An Interview with Lewis J Stadlen
1- This is your first novel after two theatrical memoirs. How much does LOVE AND SECOND ACTS, rely on biographical events?
Stadlen: I believe Philip Roth said the novel is the purist form of biography.
2- You tell the story of a group of ex-acting students and their elderly university professor who meet by chance in a small midwestern city after a twenty-five-year absence. Fact or fiction?
Stadlen: Fact to a point. I did teach acting at the North Carolina School of the Arts in 1999. It was one of the most fulfilling experiences of my career. The students were all in their early twenties and passionate it in their desire to make their mark in the professional theatre. Several would have successful careers as writers and producers, but for the most part, the most talented actors in the class were too easily discouraged and moved on to different occupations.
3- In the novel you are sent an email from a long-lost student who invites you to come to Flint, Michigan to see her perform for the first time in twenty-five years. Did that actually happen?
Stadlen: Yes, and that became the foundation of the novel. After making an eventful seven-hundred-mile road trip to Flint, I was reunited with five ex-students that in the novel I reduce to three. Having endured a fifty-five-year acting career myself, I was fascinated by the choices made by these women and saddened at their robbing the theatre of their prodigious talents. That pretty much ends the biographical content of LOVE AND SECOND ACTS. The rest is pure fiction.
4- You are obviously a stand in for the professor. Are the women you write about pure invention?
Stadlen: I have imagined the inner lives of all the characters so vividly that they sometimes feel more real than people I interact with. I have also added an entirely fictitious female character, the mother of one of the women, a celebrity TV journalist, to spice up the love interest with the elderly professor. A woman I might add who I sometimes say good night to before falling off to sleep.
5- Donald Trump appears in your novel. Why is that?
Stadlen: The story takes place during the 2024 presidential campaign. The possibility of Trump being reelected president lies heavy on the hearts and minds of all the characters. Both pro and con. Mostly con.
6- You have dedicated your book to Kate Atkinson the British novelist. Are you friends?”
Stadlen: I can only wish. I am a great admirer having read all her published fiction. Several more than once. I have done more than dedicated the book to her. I have reimagined her as one of the professor’s students. A writer of award-winning historical fiction as well as the author of a series of best-selling detective novels. My loving revenge for her not answering any of my adoring letters.
7- You have interjected the ghost of Anton Chekhov into your narrative. How did that come about?
Stadlen: I have often wondered what it would be like to cast a group of retired actors in age-inappropriate roles. A mid-seventies baritone playing Curly in Oklahoma. A forty-eight-year-old woman playing Nina in Chekhov’s masterpiece, “The Seagull.” How interesting it would be to mirror the personalities of my characters with those in Chekhov’s play. It also gave me the opportunity to not only explore Chekhov’s narrative, but to break down the process of putting on a play. Something I know a great deal about.
8- How difficult was it to abandon the first-person in your memoirs for the omniscient voice in your novel?
Stadlen: Bloody challenging. At one point I decided to experiment by going back and forth between the two. I’m not nearly accomplished enough to carry that one off.
9- Did you find yourself imitating another novelist’s style? Say, a novelist you greatly admire?
Stadlen: The great novelist Elizabeth Strout said she found her voice by not attempting to write like a writer. Humility was my co-pilot. Not that I was aware of it at the time, but one of my first readers, director Doug Hughes, said my storytelling has everything to do with cognitive dissonance. People behaving in contradictory ways to their original intentions. It makes for a spicy relationship.
10- So, what’s the book about?
Stadlen: LOVE AND SECOND ACTS!