Plays on Ideas: Little dramas, big themes
By Nicholas Patricca February 1, 2008 San Miguel de Allende

PEN Winter Lecture Series
Wim Coleman
Tues, Feb 5, 6pm
Auditorio Miguel Malo
Bellas Artes
Hernández Macías 75
50 pesos

Who should govern? Is there such a thing as the soul? What are the limits of free expression? Does a higher power take sides in human conflicts, including war?

What are the ethical limits of scientific investigation? What is the power of the written word? Must there be a conflict between science and religion? Does religion have a valid role to play in the political sphere? What is the distinction between madness and divine inspiration?

San Miguel playwright, poet, and novelist Wim Coleman probes these and other thorny questions in his new book, Plays on Ideas 1, the first in a series of one-act drama anthologies based on the history of thought. Coleman will direct staged readings of three of the book’s five playlets as part of the PEN Winter Lecture Series. Each of the mini-dramas focuses on a moment in history and on the people who made history. The plays introduce characters played by Marthe Fraser, Stan Gray, Lucina Kathmann, Bill Pearlman, Kathleen Snodgrass, John Wharton and Wim Coleman.

In “The Maiden and the Nation,” Joan of Arc comforts a dying English soldier after her victory at Orléans, only to find that his mystical visions are bitterly at odds with her own. “In the Belly of the Fish” portrays Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan after the Scopes trial, offering an unexpected view of Bryan’s views of religion and science. In “God’s Substitute,” Queen Elizabeth I angrily confronts William Shakespeare for presenting a play supporting the 1601 Essex rebellion, raising questions about divine right and the looming specter of democracy.

Coleman’s plays have won awards and honors in New York, Salt Lake City and Los Angeles. Last year, his play for students “Don Quixote in Hollywood” was a finalist for a Distinguished Achievement Award from the Association of Educational Publishers.

Wim Coleman does much of his writing in collaboration with his wife, Pat Perrin, who also designed Plays on Ideas 1. They have worked together on at least 65 books, some of which have appeared in German, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese, Romanian and Spanish editions. Copies of many publications will be for sale at the event. Their most recent mainstream novel, The Maya Gateway, is available for sale in the Biblioteca gift shop. Coleman and Perrin also manage the San Miguel PEN Scholarship Program for local students.

Proceeds from the Winter Lecture Series, which continues at 6pm every Tuesday through March 4 in Bellas Artes, fund local activities and help support the international organization. For further information: lucina.kathmann@gmail.com  or 152-0614.

Nicholas Patricca is a playwright and a member of San Miguel PEN. His play, The Defiant Muse, which won the Onassis award for Playwriting in 2006, was produced at Victory Gardens Theater in Chicago in 2007.

Leonard Brooks and Wayne Greenhaw together again
By Michael Grais

San Miguel Authors’ Sala
Leonard Brooks & Wayne Greenhaw
Joel Kramer & Diana Alstad
Fri, Feb 8, 5pm
Posada de San Francisco
Plaza Principal 2
50 pesos

Old friends, 96-year-old Canadian artist Leonard Brooks and writer Wayne Greenhaw, will present a program of readings from their latest books. World-class artist Brooks will read from Sir Nobby, the memoirs of a San Miguel Siamese, which Brooks illustrated with line drawings. “I love to read from my latest work to a crowd in my adopted home of San Miguel,” Brooks said. “Sir Nobby is becoming more and more famous.”

Brooks came to San Miguel nearly 60 years ago with his wife Reva, who became a world-class photographer. He recently published his ninth art book, a collection of his prize-winning watercolors. Eight of his earlier art books were bestsellers. A war artist for the Royal Navy in World War II, Brooks came to San Miguel in the late forties to study art. He remained to teach at Bellas Artes. 

MacKinley Helm, the Mexican art expert who wrote numerous books on the subject, praised Brooks’ work through the years. As late as last year his watercolors were shown at the National Watercolor Museum in Mexico City, where he once again received accolades for his powerful paintings.

Greenhaw divides his time between San Miguel and his native state of Alabama. He will read from his latest novel, King of Country, a trade paperback about the life and times of a country music singer and songwriter in the Hank Williams tradition. He wrote the book more than 10 years ago. “When a publisher asked to bring it out in paperback, I agreed only if I could make certain revisions,” he said. He explained that when the novel was originally published he was involved in the political world in his home state. “I really didn’t have my heart and soul in the book. Now, however, I feel as though I have done the work proud.” Greenhaw recently finished his 20th book, a biography of a Southern politician and businessman.

