Armistead Maupin's Blog, page 35
March 28, 2011
Author of Tales of the City in conversation with Jon Carroll
Best-selling author Armistead Maupin will participate in an evening of lively conversation with columnist Jon Carroll on Thursday, April 14th, 7:00 pm at the Julia Morgan Theatre, 2640 College Avenue, Berkeley. Mr. Maupin is expected to cover a wide variety of topics and engage the audience with his fabled abilities as a storyteller and raconteur. The event will benefit the academic and financial assistance programs of Oakland's Park Day School.
Armistead Maupin forged the way as one of the first of a new breed of openly gay authors, but his instant widespread appeal resided in his inclusiveness as a storyteller. For over thirty years the characters from his Tales of the City series have blossomed in popular culture—from the groundbreaking newspaper serial, to nine international bestselling novels, to a Peabody Award-winning miniseries starring Olympia Dukakis and Laura Linney. A 2006 online poll of British readers named Tales of the City the UK's all-time favorite gay or lesbian novel. In 2007, Maupin revisited one of the series' characters with another novel, Michael Tolliver Lives. His most recent novel, Mary Ann in Autumn, was published in the fall of 2010.
This May, the American Conservatory Theatre of San Francisco will present the world premiere of Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City, a new musical enlisting the talents of librettist Jeff Whitty and director Jason Moore – Tony Award–winning creators of AVENUE Q – and composers Jake Shears and John Garden – the musical minds behind the glam-rock phenomenon Scissor Sisters.
Armistead Maupin's other works include the New York Times bestseller The Night Listener, which created a sensation in the publishing world when its real-life origins were revealed in an article by The New Yorker and a follow-up investigation by ABC 's 20/20. The psychological suspense novel was inspired by Maupin's longtime telephone friendship with Anthony Godby Johnson, a 14-year-old memoirist whose very existence Maupin began to question. "It was like living in the middle of a mystery novel," Maupin said. "Once it started happening I knew I had to write about it." He wrote the screen adaptation of The Night Listener, starring Robin Williams and Toni Collette, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and was distributed by Miramax pictures.
Armistead Maupin is also the author of the bestselling novel Maybe the Moon, which chronicles the misadventures of a dwarf actress working in Hollywood. He wrote the narration for the award-winning documentary "The Celluloid Closet," and was himself the subject of an hour-long BBC documentary, "Armistead Maupin Is A Man I Dreamt Up." As a librettist, he collaborated in 1999 with composer Jake Heggie on "Anna Madrigal Remembers" for mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade and classical choral ensemble Chanticleer.
Maupin lives in San Francisco with his husband, Christopher Turner.
General admission tickets are $30. A very limited number (25) of $50 tickets will be available, which include priority seating and a post-show reception with the two speakers.
Click here to purchase tickets on-line: Armistead Maupin
http://www.sanfranciscosentinel.com/?p=115793
Armistead Maupin forged the way as one of the first of a new breed of openly gay authors, but his instant widespread appeal resided in his inclusiveness as a storyteller. For over thirty years the characters from his Tales of the City series have blossomed in popular culture—from the groundbreaking newspaper serial, to nine international bestselling novels, to a Peabody Award-winning miniseries starring Olympia Dukakis and Laura Linney. A 2006 online poll of British readers named Tales of the City the UK's all-time favorite gay or lesbian novel. In 2007, Maupin revisited one of the series' characters with another novel, Michael Tolliver Lives. His most recent novel, Mary Ann in Autumn, was published in the fall of 2010.
This May, the American Conservatory Theatre of San Francisco will present the world premiere of Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City, a new musical enlisting the talents of librettist Jeff Whitty and director Jason Moore – Tony Award–winning creators of AVENUE Q – and composers Jake Shears and John Garden – the musical minds behind the glam-rock phenomenon Scissor Sisters.
Armistead Maupin's other works include the New York Times bestseller The Night Listener, which created a sensation in the publishing world when its real-life origins were revealed in an article by The New Yorker and a follow-up investigation by ABC 's 20/20. The psychological suspense novel was inspired by Maupin's longtime telephone friendship with Anthony Godby Johnson, a 14-year-old memoirist whose very existence Maupin began to question. "It was like living in the middle of a mystery novel," Maupin said. "Once it started happening I knew I had to write about it." He wrote the screen adaptation of The Night Listener, starring Robin Williams and Toni Collette, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and was distributed by Miramax pictures.
Armistead Maupin is also the author of the bestselling novel Maybe the Moon, which chronicles the misadventures of a dwarf actress working in Hollywood. He wrote the narration for the award-winning documentary "The Celluloid Closet," and was himself the subject of an hour-long BBC documentary, "Armistead Maupin Is A Man I Dreamt Up." As a librettist, he collaborated in 1999 with composer Jake Heggie on "Anna Madrigal Remembers" for mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade and classical choral ensemble Chanticleer.
Maupin lives in San Francisco with his husband, Christopher Turner.
General admission tickets are $30. A very limited number (25) of $50 tickets will be available, which include priority seating and a post-show reception with the two speakers.
Click here to purchase tickets on-line: Armistead Maupin
http://www.sanfranciscosentinel.com/?p=115793
Win a trip to San Francisco and experience the stage debut of "Tales of the City"
San Francisco Tales of the City Sweepstakes is open to legal residents of the contiguous 48 United States and the District of Columbia age 18 and older at the time of entry.
Sweepstakes begins at 12:01 AM Eastern Time ("ET") on March 18, 2011 and ends at 11:59 PM (ET) on April 18, 2011.
To Enter: Visit http://www2.advocate.com/sanfranc...sweeps.asp and follow all entry instructions to complete and submit the online entry form.
Limit: One online entry per person or e-mail address per week.
