The great, great, talent of Terrence McNally has just passed from complications of COVID-19. Such a fulfilling, fascinating life. Nothing of his work should really be singled out from others.
But one needs not be a fan of Broadway to appreciate these:
Where You Are (Kiss of the Spider Woman)
What always interested me about Mr. McNally was how astute he was about the staging of a book. How can one possibly/plausibly seemingly diminish what was greatness to the belittled stage? That vision, of course, was/would be nothing without his collaborators. It's akin a movie screenplay-everyone gives credit to the director/the stars/ the/ the /the, and, of course, that's where auteurs are it! They see it/ they write it/they cast it/they direct it and then the critics both love and hate it for the very same reasons it was conceived.
I remember an experiment (conceived by ??) many decades ago, whereby all the major London theater critics were challenged to direct a play! Something none had ever done before. You wouldn't employ a classical music critic unless they could at least play a musical instrument and thereby read music. And yet…strangely enough, theater critics are/were so often employed when they never even entered a rehearsal room.
Food for thought, if you are the next stray cat directing your very own 'Hamilton'. :)
"I like to work with people who are a lot more talented and smarter than me, who make fewer mistakes than I do, and who can call me out when I do something lazy," he told the LA Stage Times in 2013.
"A lot of people stop learning in life, and that's their tragedy."
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52029391
