Who
is Bruce Norris - the man whose latest play, Clybourne Park, has won nearly
every honour the theatre has to give?
Here
are three fascinating profiles – from London, Australia and San Francisco – that
give excellent insights into what makes Norris tick.
"The man behind the Pulitzer Prize-winning play Clybourne Park has built
his career around watching middle-class theatre-goers squirm … as his plays
send their deeply-held liberal mores up in smoke. … During the second half of
Clybourne Park gasps and nervous laughter erupted around the two London
theatres in which it was performed as the multiracial group of characters
competed to tell the most racist jokes they could think of. The most
toe-curling of these involved a comparison between white women and tampons; I
will leave the punch-line to readers’ imaginations. As an audience member (I
saw the play twice), it was impossible to tell whether it was OK to laugh at
jokes that would be derided as beyond the pale outside the auditorium – and it
is this sense of unease that Norris delights in."
To read more (and see the UK video of what
audiences thought) click here.
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| Clybourne Park, Circa Theatre, 2012. Photo by Stephen A'Court. |
"Bruce Norris has no need for surveys or focus groups: the American playwright knows
his audience. The people who go to theatres, he says, are just like him: white,
middle-class, educated, small-L liberal, progressive. But Norris - winner of
this year's Pulitzer prize for drama for his play Clybourne Park - isn't
interested in pandering to boulevard tastes. Clybourne Park, is satire of the
sharpest sort, as he parodies the language, and the attitudes inherent in it,
that white people use in conversation with black people."
 |
| Clybourne Park, Circa Theatre, 2012. Photo by Stephen A'Court. |
"Bruce Norris and journalists have a prickly relationship. In
interviews, he can be curt, frank and painfully direct. A few writers he's
rubbed the wrong way have been less than flattering in print, which is probably
why Norris, when he agrees to be interviewed about American Conservatory
Theater's production of his Clybourne Park, requests that it be via
e-mail.
From
his home in Brooklyn Heights, N.Y., Norris politely answered e-mail questions.
Q:You
gave a fantastic performance in the 1999 production of David Hirson's
"Wrong Mountain" at ACT. How have your experiences as an actor
informed your work as a playwright?
A:
I suppose I'd say that I approach writing from an actor's point of view -
basically, for me, writing plays is just an elaborate form of improvisation in
which I act out all of the characters in my head and simultaneously transcribe
what they say.
Q:Someone
with your writing skills could have gone in any number of directions - why
theater, where the pay isn't exactly lucrative?
A:
I guess because in theater there's the understanding that the writer's word is
final, as opposed to film or novels or even TV, say, where all sorts of forces
conspire to undo the work of the writer ..."
Clybourne Park is on at Circa Theatre until 6 October. To book, please call the Circa Box Office on 801-7992 or go online www.circa.co.nz.