Prize & Approximate Retail Value(s) ("ARV"): The prize is to be awarded to one (1) entrant and consists of :
• Roundtrip airfare for two to San Francisco
• Two nights at a Kimpton Hotel in San Francisco
• $100 gift certificate to Garcon French Restaurant in San Francisco
• $50 American Express® Gift Card
• Two VIP tickets to Tales of The City (May 18-July 10)
• Hosted drinks at intermission
• A signed cast poster
• A private backstage tour of the theater (timing subject to the discretion of the theater management).
Sweepstakes begins at 12:01 AM Eastern Time ("ET") on March 18, 2011 and ends at 11:59 PM (ET) on April 18, 2011.
To Enter: Visit http://www2.advocate.com/sanfranc...sweeps.asp and follow all entry instructions to complete and submit the online entry form.
Limit: One online entry per person or e-mail address per week.
Prize & Approximate Retail Value(s) ("ARV"): The prize is to be awarded to one (1) entrant and consists of :
• Roundtrip airfare for two to San Francisco
• Two nights at a Kimpton Hotel in San Francisco
• $100 gift certificate to Garcon French Restaurant in San Francisco
• $50 American Express® Gift Card
• Two VIP tickets to Tales of The City (May 18-July 10)
• Hosted drinks at intermission
• A signed cast poster
• A private backstage tour of the theater (timing subject to the discretion of the theater management).
Will Coviello chats with Tales of the City writer Armistead Maupin
San Francisco Treat
Will Coviello chats with Tales of the City writer Armistead Maupin, who's coming to this week's Tennessee Williams Literary Festival
by Will Coviello
The Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival
March 23-27
www.tennesseewilliams.net
More than Tennessee Williams, author Armistead Maupin is inextricably associated with a place. Creator of the Tales of the City series, he chronicled bohemian and bustling life in San Francisco from the mid-1970s onward. He also met Williams in San Francisco, though they didn't discuss writing.
Maupin attended an art gallery opening in the South of Market district in the mid-1970s. Williams was inside, attracting attention and being hounded for photos. After escaping the throng of fans, Williams spotted Maupin in the parking lot. Surmising Maupin wasn't smoking a regular cigarette, Williams approached him.
"I can't exactly call it the passing of the torch from one writer to another," Maupin says, laughing. "We just sat on the hood of a car, smoked a joint and had a discussion about the moon."
At the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival, Maupin will read from Williams' work and discuss his own writing. The festival celebrates both its 25th anniversary and the centennial of Williams' birth, and the schedule of events includes readings and discussions by authors, actors who starred in famous productions of Williams' work, literary agents, journalists and others. Theatrical productions include The Glass Menagerie and world premieres of recently discovered one-act plays by Williams. There also are parties, walking tours and the popular Stanley and Stella Shouting Contest on Sunday in Jackson Square.
In tribute to Williams' birthday and his career, actors and writers will read from his work. Maupin will leave dramatic scenes to actors and present an essay titled "Too Personal," which Williams used as an introduction to Small Craft Warnings. In it, he addressed the divide between writing fiction and autobiography. Critics and fans often pick apart his plays, trying to match real people to fictional characters, and Williams protested that his plays exhibited his talent, not his diary. Maupin defends the art of writing fiction, but protests less strenuously about the connection.
"Artists draw from their own lives," Maupin says. "Almost all of my characters are autobiographical to one degree or another."
The distinction stirred debate when he released Michael Tolliver Lives!. At first Maupin said it was distinct from Tales of the City, and it was different in that it was a first-person novel and not about a swirling array of characters like previous books in the series. But Maupin later dropped his defense and said the novel is an extension of the series about one of its central characters, and parts of it are similar to his own life, particularly the manner in which Tolliver comes out as a gay man in a letter to his parents.
"I like the disguise of fiction, but I draw on cultural realities," Maupin says.
Maupin was born in Washington D.C. and grew up in Raleigh, N.C. He served in the Navy during the Vietnam War and became a reporter afterward. In the early 1970s, he moved to San Francisco, where he worked for the Associated Press. The beginning of his Tales series were short stories he published in the San Francisco Chronicle. The latest installment, Mary Ann in Autumn, was released in 2010.
Maupin adopted San Francisco as his new home almost instantly, in part because some elements reminded him of living in the South.
"It was a tolerant and vibrant city with the qualities of a small town," he says. "It had a respect for tradition that was in perfect keeping with my Southern experiences."
Theatrical productions at the festival offer insight into the development of characters and ideas in Williams' work. Southern Rep premieres three one-act plays that were discovered recently: The Pretty Trap, The Magic Tower and Every Twenty Minutes. The Pretty Trap is a precursor to The Glass Menagerie, but it's a comedy and covers the basic story in 20 pages. Director Aimee Hayes points out that the play is very different from Menagerie. It focuses on Amanda Wingfield, Tom isn't depressed and Laura doesn't limp, Hayes says.
"Everyone knows these roles," she adds. But she told the actors, "We have to think about this as a Saturday Night Live sketch and take it from there."
One of the reasons it has not been professionally performed before may have to do with Williams' feelings about it: He hated it.
"Williams wrote in his notes that he didn't like it," Hayes says. "But for our purposes, it's delightful. We see him working toward the full play."
She also sees elements in the other two works that preview more fully realized themes in the plays Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Sweet Bird of Youth.
Fans can compare The Pretty Trap with a full production of The Glass Menagerie by the UNO Department of Film, Theatre and Communications Arts at Le Petit Theatre du Vieux Carre, starring Janet Shea as Amanda.
Both Maupin and Hayes note that Williams was a dedicated writer who awoke early every morning to work. He wrote many short stories and short plays, and characters in them were plucked for greater roles in his better known works. Hayes says he pushed himself hard to improve his final product.
"He could have written for TV, he could have been a sitcom writer," she says. "If he wasn't ruthless about his own work, he wouldn't have gone on to create characters like Blanche."
