Arts-Views begins a series of introduction-interviews about this season’s crop of writers whose imaginations will take them far … while taking their readers even farther.
Susan Merson, the former artistic director who won acclaim for navigating the 13th Street Repertory theater out of financial ruin to once again take its places as one of the leaders of the off-off Broadway movement, is bringing her canon of literary works to the surface at a time when she is also sharing her spiritual acumen with the artistic community.
Merson, who’s Broadway forays include Zefirelli’s SATURDAY SUNDAY MONDAY and CHILDREN OF A LESSER GOD, as well as co-creating and appearing in the original production of VANITIES, Off Broadway. While on the West Coast, she co-founded and served as moderator for the Los Angeles Writers Bloc with writer Jane Anderson, which has supported the work of such writers as Donald Margulies, (Pulitzer), Noni White and Bob Tzudike (Tony for Newsies), Irene Mecchi (Lion King), Janet Fitch (White Oleanders) and countless others.
Currently, her visibility as an author is picking up speed with the publication of Dreaming by Daylight, a novel currently available on Amazon and gaining great notoriety.
Tell us about yourself
I think the truest thing to say about me and my work at this stage of the game is that I value stories– how they are told, why they are told and the process of telling them… as much as the final product. I have learned that process is where the magic happens and product is where you have to step back and let someone else’s life imprint react to what you have placed on the page. Sometimes that connection works and sometimes it doesn’t but the magic of the story and how it got into the world is still most important. Something in moving apart the tissues and fascia of experience, keeping them supple and available to communication is the value of writing for the writer and for the reader as well.
Where do you get inspiration or ideas from?
I write about my life and its oddities. In writing deeply with these experiences as outline I hope to dig deep enough , and observe sharply enough to connect with what is really real and truly true.
What is your creative process?
My creative process starts in stillness and seems to be pretty integrated at this point. I started as an actress and that observational training, the physical training and the observation of opposites,behavior and rhythm of dialogue as it coalesces in the actors body is what I translate into my writing. The transiton to words came as I continued to fall in love with language and the way a word and a rhythm can deeply affect us.. just like music. I am pretty old fashioned.. a creature of my own time and space… and the use of visual media, VR techniques etc are not part of my storytelling at the moment, tho I admire those using that technique. I love language and its nuance and it is that that drew me closer and closer to writing. Starting as a playwright, not wanting to ask permission to do my work, I wrote, performed and produced ten solo plays internationally.. ( See my book YOUR NAME HERE, AN ACTOR WRITERS GUIDE TO SOLO PERFORMANCE) and that work led to full lengths and one acts, and poetry and now prose and essay work.
Do you connect spirituality in your artistic works… how?
“ALL ART IS A FORM OF PRAYER” , said Franz Kafka… and yes, it is.
What’s next ?
I am currently working on a book fashioned on An Actor Prepares about working with writers in a contemporary setting. I was blown away after my first year of acting school when I finally read Stanislavski’s great work, which I purchased at the Royal Shakespeare Co while coughing thru a performance of Olivier in DANCE OF DEATH. I couldn’t believe that my fabulous mentor and Teacher Ted Kazanoff had actually created the same scenario in our classes at Boston University.
Susan Merson on AMAZON
the written word 