Michael Riedel and Christine Nagy sat down with playwright Aaron Sorkin during their Inside Broadway podcast to discuss his brand new play, To Kill A Mockingbird, now on Broadway.
Nagy asked Sorkin why he thinks people are really taking to To Kill A Mockingbird in this time period, "One of the very gratifying things is that people don't feel like they're seeing a museum piece, or piece of nostalgia, they feel like they're seeing something that was written for their times...all I did was write the play today and not in the 1960s." Sorkin reveals that it was hard, at first, to write the play for an audience today, because he was simply dramatizing the scenes that everyone already knows and loves. He felt as though he was acting as a "cover band performing a greatest hits album." When he finally made the decision to write the play in today's time period - that's where the real success was.
Later, Sorkin revealed where his love of theater and plays began. He also shared the top five Broadway songs that have the most meaning in his life. Check out the full interview above or below!
AARON SORKIN is an American screenwriter, director, producer, and playwright. His works include the Broadway plays A Few Good Men, The Farnsworth Invention and To Kill a Mockingbird; the television series Sports Night, The West Wing, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, and The Newsroom; and the films A Few Good Men, The American President, Charlie Wilson's War, Moneyball, and Steve Jobs. For writing The Social Network, he won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, among other awards. He made his feature directorial debut in 2017 with Molly's Game, which he also wrote.
To Kill a Mockingbird is currently playing at the Shubert Theatre starring Jeff Daniels, LaTanya Richardson Jackson, Celia Keenan-Bolger, and Will Pullen.