{"id":15140,"date":"2018-07-15T04:00:49","date_gmt":"2018-07-15T08:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/?p=15140"},"modified":"2020-05-01T10:50:20","modified_gmt":"2020-05-01T14:50:20","slug":"stage-sight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/stage-sight\/","title":{"rendered":"Susan Minot"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border: none; width: 100%; height: 500px;\" src=\"\/\/e.issuu.com\/embed.html?backgroundColor=%23f3f3f3&amp;d=ja18_flipbook_2&amp;hideIssuuLogo=true&amp;hideShareButton=true&amp;pageNumber=81&amp;u=portlandmagazine\" width=\"300\" height=\"150\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h1>Stage Sight<\/h1>\n<p><span class=\"s1\">North Haven Island\u2019s novelist and screenwriter <strong>Susan Minot<\/strong> debuts a new play this August that hits very close to home. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s2\"><strong>Interview by Olivia Gunn Kotsishevskaya<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\"><span class=\"s3\"><strong><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-15141 alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/JA-18-Minot-200x300.jpg\" alt=\"JA-18-Minot\" width=\"200\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/JA-18-Minot-200x301.jpg 200w, https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/JA-18-Minot-233x350.jpg 233w, https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/JA-18-Minot.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\" \/><\/strong>I<\/span><span class=\"s4\">n her third novel, <em>Evening<\/em> (made into the 2007 film starring <strong>Vanessa Redgrave<\/strong>, <strong>Meryl Streep<\/strong>, and <strong>Claire Danes<\/strong>), <strong>Susan Minot<\/strong> tells the story of a dying woman whose memories whisk her back to a weekend spent on an island off the coast of Maine in her twenties. It\u2019s a world familiar to Minot, who grew up summering with her family on North Haven, eventually living there full-time as a new mother. The island has been a constant in her life and today, at 61, she\u2019s written a play for it. <em>On Island<\/em> will run from August 2-5 at <strong>Waterman\u2019s Community Center<\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p6\"><strong><span class=\"s5\">How did the story of <em>On Island<\/em> come to you?<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"p7\"><span class=\"s4\">I\u2019m on the drama committee at Waterman\u2019s [Community Center on North Haven], and David Hopkins, a committee member, had the idea of doing something oriented toward the island much like <em>Islands: The Musical<\/em> that was done. It\u2019s very much rooted in the experience of the people on the island. The idea was to take some of the history of North Haven, some of the myths on the island, and put them into a dramatic collage-like story. I\u2019ve always wanted to write a play. In fact, I did write a one-woman show based on a memoir called <em>The Little Locksmith <\/em>by Katharine Butler Hathaway starring Linda Hunt [<em>The Year of Living Dangerously<\/em>, <em>Solo: A Star Wars Story<\/em>, <em>NCIS: Los Angeles<\/em>]. [Putting <em>The Little Locksmith<\/em> on stage] had been suggested to me by the famous John Wulp, who was the force behind North Haven theater for a long time. He was a Broadway producer who came to North Haven in the 1980s and put on the shows there. So, this isn\u2019t technically my first play, but it\u2019s the first one that\u2019s more of a proper play. I found that for me to really get behind it, my orientation is more to the personal and the present. Since I\u2019ve lived both on the island as a year-rounder and a summer person, I know a lot of aspects of the island. I decided to do a story that takes place on the island today in the summer. The day is August 3rd. It focuses on two island families; one is a year-round family and the other is a summer family.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p6\"><strong><span class=\"s5\">Is there a conflict between the two families?<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"p7\"><span class=\"s4\">It\u2019s not between the two families at all. It\u2019s more about seeing the different versions of family conflict. They both have different versions of the same thing going on. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p9\"><strong><span class=\"s5\">Life on North Haven may seem a little mysterious to everyone who isn\u2019t on North Haven. How do you connect a story that takes place on an island to the rest of Maine?<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"p7\">I think you\u2019ll find it will connect with people in Sri Lanka. It\u2019s not about the strangeness of people who live on an island. It\u2019s about people who happen to live on an island. There are some aspects that are encouraged. Isolation may be something people who live on the island deal with more. One of the through lines of the play is a stranger on the island. He gets on the wrong ferry. He was to go to Vinalhaven, which to North Haven seems like the other side of the world. He acts as a kind of catalyst. Also, North Haven has a very active theater community because of John Wulp. The children act in school, the Christmas shows\u2013they\u2019re used to performing. One of the things I love is seeing the musicals there. People are happy to hear songs, so I\u2019ve inserted existing songs in the play. Two of the artists are from the island: Courtney Naliboff and the band the Toughcats.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p6\"><strong><span class=\"s5\">Both are local?<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"p7\"><span class=\"s4\">They are. Courtney lives on-island and the Toughcats have lived on-island; some are off-island at the moment. If you live on an island, and I go into this in the play, there is a very refined sense of who\u2019s an islander, who\u2019s a year-rounder, who\u2019s a transplant.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p6\"><strong><span class=\"s5\">That could be very divisive language.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"p11\"><span class=\"s6\">I<\/span><span class=\"s4\">t can be, yes. Part of my assignment was to celebrate the island. It would be probably easier and more dramatic to do a piercing expose of the underbelly, but this is a PG effort. Children are in it; anyone can see it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p6\"><strong><span class=\"s5\">Were you tempted to go to the underbelly?