Marsha Norman
Marsha Norman
Marsha Normanis an American playwright, screenwriter, and novelist. She received the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play 'night, Mother. She wrote the book and lyrics for such Broadway musicals as The Secret Garden, for which she won a Tony Award and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Book of a Musical, and The Red Shoes, as well as the libretto for the musical The Color Purple and the book for the musical The Bridges of Madison County...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPlaywright
Date of Birth21 September 1947
CountryUnited States of America
Write about the thing that frightens you most.
Mama, I know you used to ride the bus. Riding the bus and it’s hot and bumpy and crowded and too noisy and more than anything in the world you want to get off and the only reason in the world you don’t get off is it’s still fifty blocks from where you’re going? Well, I can get off right now if I want to, because even if I ride fifty more years and get off then, it’s the same place when I step down to it. Whenever I feel like it, I can get off. As soon as I’ve had enough, it’s my stop. I’ve had enough.
The theater is a communal event, like church. The playwright constructs a mass to be performed for a lot of people. She writes a prayer, which is really just the longings of one heart.
Knowing is the most profound kind of love, giving someone the gift of knowledge about yourself.
I'm who I was waiting for. I didn't make it.
Jesus was a suicide, if you ask me.
I grew up at the piano, and I longed to write musicals.
If I had not had music in my life, I would be the neurasthenic vision of the playwright.
In the theater, when people hear that you're writing a play, they want to know what it's all about, whether there's a role for them. You write it fairly quickly, and it becomes a group activity before you're really ready to have company.
I feel that I speak the musical language.
If someone wants to say 'I love you' in a straight play, they say it, and then it's the other person's turn to talk. But in a song, you can sing about it for another three minutes. The musical form has that unique opportunity to express at length what joy really feels like.
I have had an inordinate and painful concern for the audience in my writing career.
When she called me and I heard her voice, I just went to pieces. The rest of the day, I lost all my strength.
What I hope to do is create a play that investigates the ongoing violence toward women and children in the world, and searches for some kind of answer to the question, 'What Can We Do?'