How to Make Your Characters Sound Puerile
By Robert Cooperman
I subscribe to a service that, for a monthly fee, provides playwrights with an extensive list of playwriting opportunities throughout the country (and sometimes the world). In addition to the monthly listing, the service also sends email messages that are supposed to help playwrights improve their craft. These helpful hints may be beneficial for fledgling playwrights, but for more experienced writers they are a little too basic. As a result, I rarely read the tips and tricks. This month I did. And this is why I must write this entry.
Theatre Review: The Mueller Report-Based ‘The Investigation: A Search for Truth’
The Church Report
By Robert Cooperman
Well, it didn’t take long! Robert Mueller’s long-awaited report was made public on April 18, 2019 and by June 24, 2019 we had a “play” about it! Eighteen notable actors—including John Lithgow, Annette Bening, and Kevin Kline—took the stage at the Riverside Church in Manhattan, and offered an hour-long reading of the Mueller report, entitled The Investigation: A Search for Truth, a title that forces one to sing “Dah-dah-daaahhh” after saying it.
Obviously, it would take way more than an hour to read the 400+ pages of the Mueller report. However, playwright Robert Schankken efficiently cut out most of the report—including the large portion that found no collusion committed by President Donald Trump or anyone on his campaign staff—focusing instead on the obstruction of justice section, which Mueller apparently was unsure about. Schankken himself is a Pulitzer Prize winning playwright, whose most recent piece before The Investigation(Dah-dah-daaahhh!) was Building the Wall, a May 2017 play about “life in the Donald Trump era.” I’ve yet to figure out how a President can define an “era” just five months into his administration.
