BWW Celebrates 'The Play That Changed My Life' Day 1 - Jon Robin Baitz

A new book by The American Theatre Wing, The Play That Changed My Life, poses the following questions, "What was the play that changed your life? What was the play that inspired you, that showed you something entirely new, that was so thrilling or surprising, breathtaking or poignant, that you were never the same?" In revelatory conversations, nineteen of today's most gifted playwrights respond sharing personal anecdotes and experiences.

BWW celebrates the launch of The Play That Changed My Life by bringing you excerpts of the book from noted playwrights who discuss the play that influenced them and had a lasting impact on their career and personal lives.

See below for an excerpt from playwright and screeenwriter Jon Robin Baitz.

The Play That Changed My Life is edited by Ben Hodges, published by Applause Books and presented by the American Theatre Wing, founder of The Tony Awards. Pulitzer Prize winner playwright Paula Vogel penned the book's introduction.

Excerpt from Jon Robin Baitz,

"In high school, in the highly unlikely locale of Durban, South Africa, I saw, at age sixteen, in a tiny theatre in the City Hall, a strange and overwrought production of Kennedy's Children by Robert Patrick. The homosexual "themes," viewed right next to my parents, caused me to run away from the theatre and from sex for a least a week, and in the case of the latter, a year. I would have no part of it. Acting in The Man Who Came to Dinner, in a cloud of white hair powder and perched in a wheelchair from which I mugged like Al Jolson, further compelled me to look at plays and players as a mug's game, not fit for Prince Robbie. Later, at the virtually professional theatre department at Beverly Hills High School, I essayed my Preacher/Judge in a production of Lanford Wilson's The Rimers of Eldritch, which, when I read it alone under a tree, seemed urgent and mysterious and foggy, but which onstage, played by the thespians of 90210, did not measure up. In eleventh grade, the Hamlet in my head was perfection; a handsomer, fitter version of me, with my moody hair and an aristocratic hauteur and a Bowie/Lou Reed/Belmondo cool. Better than Olivier in tights any day. Or so I thought. So was Konstantin, (again, my avatar), dying slowly over seagulls, the general absence in his life of art, conversation, recognition, or even love."

From the book's description, "From Edward Albee's 1935 visit to New York's Hippodrome Theatre to see Jimmy Durante (and an elephant) in Rodgers and Hart's Jumbo, to Diana Son's twelfth-grade field trip in 1983 to see Diane Venora play Hamlet at The Public Theater, from David Henry Hwang's seminal San Francisco encounter with Equus to a young Beth Henley's epiphany after seeing her mother in a Green Bean Man costume, The Play That Changed My Life offers readers a unique peek into the theatrical influences of some of the nation's most important dramatists. The book is filled with tributes, memories, anecdotes and other insights that connect past to present and make this volume an instant must-have for anyone who adores the theatre. Also in the book are pieces by David Auburn, Jon Robin Baitz, Nilo Cruz, Christopher Durang, Charles Fuller, A. R. Gurney, Tina Howe, David Ives, Donald Margulies, Lynn Nottage, Suzan-Lori Parks, Sarah Ruhl, John Patrick Shanley, ReGina Taylor, and Doug Wright, as well as an introduction by Paula Vogel. All together, the playwrights featured here have won more than 40 Tony Awards, Pulitzer Prizes, Obies, and MacArthur genius grants."

Click here to purchase The Play That Changed My Life: America's Foremost Playwrights on the Plays that Influenced Them on Amazon.com.