SQN - Sine Qua Non - Issue Two - Journal - Page 30
SINE QUA NON
|is doesn't mean you have to only stick to one thing. A lot of us cross over. We just have to
know what we're going to focus on orst. You have to treat your art form like a farm. Know the
seeds you9re planting. |en decide, okay I'm gonna leave this other thing for now; we'll plant
those seeds later. |ere9s no betrayal if you choose to lean in on one form for a little bit and
build an audience organically within that lane. Once you start building that audience, you9re
going to establish trust with other people and investors in other spaces. You can be strategic
about how you approach being a multifaceted artist. I don't think we can survive these days
in the state of the world without being a multi-hyphenate.
JG: In thinking of your adaptations, so many writers struggle with preserving and honoring
the original text while reinventing it as something that is emotionally true to a modern
audience or relevant to the moment. How do you make a classic work feel alive and authentic
to a present moment without it turning into a museum piece or something that's so reworked
that it becomes soulless?
FG: Whenever I'm approaching adaptation, I try to look at what in my life resonates with
this classic work. Adaptation has taken on this dirty connotation for some people. I think
that9s because it9s simplioed like Hamlet but in space or Titus Andronicus but on a Texas ranch.
But that just makes no sense to me. Adaptation is translation through time, not necessarily
translation of the specioc source text itself.
I recently did an adaptation of Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen. In the source text he was
exploring how women ond any kind of freedom or ability to afect and control their own
lives in a society that placed them as second-class citizens, even if they are
