So many roads led to the production you’re about to see.
Early in the planning process for our Centennial Season, I sat down with Robert Falls and asked him what projects were currently consuming him (directors love this question; try it on any of us, and then clear some time for the answers). It was a terrific conversation, and while we didn’t land on a final answer, we landed on a few really provocative possibilities. Flash forward, we sat down for a follow up. And the world, in the intervening weeks, had somehow become even more complicated. As a director who lives, eats and sleeps on the tenets of whatever text he’s directing, Bob made a deeply honest admission about one of the darker plays on his list: “I don’t know that I want to spend the next year diving even deeper into that.” Then, he told me about a new adaptation of Philip Barry’s wholly effervescent play Holiday that he was working on with the consummate American writer Richard Greenberg, and it was so clear that this play and this process was a joyful one.
It felt then, as it feels now, a gift of a choice. A smart and funny and utterly delightful work for the dark winter of a dark year.
What we didn’t know was that it would be one of Richard’s last plays.
Even writing that is hard, as it seems impossible that this protean writer/thinker/poet of the theater isn’t with us anymore. But I take great solace in the fact that one of his final chapters is in the hands of a great craftsman, with whom he had a deeply collaborative and affectionate relationship. And I am every kind of honored that we here at The Goodman get to set this ship sailing.
I leave you with this: if you see something you love—a performance, a costume, a directorial choice—let the artist know. Let Richard’s memory teach us all to do that more generously and more often.
Susan V. Booth, Artistic Director
