Tobias Wolff Stories, Literally Word for Word

A San Francisco theater group called Word for Word stages performances of short stories. The name reflects the fact that they literally--and literarily--"perform every word the author has written." (I suppose without adding any of their own.)
That's the kind of reverence a writer can get behind. In fact, several have. Julia Alvarez, Sandra Cisneros, Richard Ford, Ellen Gilchrist, Daniel Handler, Barbara Kingsolver, Amy Tan, and Tobias Wolff are on the company's Authors Council.

Word for Word's current production is "More Stories from Tobias Wolff," which consists of performances of: "Sanity," "Down to Bone," and "Firelight" (pictured above). All three stories are included in Our Story Begins, one of the three story collections that are finalists for The Story Prize. The premier performance of "More Stories" was on Jan. 10 at Stanford University, where Wolff serves as the Ward W. and Priscilla B. Woods Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences. The show will tour the Bay area from March 9-22 and go on to a five city tour of France from March 27 to April 10. We can only hope they bring it to New York some time.

Speaking of New York, you can see Wolff read from and discuss his work onstage at The New School on March 4, as part of The Story Prize award event.

A Play on George Saunders' Words

"Carolyn, remember that RE/MAX one where as the redhead kid falls asleep holding that Teddy bear rescued from the trash, the bear comes alive and winks, and the announcer goes, Home is the place where you find yourself no longer longing for home..."
—from "Jon" by George Saunders

President-elect Barack Obama is not the only show in town in Chicago. At the Building Stage, from now through Dec. 14, you can see a theatrical version of George Saunders' short story "Jon" (pictured above), adapted and directed by Seth Bockley of Collaboraction. The story is one of my favorites by Saunders, who read from it at our award night on Feb. 28, 2007, when In Persuasion Nation was a finalist for The Story Prize.

A lot of stories have been made into movies, and many I've read would be great for the stage, so I hope to see this happen more often. Here's the description of the play, which serves as a pretty good summary of the story, as well:

Jon is a futuristic allegory about teenage love and self-discovery in a corporate universe where television commercials replace life experiences.

Try it, you'll like it. I bet it's M'm M'm good.