In 2005, the University of Alabama, Greenhaw’s alma mater, honored him with the Clarence E. Cason Award in Nonfiction. The next year his The Thunder of Angels: The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the People Who Broke the Back of Jim Crow was published by the Chicago Review Press. After receiving much positive press, it was published in paperback early last year. In 2006, Alabama Southern Community College presented to Greenhaw the Harper Lee Award for Distinguished Writing.

Greenhaw also will read from a recent volume of his poetry, Ghosts on the Road: Poems of Alabama, Mexico and Beyond. “I always look forward to reading at the San Miguel Authors’ Sala where the people welcome new work, new ideas and old authors,” Greenhaw said.

The Author’s Sala support’s San Miguel writers and bilingual San Miguel programs, including mostly author’s readings and the annual San Miguel Writer’s Conference. For more information, visit www.sanmiguelauthors.com. 

Michael Grais is a screenwriter and novelist currently living in San Miguel.

Book Fever
By Marcia Loy

Favorite biographies and memoirs

There is properly no history; only biography.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

Biographies and memoirs are among my favorite books. I love to learn about the lives and times of people, famous, infamous or not well known.

The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls, 2005. I wanted to have the author’s parents arrested on page nine for child endangerment and I never changed my mind, even when her father took his four children outside on Christmas and gave each of them a star. Walls had to have experienced one of the worst childhoods in American history. If I’d been her I’d be going to dysfunctional family12-step meetings for the rest of my life, complaining and moaning about my childhood every week. Yet she remains remarkably generous in writing about her parents and seems to have escaped her background with little permanent damage.

Miracle in the Andes: 72 Days on the Mountain and My Long Trek Home, Nando Parrado, 2006. In 1972 a plane carrying members of a Uruguayan Rugby team crashed in the Andes 20 minutes from their airport in Chile. The author was among the survivors. They had only the food in their suitcases; the plane crashed above the tree line. The search for them was called off after a few days, and they knew it. Twenty-nine people died on the mountain; 16 lived. This is their remarkable story.

My Life in France, Julia Child, 2006. This memoir was published two years after the author’s death and recounts the years between 1948 and 1954 when she and her husband Paul lived in France. It was there she studied cooking and fell in love with French cuisine. She discusses the complexity of writing a book on French cooking for Americans and the challenges of working with two collaborators.

Chasing Matisse: A Year in France Living My Dream, James Morgan, 2005 Writer and would-be artist, Morgan and his wife sold their house in Little Rock and moved to France so he could pursue his dream of following Matisse around France, Corsica and Morocco. The book contains numerous illustrations by the author.

Sixpence House: Lost in a Town of Books, Paul Collins, 2003. The author, his wife and young son leave San Francisco to live in Hay-on-Wye, Wales, a town with 1,500 residents, 40 bookstores and two bookbinders, both named Christine. Only one bookstore carries new releases. There are also the obligatory pubs and idiosyncratic people. Each May the town is invaded by tourists who come for what used to be called the Hay Literary Festival but is now the Hay Festival. Collins likes old, obscure books and I now have a short list of books to read as a result of reading this one.

Next week: Book Fever takes the pulse of Doris Kearns Goodwin. Have you read an interesting biography or memoir? Would you like to share it with Atención readers? Please send the title, author, date of publication, 3-4 lines and a short quote to marciabookfever@hotmail.com. Happy reading.

Marcia Loy is a member of the steering committee of the Authors’ Sala and a volunteer at the Biblioteca Pública.

Recent work by Linda Schor and Halvard Johnson

Readers Aloud Series
Linda Schor and Halvard Johnson
Thu, Feb 7, 4pm
Sala Quetzal
Biblioteca Pública
Insurgentes 25
50 pesos.

Lynda Schor’s two most recent collections of short fiction are The Body Parts Shop and Adventures in Capitalism. She has had stories and articles in Ms., Playboy, GQ, Redbook, Mademoiselle and The Village Voice. Her story “Still the Top Banana” was nominated for an O’Henry Award.

She recently retired after 25 years of teaching fiction writing at The New School. A new book of short fiction, Seduction: Stories of Love & Art, is forthcoming.

Halvard Johnson grew up in New York City and currently lives there when he is not in San Miguel. Recent poetry collections include Rapsodie espagnole, G(e)nome, The Sonnet Project, Theory of Harmony and The English Lesson. Guide to the Tokyo Subway was published in 2006 and Organ Harvest with Entrance of Clones in 2007. For many years he taught overseas in the European and Far East divisions of the University of Maryland. 

