the difference between you and me by madeleine george

One of my earliest memories of playgoing is going to Amahl and the Night Visitors when I was like two-and-a-half years old. When did you first notice plays? What play first turned you on? And I studied linguistics as an undergraduate, not theater, and I love listening to people talk. I think I can safely say that that is my entry point into plays.

I have a vivid memory of being in my acting class in college and being up there in the middle of an improv and feeling language just kind of volleying forth from me and my acting teacher standing at the back of the room as I was trying to improv the scene, shouting “Objective, Objective, OBJECTIVE!” I come at it from a delight in the surface topography of language as spoken by human beings. Some playwrights come from poetry and they get in through image and some come from acting and they get in through action or objective. We were talking about the different ways to get into writing plays. Madeleine: It’s funny because I was just talking about this with my friend, the great playwright Rob Handel. Tim: What came first for you, writing or theater?

The difference between you and me by madeleine george