Shadow and Act scooped playwright Katori Hall's feature film directorial debut--Hurt Village, an adaptation of her play about life and change in a Memphis housing project.
I'm always a bit nervous about playwrights turned screenwriters. Their first films are usually a disaster, although to be fair learning something new always takes trial and error. And some never outgrow their old form. As someone who writes--books and screenplays--as well as directs, I can attest that switching between forms is really challenging. The hardest part is turning your senses on and off.
Films are about what you see and hear; plays are more or less about what people say and how they interact with each other; while books are about all the five senses--or six, if you like--making it the hardest form. I once heard Nervous Conditions author Tsitsi Dangarembga say, in an interview, that she had stopped writing prose to figure out how to properly make films:
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