WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING
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Within a few pages, I had fallen headlong into the world of the Friedkin Camp for Theatre Arts in Swallow Heart Lake Wisconsin. Todd London’s incisively drawn portrait of young souls in 1974, stumbling amidst shadows of the Holocaust on their way to American adulthood, blew me away with its spot-on evocation of the feeling of aching dislocation that colored my own Midwestern-Jewish girlhood. This is a killer coming-of-age story: gripping and compassionate. I haven’t stopped thinking about it."
Lisa Kron
Author / Well and the musical Fun Home
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“With humor and uncommon wisdom, Todd London links the temporal agonies of adolescence with the ageless horrors of the 20th Century and shows us how we can’t face these pains alone. A novel that harrows the heart. This one is going to leave a mark."
Octavio Solis
Author / Retablos and Mother Road
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In If You See Him, Let Me Know, Todd London creates an intricately woven universe drawn within the confines of one week at a children’s summer theatre. As with London’s brilliant debut The World’s Room, the reader is deftly catapulted to a precise space and time—one generation removed from the Holocaust with Richard Nixon imploding and Bernadine Dohrn exploding—yet for Philip and most of the other young thespians of Friedkin Camp, the most pressing concern is authenticating themselves as Sharks and Jets. Still, larger issues manage to creep into the isolated utopia: acquaintance rape years before there was a name for it, white-collar crime and punishment brought home. The events of that summer of ’74 and its long-term aftermath provide for the reader an engrossing journey, culminating in a denouement that is surprising, gratifying, and eminently moving.
Kia Corthron
Author / The Castle Cross the Magnet Carter, winner of the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize
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Todd London is a master conjurer of the lost—of lost youth, lost promise, lost Chicago, lost America. In If You See Him, Let Me Know, London has penned a memorably bittersweet and heartfelt love letter to a bygone age that feels both immediate and timeless, infused with both hope and regret. Populated by frustrated, frustrating and wholly believable characters and filled with clever, knowing theatrical references, it is at once an evocative road novel, a heartbreaking coming of age story, and an elegiac reflection on what America was in the 1970’s and what it ultimately became.
Adam Langer
Author / Crossing California and The Thieves of Manhattan
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PUBLISHED BOOKS
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If You See Him, Let Me Know
It's August 1974, the eve of Nixon's resignation. Jerry Rosen is facing prison for a messy, white-collar crime. Before sentencing, he has to tell his son Philip, a teenager at a theater camp in the Midwest. To the suburban kids at Friedkin camp, history is a game of dress-up. Tragic world events get retold as stage musicals--World War II as South Pacific, the holocaust as Fiddler on the Roof. Anne Frank is a role to play--Philip's friend Kathy Klein plays it to the hilt. For Jerry, who served as an army medic in Germany, and for the camp's compassionate matriarch Lila Sahlins, the past can't be sung away. Jerry's confession unearths secrets that will change the course of Philip's life and trigger a pair of haunting disappearances. A stunning novel set at the crossroads between two generations--one marked by what it witnessed, the other by what it missed. |
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This Is Not My Memoir
This is Not My Memoir tells the life story of André Gregory, iconic theatre director, writer, and actor. For the first time, Gregory shares memories from a life lived for art, including stories from the making of My Dinner with André. Taking on the dizzying, wondrous nature of a fever dream, This is Not My Memoir includes fantastic and fantastical stories that take the reader from wartime Paris to golden-age Hollywood, from avant-garde theaters to monasteries in India. Along the way we meet Jerzy Grotowski, Helene Weigel, Gregory Peck, Gurumayi Chidvilasananda, Wallace Shawn, and many other larger-than-life personalities. Click Here |
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Adventure. Compassion. Hatred. Money. Friendship. Marriage. Theatre. Failure. Beauty. Revelation. Cinema. Success. Death. Creation. And re-creation. This is a remarkable story, of a life so deeply lived.
Martin Scorsese
Film Director / Company
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True to the title, Andre Gregory hasn't written a memoir, but a confession. I never knew brutal honesty could be so romantic and inspiring. It's a testament to a fearless artist and a fascinating man.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
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André Gregory is a director, an impresario, a painter, a storyteller, maybe a fabulist, and always an artist. This Is Not My Memoir reveals André’s sublime talent, his ability to look, to really see, and ultimately just be. My experiences with André profoundly shaped my growth as an actor; reading this book is a reminder of the urgency of seeking yourself in your life and your art.