With the inclusion of the one-acts, the festival's participants and productions celebrate every facet of Williams' legacy. And, of course, locals can channel their own inner Stellas and Stanleys, comic or dramatic, at the annual Shouting Contest in Jackson Square.
http://www.bestofneworleans.com/gambit/san-francisco-treat/Content?oid=1633682
Will Coviello chats with Tales of the City writer Armistead Maupin, who's coming to this week's Tennessee Williams Literary Festival
by Will Coviello
The Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival
March 23-27
www.tennesseewilliams.net
More than Tennessee Williams, author Armistead Maupin is inextricably associated with a place. Creator of the Tales of the City series, he chronicled bohemian and bustling life in San Francisco from the mid-1970s onward. He also met Williams in San Francisco, though they didn't discuss writing.
Maupin attended an art gallery opening in the South of Market district in the mid-1970s. Williams was inside, attracting attention and being hounded for photos. After escaping the throng of fans, Williams spotted Maupin in the parking lot. Surmising Maupin wasn't smoking a regular cigarette, Williams approached him.
"I can't exactly call it the passing of the torch from one writer to another," Maupin says, laughing. "We just sat on the hood of a car, smoked a joint and had a discussion about the moon."
At the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival, Maupin will read from Williams' work and discuss his own writing. The festival celebrates both its 25th anniversary and the centennial of Williams' birth, and the schedule of events includes readings and discussions by authors, actors who starred in famous productions of Williams' work, literary agents, journalists and others. Theatrical productions include The Glass Menagerie and world premieres of recently discovered one-act plays by Williams. There also are parties, walking tours and the popular Stanley and Stella Shouting Contest on Sunday in Jackson Square.
In tribute to Williams' birthday and his career, actors and writers will read from his work. Maupin will leave dramatic scenes to actors and present an essay titled "Too Personal," which Williams used as an introduction to Small Craft Warnings. In it, he addressed the divide between writing fiction and autobiography. Critics and fans often pick apart his plays, trying to match real people to fictional characters, and Williams protested that his plays exhibited his talent, not his diary. Maupin defends the art of writing fiction, but protests less strenuously about the connection.
"Artists draw from their own lives," Maupin says. "Almost all of my characters are autobiographical to one degree or another."
The distinction stirred debate when he released Michael Tolliver Lives!. At first Maupin said it was distinct from Tales of the City, and it was different in that it was a first-person novel and not about a swirling array of characters like previous books in the series. But Maupin later dropped his defense and said the novel is an extension of the series about one of its central characters, and parts of it are similar to his own life, particularly the manner in which Tolliver comes out as a gay man in a letter to his parents.
"I like the disguise of fiction, but I draw on cultural realities," Maupin says.
Maupin was born in Washington D.C. and grew up in Raleigh, N.C. He served in the Navy during the Vietnam War and became a reporter afterward. In the early 1970s, he moved to San Francisco, where he worked for the Associated Press. The beginning of his Tales series were short stories he published in the San Francisco Chronicle. The latest installment, Mary Ann in Autumn, was released in 2010.
Maupin adopted San Francisco as his new home almost instantly, in part because some elements reminded him of living in the South.
"It was a tolerant and vibrant city with the qualities of a small town," he says. "It had a respect for tradition that was in perfect keeping with my Southern experiences."
Theatrical productions at the festival offer insight into the development of characters and ideas in Williams' work. Southern Rep premieres three one-act plays that were discovered recently: The Pretty Trap, The Magic Tower and Every Twenty Minutes. The Pretty Trap is a precursor to The Glass Menagerie, but it's a comedy and covers the basic story in 20 pages. Director Aimee Hayes points out that the play is very different from Menagerie. It focuses on Amanda Wingfield, Tom isn't depressed and Laura doesn't limp, Hayes says.
"Everyone knows these roles," she adds. But she told the actors, "We have to think about this as a Saturday Night Live sketch and take it from there."
One of the reasons it has not been professionally performed before may have to do with Williams' feelings about it: He hated it.
"Williams wrote in his notes that he didn't like it," Hayes says. "But for our purposes, it's delightful. We see him working toward the full play."
She also sees elements in the other two works that preview more fully realized themes in the plays Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Sweet Bird of Youth.
Fans can compare The Pretty Trap with a full production of The Glass Menagerie by the UNO Department of Film, Theatre and Communications Arts at Le Petit Theatre du Vieux Carre, starring Janet Shea as Amanda.
Both Maupin and Hayes note that Williams was a dedicated writer who awoke early every morning to work. He wrote many short stories and short plays, and characters in them were plucked for greater roles in his better known works. Hayes says he pushed himself hard to improve his final product.
"He could have written for TV, he could have been a sitcom writer," she says. "If he wasn't ruthless about his own work, he wouldn't have gone on to create characters like Blanche."
With the inclusion of the one-acts, the festival's participants and productions celebrate every facet of Williams' legacy. And, of course, locals can channel their own inner Stellas and Stanleys, comic or dramatic, at the annual Shouting Contest in Jackson Square.
http://www.bestofneworleans.com/gambit/san-francisco-treat/Content?oid=1633682
Tennessee Williams Festival: a conversation with Armistead Maupin
Posted by Kevin Allman on Sat, Mar 26, 2011 at 5:06 PM
The Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival wrapped up for the afternoon with "A Conversation With Armistead Maupin," author of the Tales of the City series. Maupin, who said he hadn't been to New Orleans in 21 years, seemed to be having a fine time, enjoying mint juleps and discussing topics as wide-ranging as Elizabeth Taylor, Jesse Helms, writing about AIDS in the early 1980s and moving to San Francisco after serving in the Vietnam War. The moderator was Ted O'Brien, co-host of "Writer's Forum" on WRBH-FM. (Will Coviello interviewed Maupin for this week's paper.)
Maupin, who grew up in Raleigh, N.C., told the audience, "There's a storytelling tradition in the South; I stay away from calling it an oral tradition, because that's when the jokes start."
