Listed below are three works that Alex Lubischer has mentioned as influencing his writing. Each of these are very different in style, and their impact on Bobbie Clearly can be seen in a variety of ways, from his fascination with the minutia of small town life to his non-fiction lens on a fictionalized town.


THORNTON WILDER’S OUR TOWN “What is this extraordinary thing [humanity]? There are millions of us but why are we, individually, so beautiful too?” -Tappan Wilder, nephew of Thornton Wilder


In his interview on page 4, Alex Lubischer mentions that theatre should reveal “the essence of life” that occurs on stage that we do not normally notice in our day to day lives. It could be said that people go to the theatre to watch lives happen, in order to remind ourselves that we are alive. Thornton Wilder, the playwright of Our Town, does this in his play about the residents of Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire. Wilder was obsessed with the human race’s persistence to survive and the inability to appreciate life in the moment. His writing contains an inherent optimism that exists in every character on stage. The same conceit goes for Bobbie Clearly. Here is a play centered around a murder in a small town in Nebraska. We get to watch how each individual character has a way of surviving, an idea that is inherently optimistic. We even see this in the character of Bobbie, a murderer, which in turn allows us to see them and empathize, one of the most powerful tools we have in the theatre.


IN COLD BLOOD, TRUMAN CAPOTE “The human heart being what it is, murder was a theme not likely to darken and yellow with time,” -Truman Capote


This non-fiction book published in 1966 chronicles the 1959 murder of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas. Truman Capote spent time in the small farming town with fellow writer Harper Lee (To Kill A Mockingbird), interviewing residents in order to gather information about the family, the murderers, and the night it occurred. Capote coined the term “nonfiction novel” to describe his book, a genre that could fuse journalism with creative writing. The author felt that in order to combine these two genres, the topic of the story would have to be one that would stick in the readers’ minds. Because the content of the book is based off a real crime, some consider In Cold Blood a part of the true crime genre.


FARGO, THE COEN BROTHERS “We wanted to make a movie just in the genre of a true story movie. You don’t have to have a true story to make a true story movie.” -Ethan Coen


Fargo is a film about the investigations of roadside homicides that occur after a car salesman sets up the kidnapping of his wife in order to ransom his father-in- law. This black comedy, written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, is a fictional story, though they open the film with text that states this is a true story. This caused a lot of controversy when the film came out because, while the basic events are based on an actual case, all characterizations are imagined. In a Time Out interview, Joel Coen explained that "if an audience believes that something's based on a real event, it gives you permission to do things they might otherwise not accept." Similarly, Bobbie Clearly is a play that is meant to feel as if these are real events, taking place with real people, although it is completely fictional.•


BOBBIE CLEARLY UPSTAGE GUIDE 17


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