Julianne Moore
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André Gregory's art has always rested on a unique mix of avant-garde audacity and aristocratic charm, not to mention anecdotal flair. All of those elements are irresistibly on display in what is not his autobiography.
Adam Gopnik
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André Gregory has lived a life in the theatre filled with wildly uncalculated risks, thrilling successes, dazzling failures (at least as interesting) — and endlessly fascinating memories. He is and always has been the boldest hero of our avant-garde.
Wes Anderson
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Reading this book was like having André sit by my side and tell me the stories of his life. Heartfelt, honest, insightful, and inspiring stories all told by the great storyteller himself.
Jude Law
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15, Actors, 20 Years: Making Lives In and Out of the American Theatre
1995: Todd London is captivated by 15 actors: the talent-packed graduating class of Harvard's ART. London chronicles the heartbreaks and triumphs of “the 15” throughout their first year as professional actors in New York City. 2015: London tracks down “the 15” to find out what’s become of these exceptional artists. Who is still acting? Who has quit the business? And what does “making it” even mean? Todd London's first e-book, 15 Actors, 20 Years is the fascinating professional biography of a gifted group — and a meditation on what it means to be an American theatre artist. Foreword by Robert Brustein. Click Here |
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An Ideal Theatre : Founding Visions for a New American Art
An Ideal Theater is a wide-ranging, inspiring documentary history of the American theatre movement as told by the visionaries who goaded it into being. This anthology collects over forty essays, manifestos, letters and speeches that are each introduced and placed in historical context by the noted writer and arts commentator, Todd London, who spent nearly a decade assembling this collection. This celebration of the artists who came before is an exhilarating look backward, as well as toward the future. Available on Amazon |
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The Importance of Staying Earnest
An astonishing, indispensable retrospective collection of essays, articles, reviews and reflections on artists by distinguished theatre critic and scholar Todd London, artistic director of New Dramatists. The volume spans writings from 1988-2013 and is collected for the first time. A vital, important anthology for practitioners, scholars, students, and theatre-lovers everywhere. Available on Amazon | Available on Lulu |
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Outrageous Fortune
Outrageous Fortune examines the lives and livelihoods of American playwrights today and the realities of new play production from the perspective of both playwrights and not-for-profit theatres. The study, drawing on six years of comprehensive research, reveals a collaboration in crisis between the people who write plays and those who produce them. It represents the most comprehensive field study in the history of the not-for-profit theatre to analyze new play production practices and the economics and culture of playwriting in America. Set against a backdrop of dwindling audiences for dramatic work, OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE makes clear the urgent need for new conversations and practices if the American play is to flourish. Available on Amazon |
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The World's Room: A Novel
The World’s Room explores one family’s experiences with grief. When Erich, the 17-year-old son of Willy and Lorna Hoffman, commits suicide in 1969, his younger brother asks to serve his memory by taking on his dead brother’s name. Told two decades later by the surviving Erich, the book, written in memoir style, is the true story of that renaming, and of how the love for the missing can replace the love for the living. Covering ground from New York to Venice Beach, from central Wisconsin to central Mexico, from Boston to Miami, The World’s Room is at once interior and sweeping. Available on Amazon |
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Contemporary American Monologues for Women
Audition monologues from recent works by American playwrights including Tony Kushner, Jose Rivera, Eric Bogosian, Nicky Silver, Paula Vogel, Maria Irene Fornes, Tina Howe and more. Available on Amazon |
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Contemporary American Monologues for Men
Audition monologues from recent works by American playwrights including Suzan-Lori Parks, Jose Rivera, Eric Bogosian, Nicky Silver, Emily Mann, Maria Irene Fornes, Romulus Linney and more. Available on Amazon |
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The Artistic Home: Discussions with Artistic Directors of America's Institutional Theatres
Landmark summary of 13 meetings that brought together more than 120 artistic directors from the nation's leading nonprofit professional theatres. Available on Amazon |
CONTRIBUTOR
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The Existential Actor: Life and Death Onstage and Off by Jeff Zinn
