The American Theatre Wing Presents: the Play That Changed My Life

Nineteen of today's greatest playwrights-including Doug Wright, Edward Albee, Christopher Durang, and Sarah Ruhl-contribute to this book about the transformative power of theatre. What was the play that changed your life? What was the play that inspired you; that showed you something entirely new; that was so thrilling or surprising, breathtaking or poignant, that you were never the same? Nineteen of today's most gifted playwrights respond in this most revealing and personal book. From Edward Albee's 1935 visit to New York's Hippodrome Theatre to see Jimmy Durante (and an elephant) in Rodgers and Hart's Jumbo to Diana Son's twelfth-grade field trip in 1983 to see Diane Venora play Hamlet at the Public Theater, America's foremost playwrights share their stories. Also included here are pieces by Christopher Durang, David Henry Hwang, Sarah Ruhl, A. R. Gurney, John Patrick Shanley, Doug Wright, and more.