The Tales of the City novels began as a newspaper serial in the early 1970s, Maupin said, when he was a lifestyle reporter for a small paper in Marin County, Calif. When that paper folded, he was picked up by the San Francisco Chronicle in 1976, which began running his serial five days a week — "800 words a day," he told the audience gathered in the Royal Sonesta hotel ballroom. The serial ran for many years, covering the 1970s singles scene, the Jonestown massacre, the Reagan years, the gay rights movement and the dawn of AIDS, the advent of yuppies and quite a bit more. The columns were collected in six volumes, and Maupin has written two more, including last year's Mary Ann in Autumn. A musical based on the books will open in San Francisco, Maupin said.
Maupin compared New Orleans to San Francisco, calling both cities seductive and charming, and was gracious and funny throughout, with one exception: He spoke bitterly about the American Family Association, which protested the miniseries of his Tales books. "But their time is truly over, I believe," he said, garnering applause from the audience.
http://www.bestofneworleans.com/blogofneworleans/archives/2011/03/26/tennessee-williams-festival-a-conversation-with-armistead-maupin
The Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival wrapped up for the afternoon with "A Conversation With Armistead Maupin," author of the Tales of the City series. Maupin, who said he hadn't been to New Orleans in 21 years, seemed to be having a fine time, enjoying mint juleps and discussing topics as wide-ranging as Elizabeth Taylor, Jesse Helms, writing about AIDS in the early 1980s and moving to San Francisco after serving in the Vietnam War. The moderator was Ted O'Brien, co-host of "Writer's Forum" on WRBH-FM. (Will Coviello interviewed Maupin for this week's paper.)
Maupin, who grew up in Raleigh, N.C., told the audience, "There's a storytelling tradition in the South; I stay away from calling it an oral tradition, because that's when the jokes start."
The Tales of the City novels began as a newspaper serial in the early 1970s, Maupin said, when he was a lifestyle reporter for a small paper in Marin County, Calif. When that paper folded, he was picked up by the San Francisco Chronicle in 1976, which began running his serial five days a week — "800 words a day," he told the audience gathered in the Royal Sonesta hotel ballroom. The serial ran for many years, covering the 1970s singles scene, the Jonestown massacre, the Reagan years, the gay rights movement and the dawn of AIDS, the advent of yuppies and quite a bit more. The columns were collected in six volumes, and Maupin has written two more, including last year's Mary Ann in Autumn. A musical based on the books will open in San Francisco, Maupin said.
Maupin compared New Orleans to San Francisco, calling both cities seductive and charming, and was gracious and funny throughout, with one exception: He spoke bitterly about the American Family Association, which protested the miniseries of his Tales books. "But their time is truly over, I believe," he said, garnering applause from the audience.
http://www.bestofneworleans.com/blogofneworleans/archives/2011/03/26/tennessee-williams-festival-a-conversation-with-armistead-maupin
March 18, 2011
Telling 'Tales' for the Musical Stage
By GEOFFREY A. FOWLER
Thirty-five years after Mary Ann Singleton moved west to San Francisco, one of the city's most beloved fictional residents has a new home: the musical theater.
In May, San Francisco's American Conservatory Theater will stage an original musical based on Armistead Maupin's "Tales of the City" series about Ms. Singleton and her community of colorful outcasts. The show features heavyweight talent including writing and direction from the duo behind Tony-winning "Avenue Q" and music by members of the electro-pop band Scissor Sisters. Producers say they hope the $2.2 million production could eventually travel to other cities or even Broadway, but don't have any current plans.
As the artistic team makes final tweaks in advance of rehearsals set for April, the show faces a number of creative challenges. It is difficult to predict how audiences will respond to having well-known nonmusical material transformed into a musical stage production. Also, the two books upon which the musical is based contain many characters and intertwined plot lines, making the adaptation complicated. And the show's creators need to be able to capture the carefree mood of a story set in the 1970s without oversentimentalizing the era.
"Nostalgia is always a danger in a period piece," said director Jason Moore, who directed "Avenue Q" and "Shrek the Musical" on Broadway. The question is, "how do you make the period feel relevant" today?"
Mr. Maupin's original "Tales" paints an eccentric portrait of San Francisco involving Ms. Singleton's mysterious marijuana-growing landlady, Anna Madrigal, who exposed her new tenant to a city built on tolerance and filled with disco dancing and drug use.
The musical version will contain all of those elements, along with polyester clothes and big hair. But the show will focus on what it felt like to be in that time and place, rather than what might be "archaeologically accurate," Mr. Moore said.
For example, Mr. Moore said that he and his lighting designer decided to ditch disco lights authentic to the period. "By today's standards, that lighting might seem really banal," he said. "But the experience of people going to [a disco] was amazing, trance-inducing and exciting."
While gently poking fun at how much has changed in nearly four decades, the play's script also highlights issues that remain controversial, such as the battle over gay rights. The story line features anti-gay rights crusader Anita Bryant, and a key song in which one character writes a letter to his parents to come out of the closet.
Getting the historical balance right has bedeviled many musicals. "Having a specific era, time and setting for a musical can be actually be very helpful because it leads you to what the music itself should sound like," said Joe DiPietro, who wrote the book and lyrics for the Tony-winning "Memphis," about a 1950s radio DJ from that city. Yet "it's always important to remember that you're not trying to make a documentary, you're trying to artistically explore the time period," he said. For example, "Memphis" used chord progressions that weren't common in the original era, but helped to update the sound of the era for modern ears.
Musically, the stage version of "Tales" steers clear of the "jukebox" approach used by recent hits such as "Priscilla: Queen of the Desert" and "Mamma Mia," which featured well-known pop songs for their score. Instead, "Tales" has an original, disco-inspired score written by the Scissor Sisters' Jake Shears and John "JJ" Garden, with references to Elton John and the Bee Gees.
To be commercially successful, the musical likely will have to find a way to appeal to more than just theatergoers who lived through the era or are fans of the "Tales" books and television miniseries based on them. So far, ACT says a little more than half of the available tickets have sold for the San Francisco run that stretches from May 18 through July 10.
