CHINA JOURNAL: PLAYWRIGHT IN BEIJING
"This journal covers the making of the BIG SUR production; the teaching of playwriting to English speaking Chinese students; and includes my conducting English conversation classes with large groups of adult Chinese, who are part of the enormous working engine that is China business, and who are at various levels of English speaking expertise. . . .This journal also explores how I came to fall in love with these remarkable people.”
(Rehearsals for my play, BIG SUR, begin in The Democracy Building. . .I begin to see the prodigious acting and directing talents of Joseph Graves. . . and the Chinese actors and Peking University begin to enchant me)
(“I know Joe and I are on the same wavelength when the aging hippie in ‘Big Sur’—with the arrow in her forehead—makes her entrance from stage left.” Also—a stroll around Peking University. . .living the culture of The Paradise Café and. . . “Dinner and Belly Buttons.”)
China Journal (Part three) PDF
(A Variety Of Headline Stories From The Pages Of The English-Language Newspaper “China Daily," Feb 16-May 21)
(The “Big Sur” rehearsals continue. . .the students write plays. . .I help the adults to converse in English. . .I devise silly tongue twisters for them. . .and I learn how to speak English all over again.)
(Twenty six silly tongue-twister exercises for the English Conversation Class. . .and a bonus of three raunchy tongue twisters—written especially for raunchy gaglianoriff.com voyeurs.)
(Excerpts from the student plays—to be produced next year at Peking University.)
China Journal (Part seven) PDF
(In which I find my groove in the English Conversation classes of adult-education Chinese students—
In which I lecture on the turning point for American
Drama in the 1960s, and I have an epiphany—
In which Shanghai Fish introduces me
to writer LU XIN and his “CALL TO ARMS” —
And in which the play, BIG SUR, goes on. . .)
China Journal (Part eight) PDF
("Big Sur" complete revised text)
China Journal (Part nine) PDF
("Big Sur" Chinese version)
AND SO, FAREWELL TO CHINA. . .