Playwrights in Rehearsal is an inside look at the writer's role in the creative process of bringing his or her words to life on stage. Susan Letzler Cole, granted rare access to some of the major playwrights of our time, recounts her participation in rehearsal with Arthur Miller, Sam Shepard, Tony Kushner and Suzan-Lori Parks, and others.

Playwrights in Rehearsal is an inside look at the writer's role in the creative process of bringing his or her words to life on stage. Susan Letzler Cole, granted rare access to some of the major playwrights of our time, recounts her participation in rehearsal with Arthur Miller, Sam Shepard, Tony Kushner and Suzan-Lori Parks, and others.

Author Susan Letzler Cole lost her mother, Alice, to cancer in 1990. In this "autobiography of two voices," she traces a daughter's search to recover the "missing parts" of a mother, to know her as an individual for the first time. Shunning linear narrative, Cole experiments with a variety of approaches: letters written to her mother three years after Alice died at the age of 78; oral history via taped conversations between mother and daughter during Alice's illness; excerpts from her 14-year-old mother's 1926 diary juxtaposed with the author's expost facto letters to the adolescent diarist....