Carey Perloff, the artistic director of ACT who brought the production to her theater after seeing a reading of an early script three years ago, said she would like to see it run for a long time in San Francisco—and then possibly tour Broadway and elsewhere.
"Tales," which has been underwritten by ACT's donors, is one of the largest and most expensive original productions that the nonprofit ACT has undertaken.
Write to Geoffrey A. Fowler at geoffrey.fowler@wsj.com
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704893604576200741233799106.html
Thirty-five years after Mary Ann Singleton moved west to San Francisco, one of the city's most beloved fictional residents has a new home: the musical theater.
In May, San Francisco's American Conservatory Theater will stage an original musical based on Armistead Maupin's "Tales of the City" series about Ms. Singleton and her community of colorful outcasts. The show features heavyweight talent including writing and direction from the duo behind Tony-winning "Avenue Q" and music by members of the electro-pop band Scissor Sisters. Producers say they hope the $2.2 million production could eventually travel to other cities or even Broadway, but don't have any current plans.
As the artistic team makes final tweaks in advance of rehearsals set for April, the show faces a number of creative challenges. It is difficult to predict how audiences will respond to having well-known nonmusical material transformed into a musical stage production. Also, the two books upon which the musical is based contain many characters and intertwined plot lines, making the adaptation complicated. And the show's creators need to be able to capture the carefree mood of a story set in the 1970s without oversentimentalizing the era.
"Nostalgia is always a danger in a period piece," said director Jason Moore, who directed "Avenue Q" and "Shrek the Musical" on Broadway. The question is, "how do you make the period feel relevant" today?"
Mr. Maupin's original "Tales" paints an eccentric portrait of San Francisco involving Ms. Singleton's mysterious marijuana-growing landlady, Anna Madrigal, who exposed her new tenant to a city built on tolerance and filled with disco dancing and drug use.
The musical version will contain all of those elements, along with polyester clothes and big hair. But the show will focus on what it felt like to be in that time and place, rather than what might be "archaeologically accurate," Mr. Moore said.
For example, Mr. Moore said that he and his lighting designer decided to ditch disco lights authentic to the period. "By today's standards, that lighting might seem really banal," he said. "But the experience of people going to [a disco] was amazing, trance-inducing and exciting."
While gently poking fun at how much has changed in nearly four decades, the play's script also highlights issues that remain controversial, such as the battle over gay rights. The story line features anti-gay rights crusader Anita Bryant, and a key song in which one character writes a letter to his parents to come out of the closet.
Getting the historical balance right has bedeviled many musicals. "Having a specific era, time and setting for a musical can be actually be very helpful because it leads you to what the music itself should sound like," said Joe DiPietro, who wrote the book and lyrics for the Tony-winning "Memphis," about a 1950s radio DJ from that city. Yet "it's always important to remember that you're not trying to make a documentary, you're trying to artistically explore the time period," he said. For example, "Memphis" used chord progressions that weren't common in the original era, but helped to update the sound of the era for modern ears.
Musically, the stage version of "Tales" steers clear of the "jukebox" approach used by recent hits such as "Priscilla: Queen of the Desert" and "Mamma Mia," which featured well-known pop songs for their score. Instead, "Tales" has an original, disco-inspired score written by the Scissor Sisters' Jake Shears and John "JJ" Garden, with references to Elton John and the Bee Gees.
To be commercially successful, the musical likely will have to find a way to appeal to more than just theatergoers who lived through the era or are fans of the "Tales" books and television miniseries based on them. So far, ACT says a little more than half of the available tickets have sold for the San Francisco run that stretches from May 18 through July 10.
Carey Perloff, the artistic director of ACT who brought the production to her theater after seeing a reading of an early script three years ago, said she would like to see it run for a long time in San Francisco—and then possibly tour Broadway and elsewhere.
"Tales," which has been underwritten by ACT's donors, is one of the largest and most expensive original productions that the nonprofit ACT has undertaken.
Write to Geoffrey A. Fowler at geoffrey.fowler@wsj.com
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704893604576200741233799106.html
Tales of Armistead Maupin
Monday, 14 March 2011, 2:21 pm
by Evelyn Tsitas
For American author and gay activist Armistead Maupin, there is only one place to call home - San Francisco, the city that inspired his enormously popular social comedy series Tales of the City.
"I cruise other countries, but I come home to San Francisco in my head," he said.
Maupin generously praised Australia's "Victorian buildings and wide open spaces" during his March visit. However, for him, the city that invented the words hippie, beatnik and hoodlum reflect an attitude and a way people live that breathed life into him when he arrived in the 1970s as a conservative, "in the closet" Vietnam veteran.
Maupin is currently on tour promoting his new book, Mary Ann in Autumn, which is the 8th in the Tales of the City Series. The woman in the title is Maupin's much loved character Mary Ann Singleton, whom he has chronicled from her move to San Francisco and her developing relationship with the people she meets, including life in a bohemian boarding house run by the transgender matriarch Mrs Madrigal.
The rest of the world may be a long way from Mrs Madrigal's "comfy old apartment house" on 28 Barbary Lane, but Maupin stressed his Tales series runs concurrent to gay culture. As soon as a country amasses a gay middle class, Maupin said, "my books take off when that rainbow flag starts flying".
Maupin, who started the series as a weekly column in the local newspaper in the 1970s, said he struggled with telling his parents he was gay.
"At that time, homosexuality was a mental illness and a crime, but I was in San Francisco discovering the bath houses and finding myself as a gay man."
But this conflict and duplicity was also helpful in his career. Maupin cheerfully admits that as a writer "it is your job to be a fake."
"I have always been writing about everyone and for everyone, even though I am proud of my activism," Maupin told the largely gay audience at Melbourne's Athenaeum Theatre during his recent Australian tour. His public lecture – hosted by actor Noni Hazlehurst, - was part of the Wheeler Centre's Big Gay Week.
