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 Charge to the Graduates (Agnes
Scott 2005)
Women of the class of 2005, as you no longer have to sign up for
Physics, French, or Field Hockey, I offer this charge to you, Sign
up for FRIENDSHIP, for it is women who have seen to our survival on
this planet. Sign up for FAMILY both born and created, lost and
found, dysfunctional and crucial.
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Tricycle "Take Flight"
My story is about a run-in with a tree. Now
it seems like a lot of people have had life-changing
encounters with trees, from Adam and Eve and Jack and the
Beanstalk, to the Buddha himself. But mine always felt too
stupid to tell. But it changed my life and Helen and Amy
asked for it, so here it is.
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The State of the Theatre -
Keynote – O’Neill Yearly Festival
You asked
me to talk about the state of the theatre today. You said I didn’t have
to prepare a speech. But I started making notes and it turned into a
rant. Well, you know, ask a writer and what do you get. Writing.
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Throw Out The Lifeline by Marsha
Norman
It is my very great pleasure to come give this address. For
it was this very organization, The Kentucky Arts Council, that saved
me, as a young Kentuckian, throwing out a veritable lifeline that
would pull me forever into the safe harbor of the arts, keeping me
away from the dangerous shoals of a career in advertising.
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Why Do We Need The Guild
To protect and defend your copyright so the theater doesn’t become a
work-for-hire arena where you get paid one sum for writing and then
the producers own and profit from your material for as long as they
want, as in the movies and television.
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When Did You First Know You Were
Joan Of Arc? (Agnes Scott Commencement 2000)
I am
very pleased to have been invited to give this commencement
address. I was not a very high profile student in my years here.
Not that I did badly. I won’t put up a building here someday, like
David Letterman did at his college, and dedicate it to the C
student. But I was quiet. Read
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Interviews
Marsha Norman
and Christoper Durang Interview - Nicole Renee Gilman, IMI Program
Marsha Norman: Sometimes I am asked to talk about
writing plays to groups of people who don’t know anything about
writing plays, people who’ve spent their lives writing novels, or
buying stocks, or building houses. But sometimes we all need to hear
the basics again. So here are my simplest thoughts about writing for
the theatre.
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more...
Marsha Norman by April Gornik
- BOMB Magazine
Pulitzer-prize and Tony-award winning playwright Marsha Norman has
just completed a run of her acclaimed play Trudy Blue. Painter April
Gornik talks with Norman about a misdiagnosis that altered the lives
of Norman and her character.
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Adam Rapp by Marsha Norman - BOMB
Magazine
After you read thousands of plays by young writers, you can pretty
much tell in 10 pages whether the playwright is going to get you.
The voice is either clear or not, the dramatic sensibility is either
there or it isn’t, and the writer either knows or doesn’t know what
his personal “content” is, the stuff he will draw on for a lifetime
of writing. But it didn’t even take 10 pages with Adam Rapp. When he
applied to the playwriting program at Juilliard, which I co-direct
with Christopher Durang, I knew in a single sentence that Adam was a
writer...
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NPR Interview - Marsha Norman on
the Romance of 'Cyrano' by Susan Stamberg
In the newest installment of our series "Scenes I Wish I Had
Written," NPR's Susan Stamberg talks with award winning playwright
Marsha Norman. Norman tells us about her favorite scene from another
writer's play — Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand.
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Now
American Theatre Wing, Downstage
Center - Interview with Marsha Norman
Pulitzer Prize-winner
Marsha Norman compares the gathering and rituals
shared by theatre and houses of worship; explains why she could
never have written
'night Mother now that she's had children; talks about
her specific goals in crafting the lyrics for "Lily's Eyes" in
The Secret Garden; considers whether playwriting has
actual rules and can be taught; and compares the story of
The Color Purple to the classic tale of Cinderella.
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Roger Rosenblatt Interviews Marsha
Norman -
Watch Video
InDepth InterView: Marsha Norman &
Theater For Humans by Pat Cerasaro
Today we are talking to a singular literary talent who has written
for Broadway, Hollywood, television and film, but, besides her
Pulitzer Prize-winning Broadway debut, ‘NIGHT MOTHER, which opened
on Broadway in 1982, she is perhaps best known as the Tony-winning
book-writer for two particularly beloved musicals of the last few
decades: THE SECRET GARDEN and THE COLOR PURPLE. Generously covering
her varied career writing for stage and screen, Ms. Norman and I
discuss her process, her passions...Read
more...
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