Canada’s top playwright keynotes writer’s conference
By Wayne Greenhaw

The most prolific and arguably the most popular playwright in Canada will highlight the third annual San Miguel Writers’ Conference as a keynote speaker.

Born on St. Valentine’s Day, Norm Foster was obviously blessed at birth by the saint who watches over lovers. More than 40 of his plays, many of them love stories, have been produced since the first, Sinners, was put on stage in 1983. A black farce about love gone awry, Sinners concerns a local furniture dealer who is caught in the arms of the minister’s wife. 

So intrigued by Foster’s talent in his first effort, the same director, Malcolm Black, took on his second major stage work. The Melville Boys, which the Toronto Globe and Mail critic said “touches the heart in the right places,” became a raging success across Canada and off-Broadway in New York. Critics have called the poignant, heart-touching comedy and love story a Canadian classic. 

Raised in Toronto, Foster studied radio and television arts at Centennial College there and Confederation College in Thunder Bay. For 25 years his career centered around radio, taking him to Winnipeg to Kingston to Fredericton, New Brunswick, where he was working as a morning DJ in 1980 when he became associated with the local theater by accident.

“A friend of mine was going to audition for a local community theater production of Harvey,” Foster recalls, “and he asked me to go along. I went, just for a lark, and I wound up getting the part of Elwood P. Dowd. The funny thing is, I had never even seen a play in my life before this.” It was love at first performance. 

More than 20 years after the production of Sinners, the Halifax Daily News reported that in 2004 alone there were 85 productions of Foster plays in Canada, the US, Australia and New Zealand. Ron Foley-Macdonald wrote in the Halifax paper that Foster’s work is seldom reviewed in Canada’s largest newspapers, “because he doesn’t write ‘socially useful’ or ‘politically correct’ work.” Foley-Macdonald asked why he strikes such a chord with average-Joe-and-Josephine audiences who actually pay real money to enjoy his plays. The answer is direct and simple. Norm Foster is the best dramatist in the country. He’s equal to America’s Neil Simon and Britain’s Alan Ayckbourn.

A few days before his 40th play, Mending Fences, was premiered at Port Mansion Theatre in Niagara, the playwright told the magazine Pulse, “It’ll make you laugh and I guarantee it will make you cry.” In it, Foster played Harry Sullivan, the first time he acted in the first performance of one of his plays.

“Acting is great fun,” Foster says, “but writing is my first love. A lot of people out there like the ‘idea’ of being a writer. The romance of it. The notion that we all sit around in cafés and talk about our writing with other writers. Personally, I would rather do it than talk about it.”

Most of his plays, including Drinking Alone, about a young man hiring a callgirl to pose as his fiancée to impress his father, and Ned Durango Comes to Big Oak, about an aging cowboy television star who comes to the aid of a failing small town, are funny and touching. “I find it far more satisfying if I can make an audience laugh and feel a little heartache within the same story,” he says. “It’s the stories that touch an audience’s heart as well as its funny bone that are the most rewarding.”

He is the ultimate professional. “I write for about three or four hours each day. I mean, if you can turn out even one page per day, it doesn’t take long before you’ve got a 90-page script.

“Another important thing is, you have to know when to stop writing. Know when your play is finished. One of the curses of being a playwright is that you’re never, ever completely satisfied with your finished product. There is always that one line which you think you could improve. And when you improve that line, you find another. You must know when to stop.”

Wayne Greenhaw recently finished his 20th book. In 2006 he was presented the Harper Lee Award for Distinguished Writing.

Bestsellers at writers’ conference

San Miguel Writers’ Conference
Fri–Sun, Feb 22–24
Hotel Real de Minas

The third annual San Miguel Writers’ Conference is a three-day event featuring bestselling authors, agents, editors and publishers, workshops and panel discussions, an annual writing contest and a special review of one’s work for eight lucky writers. The four keynote speakers are:

Rebecca Walker, bestselling author of Baby Love and Black, White, and Jewish;

Sena Jeter Naslund, author of Ahab’s Wife, Abundance, Four Spirits, Sherlock in Love;

Norm Foster, celebrated Canadian playwright, author of more than 40 plays, including The Melville Boys and The Love List; and

Laura Fraser, author of the bestselling memoir, An Italian Affair.

For information and registration: www.sanmiguelworkshops.com.