"When it comes to my writing, I am trying to tap into something that is going on in society," he said.
"For me, in the emerging gay culture of San Francisco in the 1970s, I was on a rampage."
It is fitting that a new musical version of Tales of the City, starring Betty Buckley, will workshop at American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco in June, with music and lyrics by Jake Shears and John Garden of the Scissor Sisters.
"I realised I'd written a love story 30 years ago that made sense to me now," Maupin said.
He said that he looks for "some sort of validation" in his life as a writer. "I tell my worst secrets in fiction. Then I feel less alone because of the response I get from people," he said.
Maupin recalled how he had a "gay quota" of characters he was allowed to insert into his newspaper column.
"At one point I had a character wake up and discover a dog humping her leg, and I argued the dog should be placed in the heterosexual quota," Maupin said.
There was, however, a serious undertone for the gay activist as he spoke of the angst he felt when deciding to come out to his friends and family. He first uttered the words "I think I am homosexual" to a good female friend - on whom he based the character Mary Ann Singleton. Her response? " Big fucking deal."
He said his friend's support, and the burgeoning gay culture of San Francisco in the mid-70s, emboldened him to discover his identity as a gay man. Maupin said he came out at the same time he as he was writing the column, and so wove in his experiences into that of his characters. Like many fiction writers, he said he "hid behind" the people he created.
"I disguise myself in my characters. I point out people's similarities while describing their differences," he said.
"As a writer, your job is empathy. You have to inhabit everyone."
This is exactly what Maupin has done with feisty Mary Ann Singleton. The last time Maupin wrote about her, Mary Ann had left the city, husband, daughter and her best friend, Michael, whom readers had come to love.
Mary Ann in Autumn tracks the now 57 year old Mary Ann down as she returns to San Francisco. She finds that everything has changed – including 28 Barbary Lane. Those she left behind have moved on. It has been called "a tale of long-lost friends and unrealized dreams, of fear and regret, of penance and redemption — and of the unshakable sense that this world we love, this life we live, this drama in which we all play a part, does indeed go by much too fast."(The New York Times, Nov 12, 2010)
"You are not always going to be young," Maupin reminded his Melbourne audience.
Evelyn Tsitas is a PhD student at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: evelyntsitas@gmail.com
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL1103...
by Evelyn Tsitas
For American author and gay activist Armistead Maupin, there is only one place to call home - San Francisco, the city that inspired his enormously popular social comedy series Tales of the City.
"I cruise other countries, but I come home to San Francisco in my head," he said.
Maupin generously praised Australia's "Victorian buildings and wide open spaces" during his March visit. However, for him, the city that invented the words hippie, beatnik and hoodlum reflect an attitude and a way people live that breathed life into him when he arrived in the 1970s as a conservative, "in the closet" Vietnam veteran.
Maupin is currently on tour promoting his new book, Mary Ann in Autumn, which is the 8th in the Tales of the City Series. The woman in the title is Maupin's much loved character Mary Ann Singleton, whom he has chronicled from her move to San Francisco and her developing relationship with the people she meets, including life in a bohemian boarding house run by the transgender matriarch Mrs Madrigal.
The rest of the world may be a long way from Mrs Madrigal's "comfy old apartment house" on 28 Barbary Lane, but Maupin stressed his Tales series runs concurrent to gay culture. As soon as a country amasses a gay middle class, Maupin said, "my books take off when that rainbow flag starts flying".
Maupin, who started the series as a weekly column in the local newspaper in the 1970s, said he struggled with telling his parents he was gay.
"At that time, homosexuality was a mental illness and a crime, but I was in San Francisco discovering the bath houses and finding myself as a gay man."
But this conflict and duplicity was also helpful in his career. Maupin cheerfully admits that as a writer "it is your job to be a fake."
"I have always been writing about everyone and for everyone, even though I am proud of my activism," Maupin told the largely gay audience at Melbourne's Athenaeum Theatre during his recent Australian tour. His public lecture – hosted by actor Noni Hazlehurst, - was part of the Wheeler Centre's Big Gay Week.
"When it comes to my writing, I am trying to tap into something that is going on in society," he said.
"For me, in the emerging gay culture of San Francisco in the 1970s, I was on a rampage."
It is fitting that a new musical version of Tales of the City, starring Betty Buckley, will workshop at American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco in June, with music and lyrics by Jake Shears and John Garden of the Scissor Sisters.
"I realised I'd written a love story 30 years ago that made sense to me now," Maupin said.
He said that he looks for "some sort of validation" in his life as a writer. "I tell my worst secrets in fiction. Then I feel less alone because of the response I get from people," he said.
Maupin recalled how he had a "gay quota" of characters he was allowed to insert into his newspaper column.
"At one point I had a character wake up and discover a dog humping her leg, and I argued the dog should be placed in the heterosexual quota," Maupin said.
There was, however, a serious undertone for the gay activist as he spoke of the angst he felt when deciding to come out to his friends and family. He first uttered the words "I think I am homosexual" to a good female friend - on whom he based the character Mary Ann Singleton. Her response? " Big fucking deal."
He said his friend's support, and the burgeoning gay culture of San Francisco in the mid-70s, emboldened him to discover his identity as a gay man. Maupin said he came out at the same time he as he was writing the column, and so wove in his experiences into that of his characters. Like many fiction writers, he said he "hid behind" the people he created.
"I disguise myself in my characters. I point out people's similarities while describing their differences," he said.
"As a writer, your job is empathy. You have to inhabit everyone."
This is exactly what Maupin has done with feisty Mary Ann Singleton. The last time Maupin wrote about her, Mary Ann had left the city, husband, daughter and her best friend, Michael, whom readers had come to love.
