This week we’re joined by Isaac Butler (author, most recently, of The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act) to discuss a play by Annie Baker, The Aliens. Butler has worked as a theater director, as well as an author and podcaster and cultural critic, so we thought he’d be a perfect guest to help us wrap our heads around the world of contemporary theater. We talk about adapting plays for the screen, the Robert Altman version of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America that almost existed, and how to figure out the right focus for a work of research-driven nonfiction like Butler’s most recent book.
If you like the show, and would like to have more of it in your life, you can subscribe to our Patreon for $5 a month and get access to our entire catalog of bonus episodes, including our new Hunt for the Worst Book of All Time, which has forced us to read books by Tucker Max, Danielle Steel, Sean Penn, and–most recently–a kid who claimed that he went to heaven.
Stream or download the episode here:
Book Fight! 
February 7, 2022 at 8:15 pm
I saw this show at Studio Theater in DC. It was a matinee. The audience skewed even older than usual and the long silences absolutely broke the audience’s brain. Every couple of minutes there would be a long pause. The characters would smoke and look at their feet. And then an elderly voice would call out “WHY AREN’T THEY TALKING?”
The speaker’s wife would try to shush him, while a group of young homosexuals in the next row would attempt to stifle their laughter and fail.
A few minutes later the whole thing would start again.
It was the purest theatrical experience I’ve ever had.
Glorious.
March 3, 2022 at 4:47 pm
I have gotten out of the habit of checking comments on the site, and I am so glad I circled back to see this one.