THE OPERATOR: Curtain Call: Bringing 'Magical Thinking' to Broadway

It's no secret The Operator loves Joan Didion (known affectionately 'round these parts as J. Diddy). With her much-lauded memoir, The Year of Magical Thinking, being adapted for Broadway, Guernica magazine sat down with the brilliant author to discuss the process of transferring her grief from the page to the stage (tip of the hat to The Wicked Stage for the article, we must've missed it when it first came out).

Guernica: How did the idea to adapt the book into a Broadway play come about?

Joan Didion: Scott Rudin, who’s producing it, came to me and said that he thought it would make a good one-woman play, and I resisted this idea. But he kept talking about it; and, after a while, I started thinking it would be an interesting thing to do, an interesting thing to try. I’ve never written a play or tried to write a play. I thought it would be an interesting exercise, and it has been. I’ve done a couple of drafts—I’m in the middle of it now.

Guernica: Did you have any trepidation about working in a new genre?

Joan Didion: That was what was attractive about it. My trepidation was in staying with the material, but it actually isn’t the same material, as it’s turned out, as time has passed. And also, it’s a new form, so it feels different to me.

Guernica: How does one go about adapting a memoir like this, so much of which involves your own explorations of grief, into a play?

Joan Didion: That’s what the play is about too. It’s just one woman on a stage, so the challenge there is to make you want to continue looking at that woman on the stage.