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Post by LOCIfan on May 31, 2004 22:32:59 GMT -5
WRITING CREDITS FOR SEASON ONE:
None.
WRITING CREDITS FOR SEASON TWO:
None.
WRITING CREDITS FOR SEASON THREE:
A MURDERER AMONG US: Teleplay & Story w/Rene Balcer SHRINK-WRAPPED: Teleplay & Story w/Rene Balcer
WRITING CREDITS FOR SEASON FOUR:
GREAT BARRIER: Teleplay & Story w/Rene Balcer
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Post by LOCIfan on Jun 4, 2004 0:15:45 GMT -5
I think I need to see more from Ms. Son, but at this point, I do find a certain common tone to the episodes. There is something ruthless and brutal about the characters and the plots, but along with that I find that when you scratch the surface, there isn't much beneath it. Which isn't to say that the surface isn't entertaining. It is.
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Post by Patcat on Jun 19, 2006 8:13:01 GMT -5
Here's a NEW YORK TIMES review of Ms. Son's latest play:
June 19, 2006 THEATER REVIEW Settling Down on Shaky Ground, in Diana Son's 'Satellites' By BEN BRANTLEY This house will not stay still. Floorboards might as well be skateboards in the old Brooklyn brownstone that is the setting for "Satellites," the tough-minded, softhearted and very likable new play by Diana Son that opened last night at the Public Theater.
Thanks to the ingenuity of the set designer Mark Wendland, rooms slide sideways, backward and forward in this study of big-city identity crises from the author of "Stop Kiss." A seemingly solid structure splits again and again into a house divided, as distinctions between outdoors and indoors, between public and private, melt and dissolve. For Nina (Sandra Oh) and Miles (Kevin Carroll), a couple who have just moved from Manhattan with their newborn daughter, home has all the stability of a runaway taxi.
Urban flux indeed. The kinetic set for "Satellites" isn't just the latest example of a designer strutting his virtuosity. Ms. Son is examining a world in which traditional ethnic, social, economic and sexual boundaries have become so porous that people are never quite sure who or where they are at any given moment. It feels absolutely right that the ground should shift so literally beneath the feet of Ms. Son's wandering, wondering characters.
It has been eight years since Ms. Son enchanted New Yorkers with "Stop Kiss" — also at the Public and also featuring Ms. Oh and Mr. Carroll — a tale of a young woman's falling in love with that dangerous and beguiling stranger known as New York City. "Satellites," directed with shrewdness and compassion by the much-employed Michael Greif, lacks the compositional balance and elegance of "Stop Kiss." In the last quarter of the new play's 90 minutes, you can sense its author groping frantically for an exit from the labyrinth she has built.
Yet as a portrayal of a disordered American social order struggling to rearrange itself, "Satellites" is both deeper and broader than its predecessor. And I'm happy to report that Ms. Son has not abandoned the New York she evokes with such a pungent mix of affection and terror. In a way (and I know the parallel sounds bizarre), she is to her generation of urbanites what the young Neil Simon was to his: a chronicler of the singular pleasures and perils of life in this city. And if "Stop Kiss" was her "Barefoot in the Park," then "Satellites" is her "Prisoner of Second Avenue," an evocation of life defined and confined by real estate.
For Ms. Son's characters have shifted their focus from the vicissitudes of falling in love to those of starting a family. They no longer inhabit small apartments, and the streets and parks and clubs that young newcomers to the city use as their extended living rooms. Nina and Miles's existence is firmly centered on that big house they have just purchased.
The setting, a seedy Brooklyn neighborhood on the cusp of a middle-class invasion, is appropriate for a family that is itself a mélange of cultural elements. Nina, an architect, is of Korean descent; Miles, a recently unemployed dot-com producer, is African-American, though he was adopted as an infant by a white family.
They have chosen to move into a predominantly black neighborhood because they want their daughter, Hannah, to have a sense of her racial heritage. For the same reason Nina hires a Korean nanny, Mrs. Chae (Satya Lee).
It soon becomes clear, though, that Miles and Nina are not entirely at ease with the people close at hand who share their ethnic backgrounds. Nor is their new neighborhood, thick with the ghosts of its varied past, at ease with these chic arrivals. A rock is hurled through their window on their first night in Brooklyn.
