James Grissom

  I’m amused when I’m sent things that purport to analyze and explain my plays, and they are almost always centered on theatrical antecedents. It is assumed, by a number of smart people, that Brecht was my primary influence in the writing of Menagerie. I was more influenced by Clarence Brown than by Brecht, but this type of analysis gives people something to do. I think this scholarly research is a variant on my mother, my sister, and me revising movies in the house and the backyard. I told this to Gore [Vidal] and he said “Yes, but you and your mother were only disturbing the squirrels, some nosy neighbors, and your psyche. Academics disturb everything.”   Do you agree?      I don’t think about it. Miriam Hopkins What are some of the films that influenced Menagerie?      Well, Amanda is certainly a repository of mannerisms and methods belonging to my mother—Edwina—but I was thinking of a number of women—actresses—when I cobbled her together. There is a great deal of Miriam Hop

Michael Learned. Photo courtesy of Harlan Boll. I have had only one personal encounter with actress Michael Learned. In 1995 my friend Marian Seldes and press agent Sam Rudy invited me to a run-through of Edward Albee’s Three Tall Women , which was being held in a large rehearsal space and in preparation for a tour and a Los Angeles production.  Marian had begun her relationship with the play in the role of  “B,” a woman she called  a  “sour mendicant,” who hunched and lurked and sneered at Myra Carter’s “A,” an imperious, racist woman of wealth who employed and insulted her. Christina Rouner had assumed the role of “C,” a young woman sent to the home of “A” to determine finances and history, and to be queried by the two older women. Rouner had studied at Juilliard under Marian’s watchful eye, and Marian told me that “I met this glorious pearl—look at her—and found a genius within. She can surprise so easily with her acting. May her beauty open doors, not close them.” I had seen Three

  Interview with Kim Stanley conducted by James Grissom/1992/Los Angeles "I'm going to stop you right there, because I do not teach acting. Acting cannot be taught, and anyone who tells you that it can is a charlatan. You are either born with the talent to act or you are not. A teacher, a guide, a coach can only enhance what you've been given, and this is done primarily through showing the actor where to look--at books, at theatre, at films, at art, at people, at life all around. Expand their minds and hearts. You can give them confidence by the foundation you build beneath their feet, and then you can hold those feet to the fire by demanding that they be truthful--in life and in any scenes they do before a class. "There is so much out there to learn and to ingest, and we can share our experience of a book or a painting or a performance by incorporating into our roles what we saw and felt. We have to think and be big. A class is where you dare to take on parts you kno

  Interview with James Grissom/2006 "A student comes to me--or a young person who needs help--and I don't want to tell them about some of the things that await them. A gifted person comes to me, and I am inspired by all they have; their unique ability to analyze and share things--and then the day comes when fear strikes them, and it almost always surfaces as envy, anger, spite. "I have always been more afraid of anger than I have of people on the street who might hurt me. People always told me to walk closer to the street, because doorways and alleys might hide people who would hurt or rob me. I'm more frightened of the dark alleys in our minds, where actions are waiting to jump out and force us to corrupt who we are. "I found myself telling students that no one--no one at all--can take what is yours. You think a part was owed to you, belonged to you, and then it goes to another, and I have seen years of rage build up over this so-called slight. It is not a sligh

  Ah, what happiness it is to be with people who are all happy, to press hands, press cheeks, smile into eyes. ―Katherine Mansfield PART ONE Johanna Day, the actress, is the youngest of nine children, was born with a caul covering her face, and is frequently followed by snakes. These aspects of her biography are sometimes credited with giving her special powers: She can diagnose illness and is very good at treating people of both mental and physical maladies, her gift for friendship is phenomenal, and she can overlook the odious with admirable rapidity. A lot of Day's positivity she credits to her mother, who had hanging in her kitchen a sign that read "Misery is Optional." Day's mother, Eileen, was close to Johanna, her youngest, and knew about and supported her dreams. Diagnosed with cancer during a peak in her daughter's career--the Broadway run of "Proof"--her mother remained as active as she could, involved in the lives of all of her children, and g

  Brooke Smith as Merilee in "Big Sky." When people who care about acting gather together to talk about how it's diminishing or being degraded, certain names are always brought up to engender hope in the group, and one of them is Brooke Smith. During a brief period when I had the ears and the attention of Mike Nichols, he said of Smith that "she was fully intelligent and present all the time, and that is very often not seen as 'acting.' People remain simple--if not dumb--about what they think acting is: Loud, outlined in neon, a parade of adjectives made flesh. To witness an actor inhabiting a character fully, listening, making a mark in the--God forgive this-- mise en scène,  is to see a rarity."        I was contracted by an online magazine last year to profile Smith when she mounted her own Emmy campaign for her supporting performance in the ABC series "Big Sky." When the campaign failed to net Smith a nomination, the story was dropped, bu