I’ve always wondered about this play, an Obie Award-winner from 2000, because the title is so, well, strange.
Some scenes involve realistic dialogue, others less so, but for her, in directing, “It’s grounded in what’s happening, making it present.” She wants the actors to know precisely what they’re saying, why they’re saying it, who they’re saying it to. Be that as it may, the story, selected by Roxane Gay for inclusion in the 2018 Best American Short Stories anthology, sounds like a perfect match for Word for Word. The literary performance company was created by Susan Harloe and JoAnne Winter and boasts an excellent core company of 21, 14 of whom are women. Word stages crystalline short stories verbatim by some of the country’s best writers.
Word for Word at Z Space Steindler Stage, 450 Florida St., Wednesday- July 21, $22-$63, 626-0453, zspace.org. Although the fictional artist is desperate to get an exhibit in a prestigious museum — “It’s not MoMa but it’s not not MoMa,” notes Rolston — the playwright is himself not a visual artist, although he and his husband are art lovers and members of several museums.
“We gave options to playwrights,” explains executive/artistic director Jessica Bird Beza, “as to what would serve their process better: online or in person. So it’s about centering the playwright.” In playwright Inda Craig-Galván’s “A Jumping-Off Point,” a white male accuses a former classmate, who’s now a “superstar Black female writer,” of plagiarism.