters a certain elegance and feeling of movement that won their creator an immediate reputation and the patronage of Francis I of France.

Composed by Creative Graphics, Allentown, Pennsylvania

Printed and bound by R. R. Donnelley, Harrisonburg, Virginia

Book design by Robert C. Olsson

THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK

PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

Copyright © 2009 by Arthur Laurents

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf,

a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada

by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

www.aaknopf.com

Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are

registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Laurents, Arthur.

Mainly on directing : Gypsy, West Side Story, and other musicals/by Arthur

Laurents. —Ist ed.

p.    cm.

“A Borzoi book.”

eISBN: 978-0-307-27342-0

I. Musicals—Production and direction. 2. Laurents, Arthur. 3. Styne, Jule,

1905-1994. Gypsy. 4. Bernstein, Leonard, 1918-1990. West Side Story. I. Title.

ML1711.5.L38 2009

792.602’33092—dc22   2008055541

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