Marcus Youssef - Thought #9 - In Conversation with Sarah Benson

Marcus Youssef here. Thought number nine. Thinking about a conversation I had with Sarah Benson last week. She's the artistic director of Soho Rep. And  was a big part of developing the play Fairview, which is an extraordinary play about race in the United States, and representation of race in the U.S. In which, like so much of the work I'm most excited by right now, the form, formal inventions perfectly reflect the analysis and the exploration and investigation of the content. Anyway, talking to Sarah about how that occurred, like how they discovered these formal inventions. Because it's pretty it's pretty formerly inventive. It starts like you think you're in a three-act play and you're not at all. And yet you are. And it was heartening to hear from her how long and involved that process was and how much time it required. And how many investigations of what they were doing and throwing out what they were doing or digging deeper into what they were doing. Just a good reminder of how formal invention, yeah -- is as deep - like a struggle -- as any other kind of creation.