The American Place Theatre

Having Oprah mention your book is nice, but when a New York actor performs parts of your memoir verbatim for thousands of high school students—now that's pretty fantastic. That's how Jeannette Walls—whose memoir The Glass Castle (Scribner) has garnered excellent reviews and has one million copies in print in paperback alone—feels about her work being selected for the American Place Theater's Literature to Life program.

 

A one-woman show based on The Glass Castle opens tonight in New York. Actor Sarah Franek will perform a staged, theatrical adaptation of the book at the Donnell Library Center Auditorium. The 260-seat space has been booked to capacity for the free event. After tonight's performance, the show will travel to schools around the country.

 

The Literature to Life program presents performances of "significant American literary works"; past adaptations have included The Secret Life of Bees, The Kite Runner and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. The program aims to give students a new way to access literature by bringing to life works of fiction and nonfiction. It's been running for 15 years, but it wasn't until APT began presenting a Literature to Life Award to the authors of selected works four years ago that publishers began getting involved. Executive director David Kener said he now receives pitches from book publicists, and that book publishers provide sponsorship to the program when their books are selected (additionally, Walls's agent, Jennifer Rudolph Walsh of William Morris, has pledged financial support for the performance of Castle). The sponsorship money goes toward touring, residencies in schools, teacher workshops and the award presentations. Kener said there are no numbers showing that the program boosts book sales, but teachers, schools and others in the educational community who are participating in the program do order books.

 

In order to "adapt a work verbatim," acting teacher and director Wynn Handman chooses paragraphs and passages from the book, which he might rearrange chronologically, but there is no additional narrative. "We keep the authors' words," Kener said. After being performed in New York, the shows go on to schools and colleges nationwide. (The Secret Life of Bees is still touring.)

 

Walls is ecstatic about having her work chosen for the program: "To say that this is a dream come true is an understatement," she said. "I think it is the most wonderful thing that could possibly happen to a book. This is a book about a tough adolescence, and if this performance can in any way affect these kids [so they] say, 'Hey, I'm not the only one,' it's just brilliant."