I wasn't, like, a saint, spending all my time taking care of her. Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting. They say "We really want you to write this"? . LONERGAN: I would have tried to. Monologue: "He's taken an interest. Most of those facilities aren't so great. Lawsuits claim it wrecked their teeth. Why were there so many troubles, if you read about it or you read some of the, you know, the lawsuit. That's what I'm there for. And I was able to write plays and do what I wanted for three years. LONERGAN: I do, yeah. And that's something interesting, there's a natural dramatic content in there. As near perfect as the performances are, the physical production occasionally lets them down. Tuesday was a tough day for "Today" co-host Savannah Guthrie, who tested positive for COVID-19 for the third time in a little over a year. "The Waverly Gallery" is a scrupulously unmanipulative, unsentimental treatment of subject matter that is, well, inherently manipulative and sentimental. And all the characters are very closely modeled on my family. Her apartment was a social hub in the '40s, '50s and '60s. I got a lotta money for it. ALTSCHUL: Yeah. The Waverly is a pet-friendly community. Or a film. Kenneth Lonergan with Serena Altschul at the site of his grandmother's art gallery, near the intersection of Macdougal Street and Waverly Place. That character's somewhat invented. It was pretty clear where it was working and where it wasn't. I'm gonna put this on paper and then I can grapple with it better"? I have a film I'm trying to write. My overhead was very low. She was all of our first all of our-- the first choice of all of us. And we ended up casting Casey. and particularly his monologue at the end which was certainly powerful stuff. Tickets and information: . LONERGAN: Yeah. the waverly gallery monologue-R$ . ALTSCHUL: So "Margaret" is perhaps your least-seen movie, but also considered your master work. Has a lot of freedom, but no foundation. And then I thought, "Well, this is great. ALTSCHUL: So if you were to do something differently, you might have said, "Okay, guys." Why were the audiences drawn to that film? I loved that man, I would have done anything for him. ALTSCHUL: They're psychotherapists or psychiatrists? You mighta walked them through it a little more? I don't wanna know anything about you or your life or anything." LONERGAN: I'm trying to work, yes. Ms. May, right, portrays a gallery owner who shows work by a struggling artist (Michael Cera, left), while her grandson (Lucas Hedges) worries about her health. You don't want them to be done once and forgotten. (LAUGHTER). It's really hard to take care of someone all day long. In any case, the Gladys we meet in The Waverly Gallery the title comes from the small rented Greenwich Village space where she shows art of dubious distinction is conducting what might be called extreme improvisation. The high school that the girl goes to is based on my high school very closely. They wanna be involved. Eileen Heckart in "The Waverly Gallery" 7,094 views Jun 8, 2017 79 Dislike Share Save Luke Yankee 1.06K subscribers Eileen Heckart in scenes from the Off Broadway production of Kenneth. LONERGAN: I thought it would be funny if he took him on and all sorts of terrible things happened afterwards! Thus, when Gladys's deterioration escalates from eccentricity to complete deterioration, the younger generation can no longer just stay in touch. I thought maybe I would use them for something else someday. But it's interesting. LONERGAN: You know, they were having structural problems with the script. Kenneth Lonergan's 1999 drama, The Waverly Gallery, has taken quite a few hits from critics over the course of its many productions around the country, mainly for trying to cash in on fear of. Gladys is . And I really don't care for the theatrical version in retrospect, and the extended edition is more representative of the film I wanted to make. LONERGAN: Yeah, and it's not your movie. And then they bought the script outright, which is unusual. Ill also admit that I looked forward to the curtain call and the reassurance it would bring that May, 86, isnt quite so fragile. You try to put that person into scenes. The play was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2001. If you're not directing it, you just say goodbye to whatever vision you had? And she belongs in this world, even though she's nothing like my grandmother and the character is her invention, really. And I thought, "Oh, that sounds like a really good story." I like these two characters. That would come a couple of years later. LONERGAN: Yeah, it is hard. LONERGAN: Not too well! Between Riverside and Crazy: Wild and Wonderful New York Story So there was an evening about faith, whatever it meant to you. And I had friends who were making good money writing screenplays, and they kept urging me to do the same. So I actually think a lot happens to those characters. I'd say it's much more work in a funny way, 'cause as a playwright you can do the writing and pass it on to others, and hang around nervously to see if it turns out the way you wanted it to. LONERGAN: Mistakes. And then as it turned out, he wasn't able to be in it either because of his schedule. Its not so much a portrait as a miniature and there are moments when it doesnt seem to quite fill the theater or earn its two-hours traffic. ALTSCHUL: "Waverly" opened to critically great reviews. I sometimes wonder about that, 'cause there's often a delay between when you have an idea and you're able to write it. ALTSCHUL: So the two rewrites were scrapped and . Most plays are just talking! That movie was so late in the process that every other movie I've ever script doctored, they always rewrite you after you're done anyway. The characters dont grow or change, they just hang around. They include Gladyss daughter (and Daniels mother), Ellen (Joan Allen, who wrenchingly combines filial devotion and resentment); her psychoanalyst husband Howard (an impeccably tactless David Cromer); and Don (Michael Cera, doing confident but clueless), a young painter from Massachusetts who stumbles into Gladyss gallery one day and winds up showing and living there. Current Totals: 12498 plays, 5653 writers, 356 monologues Title Author More about The Waverly Gallery: Play Details Monologues Add a Monologue Trivia Director's Notes Rate this Play Publisher's Website: Director's Notes for The Waverly Gallery No Notes have been entered yet for this play. I'm Simon, though He called me Peter. Very closely. What changes where you feel like, "Oh, I've got something "? LONERGAN: Yeah. The Waverly Gallery Oct 25, 2018 Jan 27, 2019 . It was about 12 pages long. I wrote a science fiction novel when I was 11 and 12, or 12 and 13, something like that. She's really smart. (LAUGHTER) But she's a genius, and she's incredible in the part, and I always wanted her to play this role. They give you backup and depth. You can't just throw stuff down and have it be interesting. It is considered a "memory play". If I could say in a sentence, I wouldn't be taking up three hours of anyone's time. And this past Sunday the play and May won Drama Desk awards. You're there to consult and help. