John Heilpern – författare

First Published in 2000. Why do we go to the theater? There's a question! Or put it this way: Why, oh why, do we go to the theater? If we go to a movie and it isn't any good, well it's not the end of the world. We're usually quite content just the same. It passes the time. Though, as Samuel Beckett pointed out, the time would have passed anyway. But if we're disappointed at the theater, everything changes dramatically. We cannot while away the time at the theater. Time becomes precious. This is a collection of writings about the world of the theatre and includes pieces about Sir John Gielgud, Sir Ralph Richardson, Arthur Miller, Michael Bennett, Noel Coward, Barbra Streisand, Ralph Fiennes and more.

Conference of the Birds is John Heilpern's true story of an extraordinary journey. In December 1972, the director Peter Brook and an international troupe of actors (Helen Mirren and Yoshi Oida among them) left their Paris base to emerge again in the Sahara desert. It was the start of an 8,500-mile expedition through Africa without precedent in the history of theater. Brook was in search of a new beginning that has since been revealed in all his work--from Conference of the Birds and Carmen to TheMahabharata and beyond. At the heart of John Heilpern's brilliant account of the African experiment is a story that became a search for the miraculous.