{"id":10077,"date":"2018-12-05T19:57:23","date_gmt":"2018-12-05T19:57:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/?p=10077"},"modified":"2018-12-05T19:57:23","modified_gmt":"2018-12-05T19:57:23","slug":"the-year-of-magical-thinking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/2018\/12\/05\/the-year-of-magical-thinking\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018The Year Of Magical Thinking\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sawtooth Productions To Present Reading<\/h2>\n
\"\"
New York City resident Clove Galilee is the director of an upcoming reading in Ketchum of Joan Didion\u2019s \u201cThe Year of Magical Thinking.\u201d Photo courtesy of Sawtooth Productions<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Claudia McCain will star in the reading as Joan Didion. Photo by Kirsten Shultz, courtesy of Sawtooth Productionsuctions To Present Reading<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

BY SUN STAFF<\/em><\/p>\n

Joan Didion is indisputably one of America\u2019s great living authors and considered its premier essayist. Starting at Vogue magazine when she was 22, Didion has chronicled her times in such memorable books as \u201cThe White Album\u201d and her first seminal work, \u201cSlouching Towards Bethlehem.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her life was then changed forever when she lost both her husband, the writer John Gregory Dunne, and her daughter, Quintana, within the space of 18 months, in 2003. With nowhere to turn, and in an effort to deal with the unimaginable grief, she found her voice again in her art.<\/p>\n

The result was the memoir \u201cThe Year of Magical Thinking.\u201d It obviously struck a deep nerve, as it went on to become an international bestseller and is considered today to be the iconic meditation on the subject of grief and loss.<\/p>\n

On Saturday, Dec. 8, Sawtooth Productions, in association with Laughing Stock Theater Co., will present a free reading of the theatrical adaptation, written by Didion, of \u201cThe Year of Magical Thinking,\u201d at The Argyros theater, starring Claudia McCain and directed by Clove Galilee. Running time is approximately 75 minutes and the show will be followed by a short Q&A. Also, complimentary wine will be served in the lobby before the show.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis will be a first for us in many ways,\u201d said the show\u2019s producer, Jon Kane. \u201cIt will be the first theatrical presentation at The Argyros. It will be the first time we have brought in a director for a reading\u2014the very talented Clove Galilee from New York City. And it will be the first time we will be utilizing sound and light for a reading. Since everything at the new facility is state of the art, we thought we\u2019d kick the tires and take her for a test run,\u201d Kane said with a laugh.<\/p>\n

For McCain, the piece is extremely touching because \u201cI\u2019ve suffered a great deal of loss over the last 15 years. As artists, we have the amazing opportunity to channel our experiences and feelings through our work. For Didion, writing was a coping mechanism. It enabled her to find structure that worked for her and she used the ability to express herself through that structure to survive.\u201d<\/p>\n

Galilee is thrilled to be coming to Sun Valley and felt deep relevance through the piece due to the loss of her mother five years ago. She has theater in her blood, literally, as her father is the visionary director, Lee Breuer, and her late mother, the legendary actress Ruth Maleczech. Today, with her wife Jenny Rogers, Galilee creates critically acclaimed performance pieces that have been presented in New York City and internationally.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe play is essentially pieces of Didion\u2019s book set onstage,\u201d Galilee said. \u201cIt is not a traditional play with easily defined emotional arcs. So my approach to directing it will necessitate a collaborative process that finds the moments of tension and release for the actor as well as the audience.\u201d<\/p>\n

Galilee added, \u201cThe book was recommended to me when my mother died in 2013. I tried to read it but the grief I felt in the wake of my mother\u2019s death was too great and the emotional truthfulness of Didion\u2019s writing took me too far down the Rabbit\u2019s Hole.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I finally read it, I was very moved by the emotional honesty and vulnerability Didion described. It was if she had been there with me through my own grief years before.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sawtooth Productions To Present Reading BY SUN STAFF Joan Didion is indisputably one of America\u2019s great living authors and considered its premier essayist. Starting at Vogue magazine when she was 22, Didion has chronicled her times in such memorable books as \u201cThe White Album\u201d and her first seminal work, \u201cSlouching Towards Bethlehem.\u201d Her life was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10078,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","_pvb_checkbox_block_on_post":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[68,53],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-10077","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-calendar-2","8":"category-calendar-feature"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10077"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10077\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}