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot loses reelection bid, Fiery train crash in Greece kills dozens, many of them students. LONERGAN: Who knows? IBDB . LONERGAN: Yeah, she was amazing. LONERGAN: I woulda walked them through it more. In that case I kind of knew what the main relationship was, what the ending would be, and what the structure of the events was going to be. LONERGAN: And that somehow got around to this brother and sister, one of whom was a religious person and the other of whom wasn't. You had early success in the film business. Most people don't like being in those facilities. The show, first produced Off-Broadway in 2000, follows a grandson watching his grandmother slowly die from Alzheimer's disease. ALTSCHUL: And just walk in the other direction--. Like, one would be censorship and the other would be faith and the other would be women. Although I think it's something I would be good at and that I would like and be interested in. There's nothing wrong with them, and if they have some depth to them, you know, you read plays that are topical that are 30, 40, 50 years old and they're wonderful because they have something besides topicality to them. And it was unusual because it wasn't an assignment and I didn't generate the material, but very quickly everything in the film became, it did generate after a short time, 'cause I wasn't able to write the script any other way. Your parents had their hands full. ALTSCHUL: So then from writing novels, plays, screenplays, you decide, "I'm gonna try directing." And it's a very big world. ALTSCHUL: So "Manchester by the Sea" was profoundly sad, disturbing, moving, emotional, let's just say very, very sad. LONERGAN: Well, I just [had] one small theatre experience after another. But with no story, it's not interesting. Also present are what Daniel calls his clan of liberal Upper West Side atheistic Jewish intellectuals: his psychiatrist mother Ellen (Joan Allen), his psychiatrist stepfather Howard (David Cromer) and most crucially his grandmother Gladys (May), a former lawyer who now runs a Greenwich Village art gallery that never seems to sell anything. She . In a bold move Shakespeare & Company has . ALTSCHUL: I guess what I'm asking is, why write it? Dr. Liptzin is Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus at Tufts University School fo Medicine and was Chair of Psychiatry at Baystate Medical Center for 25 years. While The Waverly Gallery was always a star vehicle (Eileen Heckert, who created the role, was superb both in the Berkshire and Off-Broadway productions I saw), it also relies on its ensemble to make Gladys's family a vital part of her story. LONERGAN: Not really. And especially as you're becoming an adult, and becoming not just a function of your family and your parents, to be facing the complexity of the rest of the world, and the fact that other people are just as important as you are at that moment when your own ego is identifying itself, is a very tricky moment in life. He was included in a later production at the Pasadena Playhouse in 2002. The many layers of this serious affliction are explored in each character of the family unit. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Including the last lines here I don't think you can really spoil anything, and it's a published play, but avoid if you want to see it blind." The Lifespan of a Fact review Daniel Radcliffe's patchy return to Broadway, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning. Long fabled as a director, script doctor and dramatist, Ms. May first became famous as a master of improvisational comedy, instantly inventing fully detailed, piquantly neurotic characters who always leaned slightly off-kilter. Most of the stuff with Daniel Day-Lewis' character was really good, so I barely touched that. The Waverly Gallery is a play by Kenneth Lonergan. Tried him being a cold blooded killer. So there was an evening about faith, whatever it meant to you. She did a lot of work on housing issues. And it's really hard to learn that, because you're, like, full of ideas of your own. (LAUGHTER) It was a bit too high concept for me. But yeah, I don't think he has any full-time analytic patients anymore. But it also is sort of the idea of an attempt to do a play in some kind of documentary theatricalization, 'cause it's very literal, and the events are not written in any way as to try to compress or bend the reality to make it more like a story. She's incredibly insightful and she's a lotta fun. Gallery is a moving chronicle of the deteriorating effects of aging, Apologia offers some riveting theatrics but is ultimately uneven, and Parsifal fails to achieves its lofty ambitions of examining issues of art, sex, religion, and politics, settling for cheap sitcom laughs. (LAUGHTER) But it's nice to have someone who's supportive, but very, very truthful with you. And if you get good actors, that's great. LONERGAN: I'd say so. LONERGAN: Yeah. And real life is richer usually than your imagination. How her family daughter Ellen, son-in-law Howard and grandson Daniel deals with her decline is told by the grandson. I was young. ALTSCHUL: So, "Waverly Gallery," "This Is Our Youth," pieces of yours that just stand the test of time. (LAUGHTER) So you can kind of write whatever you want. "Good As . And it just escalated. ALTSCHUL: Right. The landlord wants to close the art gallery and replace it with a restaurant. [8]), Charles Isherwood in Variety said, "The life trauma being depicted has an inherent pathos, and in Lonergan's hands, no small amount of comic potential. You know, how did that come about? And I knew I had a good arc for a full story. ALTSCHUL: So, speaking of things that stood the test of time, how does "The Wonderful World of Pluto" hold up now? And one of my college friends was my roommate, so we split the rent. 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the waverly gallery monologue