<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"p7\"><span class=\"s4\">I couldn\u2019t. That was never going to be. That\u2019s usually where I am tempted to go, but this was an interesting challenge for me. I wanted to do something moving, celebratory, and entertaining.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p6\"><strong><span class=\"s5\">On that note, how do you keep a story like this relevant to everything that is happening in our headlines?<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"p7\"><span class=\"s7\">Family and life is always relevant. That\u2019s the bottom line. Being able to exist in a family, on a small island, that couldn\u2019t be more relevant.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p6\"><strong><span class=\"s5\">What has your experience on North Haven been from childhood through today?<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"p7\"><span class=\"s4\">I\u2019ve been visiting the island since I was born. Every summer of my life. Maybe I missed a few in my twenties, but certainly growing up we\u2019d go for the month of August. My six brothers, sisters, and I would go with my parents. We\u2019d stay in part of a house my father\u2019s parents lived in. Cousins would be there. It was the fun place to go. The beauty of the island, picnics, boats, the smells, nature. When you\u2019re young, you don\u2019t notice that so much. What you notice is that you can walk barefoot everywhere you go starting at age ten\u2026 I grew up in Massachusetts and have always felt that North Haven was more of a hometown. When I was in my forties, I fell in love with a man, Charlie Pingree, who lived on the island, and married him. We had a child, and lived there for nine years year-round. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p6\"><strong><span class=\"s5\">Going from visiting to living there full-time, did you ever feel a little crazy or stuck?<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"p11\"><span class=\"s6\">I <\/span><span class=\"s4\">always feel a little crazy wherever I am, so hard to tell. I went from living in New York City and traveling a lot to living on a small island with three ferries a day. It has another kind of adventure to it. You\u2019re faced with the challenges of living with the same people and the acceptance of people\u2026 People are the same wherever you go. An island just accentuates behaviors in people more than a city. The city accentuates different ones, too. You\u2019re just experiencing yourself slightly differently. I was also a mother for the first time. There were a lot of new things going on when I lived there, but the rhythm of the day was the big difference. The rhythm of the day and the slowness. It was fantastic.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p6\"><strong><span class=\"s5\">You\u2019re going to be directing a film adaptation of your first book, <em>Monkeys<\/em>. What has been the most difficult part of that process?<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"p11\"><span class=\"s6\">W<\/span><span class=\"s4\">ell, it\u2019s the fourth script I\u2019ve written. Two of the movies have been made [<em>Stealing Beauty<\/em>, <em>Evening<\/em>], and I\u2019ve adapted another one of my books and am developing that as a movie. Difficulty? It\u2019s just the logistics. Instead of it being all up to you to finish the last page at your desk, you need a hundred things to be lined up before the making of the movie happens.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p6\"><strong><span class=\"s4\">My husband was a film student and is a big fan of Bertolucci (<em>The Last Emperor, Last Tango in Paris<\/em>), so I have to ask, what was it like co-writing <em>Stealing Beauty <\/em>with him?<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"p7\"><span class=\"s4\">It was fantastic. It was a wonderful time. I wrote the movie based on an idea of his, and then I would write some ideas and we\u2019d meet again and confer. He\u2019d say, \u201cOh, I want to have three generations in the story,\u201d so I\u2019d go back and write something else. He\u2019d say, \u201cThis should happen here,\u201d and I\u2019d say, \u201cNo, I don\u2019t think a girl would do that.\u201d It was that kind of conversation. Then I was on set all summer. That was my master class.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p6\"><strong><span class=\"s5\">How did you get the assignment to write with him?\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"p7\"><span class=\"s4\">Bertolucci was looking for an American or English woman writer to give credence to the main character point-of-view; a mutual writer friend mentioned me as a cinephile. My books had recently come out in Italy, and he read <em>Lust &amp; Other Stories<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p6\"><strong><span class=\"s5\">Was Bertolucci aware of the Maine connection that you and Liv Tyler share? Has Tyler ever visited North Haven with you? <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"p7\"><span class=\"s4\">No awareness at all. Liv\u2019s childhood was in Portland. She has rented houses a couple of summers on North Haven and loves it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p6\"><strong><span class=\"s5\">Did you write any of the <em>Stealing Beauty <\/em>script in North Haven?\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"p7\"><span class=\"s4\">I wrote the script in New York, Rome, and Sabaudia, a seaside town south of Rome.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p6\"><strong><span class=\"s5\">You come from a family of writers, so do you play off of one another\u2019s work?<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"p7\"><span class=\"s4\">My sister Eliza\u2013who lives in New Jersey with her four children\u2013she is working on her next book. She writes beautiful essays and short stories she shares with me. I\u2019m continually inspired by her. I aspire to be as good a writer as she is. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The North Haven Island novelist and screenwriter&#8217;s new play hits very close to home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15142,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8,943],"tags":[227],"class_list":["post-15140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-personalities","tag-julyaugust-2018"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15140"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15140\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18543,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15140\/revisions\/18543"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}