At the PWC this week: Barbara Field

This week at the Playwrights’ Center, Core Writer Barbara Field is workshopping The Dwindles, a play about a group of artists reuniting at an artists’ retreat, with director Hayley Finn and actors Harry Waters Jr., Casey Hoekstra, Gregg Almquist, Mark Benninghofen, Tracey Maloney, and Angela Timberman. Learn a bit about Barbara in this mini-interview.

How is your approach to writing adaptations different from your approach to original work?

My approach to adaptations involves a kind of respect for the original source, usually a novel. What was that writer’s style; what was his/her underlying message, etc.

What play do you wish you would have written and why?

One play I wish I had written is Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia. It always moves me.

What else have you been working on this year?

I worked on an opera that I wrote 35 years ago, with the late Hiram Titus. Rosina was originally commissioned and produced by the Minnesota Opera, and performed on the Guthrie stage in 1980. It appeared in NYC in the summer, produced by the dell’Arte Opera Ensemble, as the final part of a Beaumarchais trilogy with The Barber of Seville and The Marriage of Figaro.