Category Archives: Bathsheba Doran

Our Next Reading is on Monday, April 23 at 7pm

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We are holding our second FPP Harlem Reading at Shrine next Monday night 4/23 at 7pm featuring playwright Bathsheba Doran; former editor of The Believer and novelist Ed Park; and short story writer Tiphanie Yanique.

Writers will read from their body of work and new pieces exploring the plural voice. Join us for this one-of-a-kind evening!  It’s FREE and there’s a cash bar.  You will find us at: Shrine World Music Venue, located at 2271 Adam Clayton Powell Blvd. Harlem, NY http://www.shrinenyc.com/

Bathsheba Doran: The FPP Harlem Interview

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FPP Harlem spoke with acclaimed playwright and screenwriter Bathsheba Doran (Kin, Parents’ Evening, and Living Room in Africa), about “we” vs “me,” the writer’s life in Harlem, and what current play we need to see right this minute.

Do you create characters that exist outside of your personal sense of we?

I create characters out of me not we.  If my characters don’t reflect a part of myself then I don’t understand them so they end up disappearing from drafts. I don’t always know at first what part of myself the character has accessed, but at some point I’ll realize they’re made up of a certain emotional makeup I experienced at some point in my past. And the dream is that other people will see themselves in my me, then it’s a we, and hopefully we’re all less lonely for a second.  For more of this interview, go here.

Check out this preview of Bathsheba Doran’s Kin in TimeOut NY

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TimeOut New York’s preview of Bathsheba Doran’s Kin might help explain why we are so excited to have her read with FPP Harlem, if you don’t already know.  “Doran’s effortless dialogue and finely textured moods evoke the sweeter end of indie cinema, so there’s little wonder she has a parallel career scripting HBO’s Boardwalk Empire and adapting The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency for film. Kin, though, is stubbornly theatrical. Doran has written an intimate story by telling its nonintimate details, peripheral moments (like after-the-kiss debriefs with family members) that nonetheless coalesce into something penetratingly romantic. Much as she did in Parents’ Evening, in which a fought-over child never appeared, Doran has actually written around her story. This forces audiences into becoming complicit in imagining the central relationship. Doran’s diffidence has made its way into the weft of her written material.”  For the entire preview, click here.