#interview with the playwright

[northern-pirate]

Signal boost! Lovely and interesting new interview with Eric Bogosian by Ilana Levine. <3

[librarygf]

sorry but genius episode to me. it’s all a play and and they’ve all been cast in their roles since the beginning. and yet the truth strains against the cloth of the fake thing. lestat has his lines but they’re written by the coven, and no one but the audience truly believes him. his victimhood is too convenient and it’s not the even the story he wants to tell. instead, with the help of his sidesteps and the lines he refuses to say, something true emerges from the fog. a story where everything is real, the love and the horror and most of all the way claudia was always a daughter, as some daughters are. immensely loved but also immensely failed

[tbd6]

'Ep543 - Danai Gurira, Actress ‘Black Panther’ Franchise & ‘The Walking Dead’ Franchise' by Creative Principles Podcast is on SoundCloud

[nalyra-dreaming]

Roget knowing Lestat might be asleep is interesting in and by itself of course, but also the foreshadowing once more. Maybe dead, maybe... sleeping.

The whole episode was shock-full of foreshadowing: brain-switches, beheadings, refused replacements, body-sizes, forgiveness, the coven's judgment. The fire at the mansion and the screams Louis left behind.

The last performance/play being the only one that counts.

[heliza24]

I love how every time an interview asks Rolin some variety of “how did you pull off this very difficult story beat or tonal balance” Rolin is like. Well we’re all playwrights. And we hired people with theatre training, like that fully explains it. And you know what? It does actually. It does.

[comorbidipus]

hey tumblr this might be a crazy request but on behalf of my hyperfixation on interview with the vampire, i would really like to know if ANYONE can give me the details of this song. if you'd consider my input, it sounds vaguely Beck-ish, specifically the instruments and the cadence of the voice, but i have a feeling it is Not Beck.

i'm being genuine and i'm really curious about this. i've done a bit of a search but maybe i can get a bit of a boost in finding it :P

this clip is from "sex, drugs, rock and roll", a one-man-show by eric bogosian made in 1991 and performed by joe deese that i casually stumbled across (after days of watching the movies he starred in in the 80s). it's just a small snippet of the song and it's during a very short intermission in the play. i am having trouble deciphering it, so any help is appreciated!

apologies how absolutely unstable my camerawork is. a boy cannot sit still

[briarmae]

Headcannon: former vampire playwright, current theatrical DJ, always Talamascan agent, Sam Barclay opens for The Vampire Lestat, rockstar, on tour.

[dxxtruction]

Pairing sam + armand next to each other at the trial has gotta be one of those choices man. Sam - literal riff on Samuel Beckett, writer of Waiting for Godot. Godot, who some say is this stand in for the absence of god, and hope, that never comes.

Godot who might honestly be Armand - this all powerful being - because he never does come to provide hope and salvation that he very well could.

There is also the read of WFG that suggests the characters are waiting for death - Armand places himself into the role which is an absence of a role casting Sam to be the stand in for the role which is the role of death. Precluding him from having any real part in the deaths. 'He could not have prevented it' because if he did - in this staged lack of performance - he'd be sending death to them and himself.

[jaggedjot]

When naming the members of the Théâtre des Vampires, Armand introduces Louis and Claudia to their “playwright in residence”, one Samuel Barclay (“Sam. Call me Sam.”). This is almost certainly a reference to Samuel Barclay Beckett, the famous modernist writer, theatre director and playwright. The style of theatre that Beckett was instrumental in creating, the so-called Theatre of the Absurd, with its focus on existentialism and tragicomic tones, shares some notable characteristics with the plays shown at the Théâtre des Vampires; Louis’ complaint that “They were weird! And always ended in death or some kind of cruel, barely motivated violence.” feels affectionately pointed. Beckett’s most famous work, Waiting for Godot, has also been confirmed by a reviewer to appear in the show (“Santiago fuming about the lack of action in a vampiric version of Waiting for Godot”). The choice of name and the inclusion of a play that was written during this period of Louis and Armand’s lives (“The Paris Albums, 1946-1949.”) but did not premiere until 1953, could suggest that Sam is meant to be the man himself. 

This is not the first time the show has played with the idea that a famous writer may have been a vampire, however, unlike Emily Dickinson, Beckett was alive and working in Paris until his death in 1989. Considering the ending of the show’s source material, it seems unlikely that Sam will live that long unless he independently parts ways with the Théâtre des Vampires. It is also notable that, if intended to be a cameo, Sam has been quite underplayed compared to historical figures like Jelly Roll Morton and Jean-Paul Sartre. Though the supposed playwright for the company, Sam is shown selling tickets for the performance and collecting laundry rather than, say, giving notes on that night’s performance. Sam is presented as apart from the other members of the coven; absent during their prank on Louis and Claudia, not joining in the ensuing greetings, and leaving during the introductions. This framing of the character suggests that he is therefore not intended to be the real Beckett. Perhaps then the name was chosen by Sam himself in an attempt to emulate a writer he admires. Perhaps it is meant to further emphasise the strangeness of the supposed playwright for the company having the least interaction with its members, while only being shown to perform menial tasks. Or perhaps this is simply a reference made by a team of writers with backgrounds in theatre.

[tllgrrl]

Throwback Friday: 17 December 2020 - Photographer Sam Jones interviews the multi-hyphenate Actor-Writer-Producer, Danai Gurira.

This is your Listen Recommendation, right here.

[flockofdoves]

that post thats like 'subtly doxxing myself through my posts' is so unfortunately unavoidable for me down to my exact apartment whenever i get really excited and want to post about birding

[sisterdivinium]

That Sylvia didn't know from the beginning of shooting the show about Mother Superion having been a halo bearer before is absolutely wild based on her performance. Talk about intuition...

[ismsetcetera]

It's OK to take 15 years to write what you need to say.

---

Jeffrey Sweet interviewing the late Lanford Wilson – "What Playwrights Talk About when they Talk About Writing" (Yale Press, 2017).

[cynicaesura]

oh my god this is trash i love it

[lenbryant]

"Theater and I have an arrangement."

It's bon mots like this that make Jeremy O. Harris a playwriting treasure. Here's his enlightening Fresh Air interview.

[flameraven]

That last point is underlined by the fact that like, half the Earth Kingdom army witnessed Toph wrecking their shit and I'm betting at least some of them could have talked and still nobody admitted to it.

I feel like people have forgotten about this