An HB Studio production
Playwrights: Donald Margulies
Director: William Carden
Cast: Uta Hagen, Lorca Simons
Set: Ray Recht Lighting: Chris Dallos Sound: Robert Auld Costumes: Mirena Rada Casting: Adrienne Stern Production Stage Manager: Lloyd Davis, Jr
Collected Stories was performed from March 26th- April 3rd
Synopsis: This play explores the vexed emotional and legal question of a writer’s right to create art from the biographical material of another person’s life-particularly when that other person is also a writer. Meditating upon the recent, real-life conflict between poet Stephen Spender and novelist David Leavitt, Margulies has created two of the most vivid and moving fictional characters of his career: Ruth Steiner, an aging, highly regarded author who never wrote about her youthful affair with real-life poet Delmore Schwartz, and Lisa Morrison, a student of Steiner’s who, after publishing a much-ballyhooed first short-story collection under Steiner’s direction, follows up with a novel that draws upon the Schwartz affair. The result is charged drama with the depth and weight of the finest prose fiction.