[Watch the video interview on YouTube here]
Film Courage: Can you think back to a great writing day and what was it that made it so?
Sarah T. Schwab, Writer/Director/Producer: A great writing day was when I was first learning how to write stage plays.
I had been in New York for a while. I had been part of the independent theater scene. I had met my producing partner Brian Long. He was the managing director at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater and they had such supreme talent there when I first got there. They were doing a three-hander with Vanessa Redgrave, Jesse Eisenberg and another talented actor (his name is escaping me right now).
It was at the Cherry Lane Theatre before A24 bought the theater. It was in a 200-seat house and it was just magic.
I was slowly learning. I had a lot of embarrassing moments because I was meeting these kinds of actors in this echelon and they’re just great writers.
Jesse had written the play. He’s a beautiful writer and actor.
I would have a lot of readings at my apartment, and oh gosh, I just did not know how to write dialogue at all at the time. It was just exposition, exposition. I was still learning. I was determined to go to every Rattlestick play and talk with actors and keep just making bad writing.
This one day I got into an argument with my partner. We were on the subject of end of life topics. He was saying If I were to ever get very sick, I wouldn’t want you to see me that way and we’d break up. We had been together for I don’t know 3-4 years by then and we’ve been together now for going on 13, so we stayed together. But I remember just being so angry that it was just not my choice at all either because we loved each other.
I was just like I can’t look at you right now and I went into the shower and I got lathered up literally. I came out of the shower, got dressed, went into my office at the time and I wrote down our whole conversation that we had almost verbatim. It ended up being the first scene in the play which is called The Stage of Twilight which is loosely based on that conversation.
Also, my father getting sick when I was 15 years old with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma which is cancer and then his ultimate death when I was 21. That whole experience of watching him suffer and how embarrassed he was to suffer because he was this blue-collar, hardworking, very respected man in the area that we lived. I think it was really hard for him.
That play was based off of that but I think that was the proudest moment because I not only wrote a scene, that the dialogue was…(Watch the video interview on YouTube here).
About:
Award-winning filmmaker, Sarah T. Schwab, is a writer, director, and producer dedicated to crafting authentic narratives that connect emotionally with audiences. Through her lens, audiences are invited to examine the human experience in ways that feel vivid, visceral, and often vulnerable. As an active member of the playwright and directors unit at the Actors Studio in New York City, Sarah also remains a valued contributor within the theatre community. Sarah’s most recent film, “A Stage of Twilight,” received critical acclaim and premiered at the Woods Hole Film Festival. It featured performances by Karen Allen and William Sadler, who won Best Performance in a Feature Film. Sarah herself was honored with the Best Emerging Director award.
CONNECT WITH SARAH T. SCHWAB
Instagram.com/sarah_cardinalflix
WATCH ‘A STAGE OF TWILIGHT’
Tubitv.com/movies/100026437/a-stage-of-twilight
MORE VIDEOS WITH SARAH T. SCHWAB
A Stage of Twilight
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