Friction develops quickly between Mrs. Chae and Nina, who suspects that the nanny disapproves of her marriage to a black man. Miles instinctively draws away from Reggie (Ron Cephas Jones), a slick, self-styled entrepreneur who grew up in the neighborhood and is determined to have a hand in the renovation of the house.
The arrival of Eric (Clarke Thorell), Miles's ne'er-do-well (and white) brother, who has been traveling the globe and longs for a ready-made family of his own, only adds to the tension. So does the presence of Nina's patient but weary partner, Kit (Johanna Day), who has been bearing much of their firm's burden alone.
The marvel of "Satellites," for its first hour at least, is how effortlessly each of these elements echoes and enhances the others. There are no clean lines between the psychological and the social. And while Ms. Son, a veteran of television (she is a writer-producer on "Law & Order: Criminal Intent"), creates dialogue with sitcom zing and sting, she also explores language's limitations in dealing with a world in transition.
The combustibility of the cocktail of race and class that life has become means that people must speak carefully. The pauses that split sentences often suggest that words appropriate to the situations here have yet to be invented. Even lullabies sung to Hannah are discarded in midsong, because none of the traditional ones seem to fit.
Ms. Son sets up her central, multi-pronged conflicts so adroitly that it's only toward the end that you realize that the plot that holds them together is a makeshift affair. The play's concluding Big Moment confrontations, in which people spell out grievances that are already fully evident, are jarringly artificial. And the hopeful final scene feels like a hasty, if generous, postscript.
None of this undermines the fluid work of the cast members, whose characters exist in a convincing state of explosive prickliness throughout. Ms. Oh, who since "Stop Kiss" has become a popular actress in film ("Sideways") and television ("Grey's Anatomy"), is an ideal central conduit for the play's aching ambivalence: a spiky amalgam of frustration and empathy, bright optimism and gloomy resignation. It's a gutsy, physically charged portrait that never coasts on charm or begs for the audience's affection.
Similarly, for all the effervescence of its performances and honed wit of its dialogue, "Satellites" pulses throughout with a bass line of fear. It's the throbbing awareness, common to adults approaching midlife, that every choice made now could be disastrously wrong, an apprehension amplified by the birth of a child. In the first scene Nina starts to sing "Rockabye Baby" to Hannah, then stops abruptly. The prospect of a bough breaking and a baby falling suddenly seems all too possible.
Satellites
By Diana Son; directed by Michael Greif; sets by Mark Wendland; costumes by Miranda Hoffman; lighting by Kenneth Posner; composer, Michael Friedman; sound by Walter Trarbach and Tony Smolenski IV; production stage manager, Martha Donaldson. Presented by the Public Theater, Oskar Eustis, artistic director; Mara Manus, executive director. At the Public Theater, 425 Lafayette Street, at Astor Place, East Village; (212) 239-6200. Through July 2. Running time: 1 hours, 40 minutes.
WITH: Ron Brice (Walter), Kevin Carroll (Miles), Johanna Day (Kit), Ron Cephas Jones (Reggie), Satya Lee (Mrs. Chae), Sandra Oh (Nina) and Clarke Thorell (Eric).
Home World U.S. N.Y. / Region Business Technology Science Health Sports Opinion Arts Style Travel Jobs Real Estate Automobiles Back to Top Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company
Pat
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Post by Techguy on Jun 19, 2006 16:59:00 GMT -5
Diana Son's other writing credits:Season 5: Wasichu (19 March 2006): Co-writer (story) with Rene Balcer, Writer (teleplay) On Fire (14 May 2006): Co-writer (story) with Rene Balcer, Writer (teleplay)BTW, does anyone know who wrote "Scared Crazy" and "The Healer" so I won't have to hunt through my CI tapes? The epguides.com website doesn't mention the writing or directing credits for these episodes.
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Post by NikkiGreen on Jun 19, 2006 17:32:00 GMT -5
Scared Crazy - Story (with RB) & Teleplay by Diana Son; Directed by Marisol Torres The Healer ---- Story (with RB) & Teleplay by Marlene Gomard Meyer; Directed by Frank Prinzi.
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Post by filmnoir5 on Jul 19, 2006 19:12:52 GMT -5
It would be good if Sandra Oh would guest star on L&O:CI since she is in Diana Son's play.
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