Mary Ann in Autumn tracks the now 57 year old Mary Ann down as she returns to San Francisco. She finds that everything has changed – including 28 Barbary Lane. Those she left behind have moved on. It has been called "a tale of long-lost friends and unrealized dreams, of fear and regret, of penance and redemption — and of the unshakable sense that this world we love, this life we live, this drama in which we all play a part, does indeed go by much too fast."(The New York Times, Nov 12, 2010)
"You are not always going to be young," Maupin reminded his Melbourne audience.
Evelyn Tsitas is a PhD student at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: evelyntsitas@gmail.com
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL1103...
Tales of the City Musical Will Star Judy Kaye, Betsy Wolfe, Mary Birdsong and Wesley Taylor
By Adam Hetrick
18 Mar 2011
Tony Award winner Judy Kaye, Betsy Wolfe, Mary Birdsong and Wesley Taylor have been cast as the eclectic denizens of 28 Barbary Lane in the world-premiere musical adaptation of Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City, which will debut at the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco May 18.
Based on Maupin's beloved 1970s San Francisco-set literary series, Tales of the City features a score by Scissor Sisters band members Jason Sellards (lyrics) and John Garden (music), and a book by Tony winner Jeff Whitty (Avenue Q). It will have choreography by Larry Keigwin. The stage adaptation centers on the first book of Maupin's series.
Tony nominee Jason Moore (Shrek, Avenue Q, Steel Magnolias) will direct the musical that will officially open May 31 and play an extended engagement through July 10.
Kaye (The Phantom of the Opera, On the Twentieth Century, Souvenir) will portray pot-smoking landlady Anna Madrigal, with Wolfe (Everyday Rapture, 110 in the Shade) as Midwestern transplant Mary Ann Singleton, Birdsong (Martin Short Fame Becomes Me, "Reno 911") as the free-spirited Mona Ramsay and Taylor (Rock of Ages, The Addams Family) as Michael "Mouse" Tollivar. Both Wolf and Birdsong have been part of Tales of the City since its early development during the 2009 Eugene O'Neill Theater Center Musical Theater Conference.
The premiere cast will also include Tony Award nominee Manoel Felciano (Sweeney Todd) as Norman Neal Williams, Matthew Saldivar (Grease) as Brian Hawkins, Richard Poe (Cry-Baby) as Edgar Halcyon, Kathleen Monteleone (Legally Blonde) as Dede Halcyon-Day, Andrew Samonsky (South Pacific) as Beauchamp Day, Josh Breckenridge (Scottsboro Boys) as Jon Fielding, Diane J. Findlay as Mother Mucca and Alex Hsu as Lionel.
The ensemble will include Keith Bearden, Kris Cusick, Kimberly Jensen, Stuart Marland, Pamela Myers, Julie Reiber and Josh Walden.
Here's how ACT bills the work: "On the bustling streets of 1970s San Francisco, neon lights pierce through the fog-drenched skies, disco music explodes from crowded nightclubs, and a wide-eyed Midwestern girl finds a new home — and creates a new kind of family — with the characters at 28 Barbary Lane. Three decades after Armistead Maupin mesmerized millions with his daily column in the city's newspapers, detailing the lives and (multiple) loves of Mary Ann, Mouse, Mona, Brian, and their beloved but mysterious landlady Mrs. Madrigal, his iconic San Francisco saga comes home as a momentous new musical."
"Tales of the City" has also been adapted into several television miniseries featuring performances by Olympia Dukakis, Laura Linney, Chloe Webb, Parker Posey, Marcus D'Amico, Donald Moffat, Thomas Gibson, Barbara Garrick, Nina Foch, Paul Gross, Stanley DeSantis and Philip Moon. Tony winner Betty Buckley appeared as Anna in a recent workshop of the musical but is not moving forward into the world premiere.
For tickets call (415) 749-2228 or visit ACT-SF.
http://www.playbill.com/news/article/148903-Tales-of-the-City-Musical-Will-Star-Judy-Kaye-Betsy-Wolfe-Mary-Birdsong-and-Wesley-Taylor
18 Mar 2011
Tony Award winner Judy Kaye, Betsy Wolfe, Mary Birdsong and Wesley Taylor have been cast as the eclectic denizens of 28 Barbary Lane in the world-premiere musical adaptation of Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City, which will debut at the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco May 18.
Based on Maupin's beloved 1970s San Francisco-set literary series, Tales of the City features a score by Scissor Sisters band members Jason Sellards (lyrics) and John Garden (music), and a book by Tony winner Jeff Whitty (Avenue Q). It will have choreography by Larry Keigwin. The stage adaptation centers on the first book of Maupin's series.
Tony nominee Jason Moore (Shrek, Avenue Q, Steel Magnolias) will direct the musical that will officially open May 31 and play an extended engagement through July 10.
Kaye (The Phantom of the Opera, On the Twentieth Century, Souvenir) will portray pot-smoking landlady Anna Madrigal, with Wolfe (Everyday Rapture, 110 in the Shade) as Midwestern transplant Mary Ann Singleton, Birdsong (Martin Short Fame Becomes Me, "Reno 911") as the free-spirited Mona Ramsay and Taylor (Rock of Ages, The Addams Family) as Michael "Mouse" Tollivar. Both Wolf and Birdsong have been part of Tales of the City since its early development during the 2009 Eugene O'Neill Theater Center Musical Theater Conference.
The premiere cast will also include Tony Award nominee Manoel Felciano (Sweeney Todd) as Norman Neal Williams, Matthew Saldivar (Grease) as Brian Hawkins, Richard Poe (Cry-Baby) as Edgar Halcyon, Kathleen Monteleone (Legally Blonde) as Dede Halcyon-Day, Andrew Samonsky (South Pacific) as Beauchamp Day, Josh Breckenridge (Scottsboro Boys) as Jon Fielding, Diane J. Findlay as Mother Mucca and Alex Hsu as Lionel.
The ensemble will include Keith Bearden, Kris Cusick, Kimberly Jensen, Stuart Marland, Pamela Myers, Julie Reiber and Josh Walden.
