Viewing page 21 of 33
This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.
“The joy of having your take on the world land on an audience—that’s a great feeling. That’s what writing can offer.” said, ‘That’s the good news? What’s the bad news?’ He said, ‘The bad news is you’re a writer. You have to start writing another play.' So I put that first play aside that evening, and about a year or so later, I started working on Snakebit.” The play that eventually emerged was one that triangled rather trickily among an egocentric actor on the rise, his put—on wife and a gay friend who’s sweating the outcome of an AIDS test that could affect all of them. The dialogue was brittle, but the undercurrent was mournful, and that was pretty much the state of David Marshall Grant at that point in time. “I was living in Los Angeles, and I’d just ended a relationship,” he remembers. “My career as an actor was feeling a little stalled, and I was feeling sorry for myself, I think. “I started writing a play about what happens in friendships when everything terrible happens to one person and everything great happens to the other. In the process of writing it, I discovered what I was really writing about—a person who found success and wasn’t daunted by failure, and someone who romanced failure and found a peace in tragedy. I realized these two had a lot to learn from each other, that the more ambitious character could learn about decency and the more decent person could learn about self-reliance.” By the time Grant finished the play, he was on top as an actor, doing Tony-nominated work in Angels in América—as was Joe Mantello, who played his lover in that landmark drama. “I think both of us were toying with the idea of leaving the acting pool for a while. We’d both reached a place in our lives where we were experiencing other creative impulses, and for whatever reason, we explored them.” They struck up a collaboration, and Mantello directed Snakebit's first mounting at New York Stage and Film Workshop. Save for the occasional movie and an appearance in Roundabout’s all-star Three Sisters, Grant has spent his years of Snakebit fame focused on writing Opus Two, Current Events. Headline wise, the plot couldn't be more current. Jon Tenney plays a politician compelled to get his personal life in order before he runs for Congress. Barbara Barrie, Christine Ebersole and John Gallagher, Jr. co-star, under the direction of David Petrarca. "So much of what we know about politics goes on with the candidate on the campaign trail, and so little of it goes on inside living rooms. Politicians have families, and human beings are affected by choices that are made. I'm interested in that human dimension of politics. Giuliani's story could happen to a computer programmer or a plumber. Politics brings unusual stakes to a personal relationship. It's one of the jobs where your ability to navigate your private life is challenged by the fact that people are not only interested in it to sell magazines, but they're interested in your ability to do the job you're asked to do" In one sense Grant sees acting and writing as the same thing. "It's a process of discovery for both actor and writer. As a writer, you've written something, but actors bring so much to it. You really start learning more about what you wrote from what they bring to you. As an actor, it's a process where you start to understand what the writer intended. So it's sort of the same thing. Hopefully, you meet in the middle. The actor brings things the playwright didn't think of, and the playwright brings things that the actor discovers." Still, he's not entirely comfortable with his two-hat trick. "As a writer, you don't get to bond the way you used to as an actor. You're the adult behind the desk. It's just not nearly as much fun. But the joy of having your take on the world land on an audience - that's a great feeling. That's what writing can offer, finally. "Writing is such a cerebral activity, and acting is so emotional. It's a great balance. My dream is to act in the theatre at night, wake up the next morning and write for a few hours." 32 WWW.PLAYBILL.COM PURE THEATRE ONLINE [[end page]] [[start page]] [[advertisement]] [[image: photo of round planetarium]] ROSE CENTER FOR EARTH & SPACE DON'T MISS THE SPACE SHOW AT THE NEW HAYDEN PLANETARIUM CALL FOR TICKETS 212-769-5200 CENTRAL PARK WEST AT 79TH STREET OPEN DAILY AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY [/advertisement]]
