Joe DiPietro on his New Work LIVING ON LOVE

By: Jun. 29, 2014
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In 2012, Joe DiPietro joined forces with director Kathleen Marshall to take a forgotten Gershwin show, revamp it, and turn it into hit Nice Work if You Can Get it. Now, according to The Boston Globe, they're at it again. This time, they are taking Garson Kanin's 1985 play Peccadillo and turning it into Living on Love. Living on Love follows a Italian maestro and his wife, an opera dive, who hire ghostwriters of the opposite sex to pen competing memoirs. They both become trapped between their drive to battle each other and the feelings that arise for their ghostwriters.

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DiPietro discussed with a reporter some of the changes he made to the script: "The original took place in 1985. Both Kathleen and I had the same thought, which was to move the setting to the '50s. When I think of how people like Leonard Bernstein really influenced the culture, it was in the 1950s when they were at their zenith. So [the characters] could really be people who were in the news all the time. And in the original play, [the character of Raquel] had retired from opera singing sometime after they got married. So she was now his housewife. I wanted to actually make her character much more dynamic and active - by having her still be a famous working opera singer."

Living on Love will premiere at the Williamstown Theatre Festival beginning on July 16. The production will star opera soprano Renée Fleming and actors Justin Long and Anna Chlumsky. Click here to learn more about the upcoming production.



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