Play That Changed My Life.

Play That Changed My Life. Edited by Ben Hodges. Applause Theater and Cinema Books

The Play That Changed My Life is a collection of essays detailing the most formative memories of some of America's most successful and critically-acclaimed playwrights. The book unfolds in a series of vignettes, as each author tells the story of his or her encounter with the first play that completely changed his or her perspective on the theater. Some stories are of plays that were 'the best' the author had seen thus far. Other plays challenged the authors' consciousness, and still others spurred them on to chose a life in the theater.

The plays described in the book run a wide gamut. Some authors chronicle their first encounters with classical theater. Diana Son, for example, talks about how much she enjoyed reading William Shakespeare's tragedy of Hamlet in high school. Like many adolescents, she loved the play, but she also developed a very clear image in her mind while reading the play about the 'right' or the only way that the play should be performed. Then, she saw a production of Hamlet with the title role performed by a woman. The brilliance of the performance demonstrated to Son the fact that drama is a living art, and there are many different ways for dramatic words to be translated from the page to the stage.

Not all plays are about 'serious' theater. For example, Lynn Nottage cites her experiences seeing theater as a child as her most formative memories, including a production involving talking Lima beans. As humorous and light-hearted as this piece of children's theater may have been, it also instructed Nottage about how to use the possibilities of using the suspension of disbelief inherent within the theatrical format to tell a story. It awakened her imagination and excited her about the theater, and it also instructed her, forming the basis for her future art. Another contributor, Beth Henley, has a very different memory: of being greatly disappointed at the ordinariness of a princess in a production, and her dissatisfaction with the actress' performance. Casting is everything. Henley learned at an early age.

Many of the authors detail unconventional encounters with theater that give rise to future inspiration. David Auburn says that he saw his first, truly life-changing production on PBS, a surrealist production of the House of Blue Leaves. This example suggests that theater does not even have to be 'live' to be life-changing; it merely needs to challenge the assumptions of the audience of what is possible. Auburn grew up in a 'theater town' with a local repertory company and an English professor for a father. However, being exposed to a unique play that merged farce and tragedy, and spoke to Auburn's own frustrated and longing ambitions, was what transformed him.