BringingTo Kill a Mockingbirdto Broadway was nearly impossible.
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I have something very exciting to talk to you about.
Thats how Scott Rudin, theEGOT-winningproducer, began a phone call to me three years ago.
After several years of trying, he said, Ive got the stage rights forTo Kill a Mockingbird.
He wanted me toadapt the novel into a play.
He was right it was very exciting.
It was also a suicide mission, and I understood that right away.
This wasnt just any Pulitzer Prizewinning novel; its one that holds a sacred place on Americas bookshelf.
We all read it together in seventh or eighth grade.
For some of us, it was the first time we read about injustice.
It was the first time the hero wore glasses.
It was the first time we liked reading a book more than watching television.
And Ive heard theres a movie.
She never wrote again.
What could I do but make it all less than it was?
Why invite the comparison between a legend and … not a legend?
Why put on a nightly PowerPoint presentation on the difference between Harper Lees skills and my own?
It wouldnt be a wise thing to do.
Without hesitation, I said yes.
Im an accidental writer of movies and television shows.
And while its been a very happy accident, what I love most is writing plays.
Not just writing them, doing them.
My last play was 11 years ago.
I wanted to be a part of it.
Six months later, I turned in my first draft and it was terrible.
It was a greatest-hits album performed by a cover band.
Thats regular working procedure for Scott and me.
The firstMockingbirdwork session lasted 45 minutes.
Scott had two notes.
The first was We have to get to the trial sooner.
I didnt know yet.
But the second note was the one that changed everything.
Scott said, Atticus cant be Atticus for the whole play.
He has to become Atticus by the end.
First semester, first week.
A protagonist has to change.
A protagonist has to be put through something and be changed by it.
And one more thing: A protagonist has to have a flaw.
In the book, Atticus isnt the protagonist Scout is.
Faced with the brutal realities of the Jim Crow South, Scout loses some of her innocence.
Her flaw is that shes young.
I wanted Atticus to be a protagonist too in fact, the central one.
I didnt want any part of that draft anymore.
Theaters arent museums; theyre the places we go to have as Lily Tomlin puts it the goose-bump experience.
The structural problem getting to the trial sooner was easily solvable.
But how do you give Atticus Finch a flaw?
Does he go from a bad guy to a good guy?
A bad lawyer to a good lawyer?
An abusive father to a loving one?
A racist man to one who believes in equality and justice?
No, no, definitely not, and no.
Atticus believes that you cant really know someone unless you climb into someones skin and walk around in it.
He believes that Bob Ewell should be understood as a man who lost his job.
He believes in the fundamental goodness in everyone, even homicidal white supremacists.
He believes … that there are fine people on both sides?
In the play, this set of beliefs would be challenged.
Theres a story about James Carville on the night Bill Clinton won his first term, in 1992.
A man turned to Carville and said, My God, look at him.
How did he change in just a few hours?
Carville said, He didnt change we did.
The book hasnt changed; we have.
Thats why its alarming when we abruptly discover how much we havent.
In a tale about racial injustice, neither of them has anything to say on the matter.
Tom begs for his life, and Cal bakes crackling bread.
Also, in this instance, a wasted opportunity.
Does that mean all copies of the novel should be recalled and edited like a Wikipedia entry?
But neither could I pretend I was writing the play in 1960.
To Kill a Mockingbirdis about the nature of decency.
What it means to be a person.
In the novel, Atticus has the answers.
In the play, he would struggle with the questions.
There was speculation outside my circle of collaborators that I would incorporateGo Set a Watchmaninto the play.
Ive never readGo Set a Watchman,specifically so I could truthfully say Ive never readGo Set a Watchman.
I delivered the new draft in August 2017, a year after the previous one.
Things had gotten real in a hurry.
As we started planning two workshop sessions that winter, we faced one big casting challenge.
That was the kids Scout, Jem, and Dill.
The roles were potentially too difficult for child actors.
Scott suggested that, just for the purpose of the first table read, we use adults.
So we asked Celia Keenan-Bolger to read Scout and Will Pullen to read Jem.
(Gideon Glick joined them a little later as Dill.)
It simply worked, and what had been an expedient solution became the right idea.
What would Bart think?
Will this work at all?
ended with enthusiasm, energy, optimism, and commitment.
There was a hard road ahead, but we had murderers-row creative and investment teams.
A new Broadway play at Christmas.
Thats whenwe were sued.
Three weeks later, she died.
(I like to think those two events were unrelated.)
A woman named Tonja Carter took over as executor of Lees estate.
Carter filed a suit in federal court in Alabama claiming Id done both.
New plays, like new movies, arent finished theyre confiscated.
In other words, a play isnt done until opening night.
Carters suit was filed six months before the start of rehearsal.
I dont know what the spirit ofTo Kill a Mockingbirdis, and neither does anyone else.
Theres certainly no legal definition, and Im not sure theres a literary one, either.
Still, whateverspiritmeans, Im confident I didnt depart from it.
As for altering characters, Carters demand letter included a list of things these fictional characters would never do.
Atticus: I believe in being respectful.
Calpurnia: No matter who youre disrespecting by doin it.
A coupla thoughts:
Theres no such thing as a typical black maid.
Plays arent written about typical people doing typical things.
Lawyering up isnt cheap.
Once the complaint was served, Scott started bleeding about $30,000 a day in legal bills.
Carter herself, we suspected, was in a tough spot.
There were whispers that its release had been a money grab.
Carter had told Scott shed received death threats.
She likely didnt want to make the same mistake again.
The next morning, a snowstorm closed the airports, so the face-to-face meeting turned into a teleconference.
I never asked why.
I thanked Carter for the face-to-face and told her how honored I was to be working on the material.
I told her she was going to be part of a thrilling night in the theater.
The rules of drama, I said, were written down by Aristotle in thePoeticsin 350 BC.
These rules are four centuries older than Christianity.
A protagonist Yeah, we got nowhere.
Was it possible that a person could win a lawsuit just by filing it?
Moving the case to New York and the pressure of an immediate trial apparently broke the logjam.
None of them, I said.
The play cant be written by a team of lawyers.
If this isnt settled by the end of the day, Scott replied, there is no play.
The end of the day was in 90 minutes.
And that was that.
Instead,we were able to settlewithout damage to the play other than the unwanted publicity.
Ive been asked if I thought Harper Lee would like the play.
Of course, I dont know.
No one knows or ever will.
Its not an homage or an exercise in nostalgia.
Was it a suicide mission?
Im not the judge of that, and there will be no shortage of strong opinions.