This is a book for the thinking actor, and the finest actors I've known are just that. The best actors bring it all together body, heart, spirit, and mind. This book is for the actor who thinks about craft and influence, who thinks about the relationship of performance to living, who thinks about doing and what that doing means. Acting is a metaphor and it's a mirror, and, so, a theory of acting, if true, shows us to ourselves. Jeff Zinn knows this. He knows it as an actor, director, teacher, and thinker. His theory of everything is simple and revelatory. (from the foreword by Todd London) Available on Amazon |
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Remapping Performance: Common Ground, Uncommon Partners by Jan Cohen-Cruz
Remapping Performance focuses on the work of artists and experts who collaborate across fields to address social issues. Available on Amazon |
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Cino Nights
A collection from Rising Phoenix Rep's series of fully produced new plays inspired by and honoring the groundbreaking work of the original Caffe Cino with playwrights: Mando Alvarado, Gary Sunshine, Courtney Baron, Kristen Palmer, Emily DeVoti, Lucy Thurber, Jessica Dickey and Adam Szymkowicz. Available on Amazon |
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The American Theatre Reader: Essays and Conversations from American Theatre Magazine
In celebration of American Theatre’s twenty-fifth anniversary, the editors of the nation’s leading theater magazine have chosen their best essays and interviews to provide an intimate look at the people, plays, and events that have shaped the American theater over the past quarter-century. Over two hundred artists, critics, and theater professionals are gathered in this one-of-a-kind collection, from the visionaries who conceived of a diverse and thriving national theater community, to the practitioners who have made that dream a reality. Available at Amazon |
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The Art of Governance Edited by Nancy Roche and Jaan Whitehead
The Art of Governance is an essential guide for trustees in the performing arts and for the artists, managers, and community leaders who work with them. This book provides the larger context in which trustees govern—the art, artists, history, institutions, and national policies of the performing arts—and also explores more practical issues, such as board development, planning, finance, and fundraising. A wide range of distinguished artists, trustees, managers, and consultants have contributed articles, covering everything from “The Art of Theater” to “Understanding Financial Statements.” Available on Amazon |
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Popular Forms for a Radical Theatre Edited by Caridad Svich and Sarah Ruhl
Popular Forms For A Radical Theatre is a collection of articles and interviews edited by playwrights Caridad Svich and Sarah Ruhl exploring populism, theatre practice, and radicalism. The book includes essays by Todd London, W. David Hancock, Diane Paulus, Aleks Sierz, Will Eno, Jonathan Kalb, Michael Friedman and interviews with Eugenio Barba, Dijana Miloseviv, Nina Steiger, Scott Graham, Richard Maxwell and Brian Mendes. Available on Amazon |
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New Dramatists: The Best Plays by the Graduating Class of 2001
The New Dramatists is still a place for talented playwrights to develop, to grow, and to work in a theater with fine actors and directors with no production pressures. In the years since New Dramatists was founded, many valuable nurturing grounds have sprung up around the country. Upon admittance, the writer becomes a member for seven years--seven years to hear his or her plays read, see them workshopped, listen, learn from others, see theater, enjoy the support and companionship of other playwrights and the services of a trained staff of people who are there to help the playwright grow and develop. Available on Amazon |
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New Dramatists: The Best Plays by the Graduating Class of 2000
New Dramatists is a major resource for the development of American Playwrights. It serves as an artistic home, research and development center and national writers colony. Member playwrights and alumni have won 9 Pulitzer Prizes, 120 Tony Awards, 47 Obie Awards, 17 Drama Desk Awards and 9 Susan Smith Blackburn Awards. New Dramatists is the recipient of a 1991 Drama Desk Award "for decades of nurturing new American Playwrights". Available on Amazon |
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Gum by Karen Hartman
In Karen Hartman’s "juicyfruit tragedy," two young sisters discover new appetites within the walls of their father’s garden. Gum explores the need to tame nature in a fictional fundamental country where the title candy is contraband and every desire has its price. "A brief, intense, beguiling, sensual, witty, impassioned, deeply moving and brightly burnished gem"--San Francisco Examiner. Also includes The Mother of Modern Censorship. Available on Amazon |
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Letters to the Editor: Two Hundred Years in the Life of an American Town
by Gerard Stropnicky (Author), Tom Byrn (Author), James Goode (Author), Jerry Matheny The voices of America's past and present live on in this timeless portrayal of small-town America, which, through two hundred years of letters to one town's newspapers, evokes the most memorable moments in our history and the passions they engendered. Available on Amazon |