Theatre · The Creative Process: Acting, Directing, Writing & Behind the Scenes Conversations The Creative Process

"S. E. Hinton, Susie Hinton wrote The Outsiders when she was 15 and 16. It was published when she was 17. She was told by one editor in particular that she couldn't have any swear words, so she was sort of forced to write about these very big, intense, love-and-death operatic themes where there's a boy who dies by suicide by cop. There's a boy who dies from a fire. So it's about grief. His parents die in a car crash prior to all that. There's this hugely stacked deck of grief that exists in the novel. But when you read the novel, there's a very sweet and loving tone to it. So when I started working on it, I recall childhood in Joliet, Illinois. My mom was a single parent, and she raised three kids on her own on a nurse's salary. So I had to give myself permission to take her great dark themes and actions that are in her novel and like give language to it that was also from an adult world.
Right now, live theater is probably much different than looking at a screen. It's much different than looking at your computer or your Game Boy or whatever. I see grown men on the subway playing video games on their phones. And we're not even looking at each other on the subways anymore. We're like deep in our in a screen. And I wonder what that's done. And so I think theater actually has a powerful ability to rewire us to the human experience. And maybe because of it, maybe we can find more empathy or more capacity toward kindness."

What role do the families we’re born into or the traumas we experience shape the people we become? Do good deeds offset bad deeds? How can the arts increase our capacity for empathy, understanding, and kindness?

Dan Futterman is creator, executive producer, and writer of Amazon Prime's American Rust, the acclaimed crime drama starring Jeff Daniels, Maura Tierney, and David Alvarez. Previously, Dan has written screenplays for Capote, Foxcatcher, In Treatment, and Gracepoint. He served as executive producer on The Looming Tower. Dan is also an actor, director, and two-time Oscar nominee.

Adam Rapp is the executive producer and writer of American Rust. He has written plays, films, and series, including Red Light Winter, The Sound Inside, In Treatment, Blackbird, The Looming Tower, and Dexter: New Blood. His latest novel is Wolf at the Table. He recently wrote the book for the new Broadway musical, The Outsiders.

"For years, people spoke about how awkward or embarrassing it was to perform the intimate content. And what they're speaking about is feeling horrible. If something's awkward, that squirm, that ring in the body, it feels embarrassing. That's actually an emotion that is not professional. That is not allowing the actor to stay feeling listened to, heard, empowered, autonomous. And so that they can just get on without any of those concerns and do their job to their best ability. And that's the awareness that we brought. So, we're saying, it is not suitable in our workplace for anybody to feel harassed or abused. "

How can intimate scenes be brought to the screen in ways that respect the emotional well-being and privacy of the artists themselves? How do we make sure that we can create a story about abuse without anyone being abused in the process?

Ita O’Brien is the UK’s leading Intimacy Coordinator, founder of Intimacy on Set (and author of the Intimacy On Set Guidelines). Her company, set up in 2018 provides services to TV, film, and theatre when dealing with intimacy, and is a SAG-Aftra accredited training provider of Intimacy Practitioners. Intimacy on Set has supported numerous high-profile film and TV productions including Normal People & Conversations With Friends (BBC3/Hulu), Sex Education 1&2 (Netflix), I May Destroy You (BBC/HBO), It’s A Sin (Channel 4), (Neal Street Prods / Searchlight Pictures).

"When I did my show Positive Me, we were in the middle of a horrible crisis. The AIDS crisis was very real to me and my friends and not real to the people that I knew from New Jersey. They thought it was government hype. They didn't believe in it. And so I couldn't even fathom that. And I had taken a class with Elizabeth Swados about writing satire, and she was very encouraging in terms of what I was doing. And so maybe it was just gumption. I just thought, Okay, then this is what I'm going to do!"
"I had the first ever lesbian makeout scene on network television on a short-lived show called Relativity. That was another role where I felt really honored to be asked to do that, having been in and around the gay community my whole adult life. In the club scene, it was like all my friends were gay. So I was really happy to represent doing that."

How can the arts help us examine and engage with social issues? How do our families shape our views, memories, and experience of the world?

From her role as Dr. Lisa Cuddy on the hit Fox series House, to her starring role as Abby McCarthy in Bravo's first scripted series Girlfriend's Guide to Divorce, Lisa Edelstein's range of roles are as diverse talent. Some of Edelstein's feature credits include Keeping the Faith, What Women Want, Daddy Daycare, As Good as It Gets, and Fathers and Sons. She played a Holocaust survivor and adopted mother in the drama television series Little Bird. The story centres on a First Nations woman who was adopted into a Jewish family during the Sixties Scoop, as she attempts to reconnect with her birth family and heritage.

Lisa’s career began by writing, composing, and performing an original AIDS awareness musical Positive Me at the renowned La Mama Experimental Theater Club in New York City. In the wake of COVID, Lisa began to paint using old family photographs as starting points. Her incredibly detailed paintings capture intimate relationships and spontaneous moments with honesty and compassion.