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My Experience at Sundance

ON WRITING, DIRECTING, PRODUCING - by G.L. Horton

MP wrote: "What was your Sundance experience like? How thrilling that must have been!"

It was thrilling-- besides being luxurious beyond a humble writer's dreams.

It was also a big disappointment, in that

1) I had a last-minute substitute director who had no pre-lab connection to the piece or plans to produce it. Most scripts at Sundance come with an attached director and an at least tentatively scheduled subsequent production.

2) I was assigned an all white cast for a play created by and intended for a racially integrated ensemble. Sundance is in a part of Utah that is Very White, and uses local talent to fill in minor roles-- all those "cameos" in Under Siege. There were two excellent black actresses at Sundance, one drafted to direct my play and another in the cast of Schekkan's "Kentucky Cycle", but none available for mine-- and I needed at least 6! Only one of the characters is specifically African-American, but the clinic is urban and the characters a cross-section of urban women who go to a clinic rather than their own private gyn for an abortion. I expected a rainbow. and

3) 1990 was the summer that "The Kentucky Cycle" and "Angels in America" were in residence at Sundance-- the rest of us were, understandably, mere afterthoughts. (4/20/05)

 

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