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"Linda Griffiths on the four books she has going at once"
January 30, 2021

WHO: Linda Griffiths
WHAT: Boys Adrift, by Leonard Sax; Ambivalence, by Jonathan Garfinkel; Truth and Beauty, by Ann Patchett; Acquainted with the Night, by Christopher Dewdney
WHY: Piles of books everywhere, beside my bed, in the living room, kitchen, office, glorious books zapping me into so many worlds. As part of my vision quest to understand the masculine of the species, there's Boys Adrift, by Leonard Sax – also research for a play, so two birds down with one Abe Books delivery.

Apart from fascinating stuff about alligators with shrunken testicles and low sperm count in adolescent boys, it includes truly terrifying studies about the hard wiring of female and male brains as we go through puberty and beyond. Sax identifies an epidemic of lost boys, poisoned, misdiagnosed and humiliated. Luckily, he offers solutions.

Anne Patchett's Truth and Beauty kept me awake all of one snowy night; its truth and beauty were a drug. This is the real-life friendship between two writing women, one who didn't really have a face. Patchett's portrait of poet Lucy Grealy is so electrifying that this charismatic character lay beside me in bed, inventing wild schemes, suggesting impractical spending.

Anne and Lucy are the ant and the grasshopper. Anne is firmly, diligently talented, while Lucy bounces wackily from brilliance to desperation. The lesson is that ants and grasshoppers, tortoises and hares, need each other to survive – even if the grasshoppers need help to get through the winter. Patchett makes the case for every maddening, self-destructive, brilliant creature we have ever known. This is a book of deep love and physical torment, of cruel loneliness and transcendent art – unforgettable.

Interesting timing to be reading Ambivalence during the recent hostilities in Gaza. “Hostilities” for lack of a better way to describe the impossible. In this memoir-ish book, Jonathan Garfinkel paints himself as the classic rube. A Toronto Jew, educated in Bialik Hebrew Day School, he stumbles through Israel and Palestine trying to understand what the hell is going on.

There are times when Garfinkel seems in real danger as he navigates checkpoints, ignores curfews and braves guard dogs, but he's protected by the ghost of his Hebrew teacher, Mrs. Blintzkrieg. Garfinkel is goaded and guided by a muse from Palestine, who tells him of a house shared in true ambivalence by a Palestinian and a Jew. He sets out to find the house, crossing every conceivable border on the way.

Chris Dewdney's Acquainted with the Night is one of the books that never leaves the stack beside my bed. It shares a place with Sappho's poems, If Not, Winter, translated by Anne Carson, Karen Connelly's One Room in a Castle, Mary Renault's The Mask of Apollo, Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities. I won't dip into it for months, then will need to be inspired by this galactic patchwork of myth, science, history, religion, poetry and personal story. This is a feat of nocturnal virtuosity in which we are all the dreamers following Dewdney's hour-by-hour journey into night. It may be true that we are divided into day people and night people; for those who mysteriously perk up around 8 p.m., Dewdney captures the alchemy of our relationship to night. It is an ode to the twinkling universe. Whoever said, “The stars are gods, there are no others”?

Tonight, Pricilla Uppal's new novel, To Whom It May Concern. I may or may not sleep through the night.

Linda Griffiths is a playwright and actor. Her latest play is Age of Arousal.

(View online article)

Theatre can be developed in many ways, but ultimately it exists on the physical plane - bodies watching bodies in the dark.

Award-winning playwright/actor Linda Griffiths teaches this studio course for theatre practitioners from all traditions. This unique class is follows a process beginning with observation exercises, using overheard dialogue, then moving to invented work. This mirrors Griffiths' own development and process, which includes combining traditional writing practice with improvisational methods. Visceral Playwrighting is a class designed to find and encourage a gut connection to the theatrical word. 

The work will involve getting participants on their feet to improvise, create characters and finally to write scenes. Although produce may result from the class, it is exploratory in nature.

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This course is an incredible experience for theatre practitioners of all kinds. Class dates are:

February 9, February 22, March 8, March 15, March 29, April 5, April 26

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Classes begin at 6:30pm and end at 9pm and are held at Bread & Circus 299 Augusta Ave, Toronto.

VISCERAL PLAYWRITING will be limited to twelve participants. The cost is 245.00 plus GST  (12.25) for seven sessions. A non-refundable 35.00 deposit is necessary to secure a place in the class. Cheque payable to:

Linda Griffiths
224 Markham St., Toronto, ON M6J 2G6

**Please include your phone number and e-mail address!**
 
For inquries, please email [email protected]

This class will fill up quickly - if you know of an artist who would be interested, please feel free to forward this information along!

DUCHESS PRODUCTIONS