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Sarah Schulman Part 2

Sarah Schulman is a playwright novelist, nonfiction writer, screenwriter, journalist and AIDS historian. This is the second interview with Sarah Schulman, the first one can be heard here.

Her plays include: CARSON McCULLERS – (Sundance/Playwrights Horizons -2002) MANIC FLIGHT REACTION (NY Stage and Film/Playwrights Horizons-2005) ENEMIES, A LOVE STORY, adapted from IB Singer (Wilma Theater-2007). And play workshops, commissions, readings at: South Coast Rep, La Jolla Playhouse, ART, New York Theater Workshop, The Roundabout, The Vineyard, Cleveland Playhouse, The Public Theater.

Her eleven novels :  MAGGIE TERRY  (forthcoming in Fall 2018) THE COSMOPOLITANS (The Feminist Press, 2016), THE MERE FUTURE (2009), THE CHILD (2007), SHIMMER (1998), RAT BOHEMIA (1995), EMPATHY (1992), PEOPLE IN TROUBLE (1990), AFTER DELORES (1988), GIRLS, VISIONS AND EVERYTHING (1986), THE SOPHIE HOROWITZ STORY (1984) and five nonfiction books :CONFLICT IS NOT ABUSE: Overstating Harm, Community Responsibility and The Duty of Repair (2016)  ISRAEL/PALESTINE AND THE QUEER INTERNATIONAL (2012). THE GENTRIFICATION OF THE MIND: Witness to a Lost Imagination  (2012), TIES THAT BIND: FAMILIAL HOMOPHOBIA AND ITS CONSEQUENCES (2010) STAGESTRUCK: Theater, AIDS, and the Marketing of Gay America (1998) MY AMERICAN HISTORY: Lesbian and Gay Life During the Reagan/Bush Years (1995)

In film Sarah has collaborated as a screenwriter w/ film director Cheryl Dunye on THE OWLS, (2010 Berlin Film Festival,) MOMMY IS COMING, (Berlinale 2012,) w/ director Stephen Winter on JASON AND SHIRLEY, (Brooklyn Academy of Music BAMfest ’15,) w/ director Jim Hubbard on UNITED IN ANGER: A History of ACT UP, (Museum of Modern Art.) With Jim Hubbard, she is co-founder of the MIX: NY LGBT Experimental Film and Festival, and The ACT UP Oral History Project.

Awards include a Guggenheim (Playwrighting), Fulbright (Judaic Studies), Kessler Prize for Sustained Contribution to LGBT Studies, 3 NY Foundation for the Arts Fellowships (Playwrighting and Fiction) 2 American Library Association Book Awards (Fiction and Nonfiction) and a finalist for the Prix de Rome. Sarah is a Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at The City University of New York, College of Staten Island, a Fellow at The New York Institute for the Humanities at NYU, Faculty Advisor to Students for Justice in Palestine, and on the advisory board of Jewish Voice for Peace.

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  1. […] Sarah Schulman has been working with rock icon turned avant-garde artist Marianne Faithfull to write a play based on some of Faithful’s songs. The theme of the play draws from the fairy tale The Snow Queen and examines how we carry the traumas of our mothers using 24 of Faithfull’s songs. Schulman traveled to Paris where Faithfull lives. There she found the septuagenarian working on new music using punk rock motifs to examine aging and old age. Schulman discusses the way in which Faithful has let go of a lot of things that are unimportant enabling her to see from a whole new perspective. This perspective, Schulman says, often comes with age and growth and the wisdom gained over the years. Alongside this sometimes comes bitterness or a jaded point of view for some. Schulman discusses in her interview the way in which work she produced years ago has received interest years later. A novel she published in 1990 was recently reviewed by the New Yorker who paid it no mind upon initial publication. The reason for the sudden interest is that Schulman cast Donald Trump as the villain in her now nearly thirty-year-old book. Of the recent Me Too movement, Schulman discusses “the absolute miracle that women are being heard” after over half a century since the inception of feminism. Schulman is interested in the superstructure behind powerful men losing their positions. She notes that in the higher profile cases of Harvey Weinstein, Matt Lauer, and Charlie Rose, it was corporations who fired them rather than actual individuals. She also reframes the conversation as being more about power than about actual sexuality citing the numerous women whose careers were completely derailed by powerful men. She expands this conversation into a much larger context that questions the very fundamentals of what we have long been told are “good” films and performers and those who have found success within an industry where sex and sexual relationships serve as a sort of social and professional cement. Schulman goes on to discuss how changing norms have shaped and complicated the conversation and eroded the concept of due process. To hear her complex and important take in more detail, listen to the full interview. […]

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