Here's how ACT bills the work: "On the bustling streets of 1970s San Francisco, neon lights pierce through the fog-drenched skies, disco music explodes from crowded nightclubs, and a wide-eyed Midwestern girl finds a new home — and creates a new kind of family — with the characters at 28 Barbary Lane. Three decades after Armistead Maupin mesmerized millions with his daily column in the city's newspapers, detailing the lives and (multiple) loves of Mary Ann, Mouse, Mona, Brian, and their beloved but mysterious landlady Mrs. Madrigal, his iconic San Francisco saga comes home as a momentous new musical."
"Tales of the City" has also been adapted into several television miniseries featuring performances by Olympia Dukakis, Laura Linney, Chloe Webb, Parker Posey, Marcus D'Amico, Donald Moffat, Thomas Gibson, Barbara Garrick, Nina Foch, Paul Gross, Stanley DeSantis and Philip Moon. Tony winner Betty Buckley appeared as Anna in a recent workshop of the musical but is not moving forward into the world premiere.
For tickets call (415) 749-2228 or visit ACT-SF.
http://www.playbill.com/news/article/148903-Tales-of-the-City-Musical-Will-Star-Judy-Kaye-Betsy-Wolfe-Mary-Birdsong-and-Wesley-Taylor
Restaurant insult shocks gay author
Lindsay Murdoch
March 18, 2011
BEST-SELLING gay author Armistead Maupin says he could not believe what he heard when he and his husband Chris Turner walked into Bojangles Saloon in Alice Springs for lunch last Friday.
Turner asked a staff member if he could use the rest room.
"The guy said, 'Sorry, we don't have one in here but you can go across the street and use the public facility,'" Maupin said.
Maupin, who had used the toilet in Bojangles the day before, said he had pointed in the direction of the toilet and asked, "What's that over there?"
"The barman gave me a very pointed look and said, 'That's reserved for real men,'" said Maupin, the San Francisco-based author of nine novels, including the Tales of the City series.
"Neither of us could quite believe he said it and he actually repeated it."
Maupin, 66, told ABC radio in Alice Springs that he and his partner left the restaurant after the comment was made and reported it at a tourist information booth.
Later, a tourism official sent him an email saying the owner of Bojangles had been as "shocked as we were, and the man had extended his apologies".
A representative of Bojangles management could not be reached for comment.
Maupin said he was happy with the response from Tourism Central Australia and the incident would not make him avoid Alice Springs in the future, hinting that he might make it the backdrop for one of his future books.
He said that when he posted an account of what happened on his Facebook page, he had received many messages of support.
Some said they had contacted Bojangles to express their outrage.
"The reaction to it was quite extraordinary and it took the bad taste out of our mouths, that's the best part of it," Maupin said.
"As a gay man I look at this as progress, that there is a lot of reasonable folks out there that don't think that acceptable behaviour any more."
Despite Alice Springs's reputation as a hard-drinking, rough-and-tumble desert town, it is home to dozens of lesbian couples, some of whom proudly describe it as Australia's lesbian capital.
With saloon doors, a life-size replica of Ned Kelly and a stuffed wedge-tail eagle suspended from the ceiling, Bojangles is one of the best known restaurants in Alice Springs.
http://www.theage.com.au/travel/travel-news/restaurant-insult-shocks-gay-author-20110317-1byyw.html
March 18, 2011
BEST-SELLING gay author Armistead Maupin says he could not believe what he heard when he and his husband Chris Turner walked into Bojangles Saloon in Alice Springs for lunch last Friday.
Turner asked a staff member if he could use the rest room.
"The guy said, 'Sorry, we don't have one in here but you can go across the street and use the public facility,'" Maupin said.
Maupin, who had used the toilet in Bojangles the day before, said he had pointed in the direction of the toilet and asked, "What's that over there?"
"The barman gave me a very pointed look and said, 'That's reserved for real men,'" said Maupin, the San Francisco-based author of nine novels, including the Tales of the City series.
"Neither of us could quite believe he said it and he actually repeated it."
Maupin, 66, told ABC radio in Alice Springs that he and his partner left the restaurant after the comment was made and reported it at a tourist information booth.
Later, a tourism official sent him an email saying the owner of Bojangles had been as "shocked as we were, and the man had extended his apologies".
A representative of Bojangles management could not be reached for comment.
Maupin said he was happy with the response from Tourism Central Australia and the incident would not make him avoid Alice Springs in the future, hinting that he might make it the backdrop for one of his future books.
He said that when he posted an account of what happened on his Facebook page, he had received many messages of support.
Some said they had contacted Bojangles to express their outrage.
"The reaction to it was quite extraordinary and it took the bad taste out of our mouths, that's the best part of it," Maupin said.
"As a gay man I look at this as progress, that there is a lot of reasonable folks out there that don't think that acceptable behaviour any more."
Despite Alice Springs's reputation as a hard-drinking, rough-and-tumble desert town, it is home to dozens of lesbian couples, some of whom proudly describe it as Australia's lesbian capital.
With saloon doors, a life-size replica of Ned Kelly and a stuffed wedge-tail eagle suspended from the ceiling, Bojangles is one of the best known restaurants in Alice Springs.
http://www.theage.com.au/travel/travel-news/restaurant-insult-shocks-gay-author-20110317-1byyw.html
March 7, 2011
Armistead Maupin Radio Interview
The acclaimed author Armistead Maupin, creator of the 'Tales of the City' series explains why he once hated his name, now loves it and declares that the rumour it's an anagram of "a man I dreamt up" is false!
click the link for the interview
http://www.abc.net.au/local/audio/2011/03/04/3155743.htm
click the link for the interview
http://www.abc.net.au/local/audio/2011/03/04/3155743.htm
Armistead Maupin's Blog
- Armistead Maupin's profile
- 1953 followers
Armistead Maupin isn't a Goodreads Author
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