LETTER OF RECOMENDATION
I am pleased to recommend the work of Warren Gore for your consideration.
When we met in 1999, Warren was already a seasoned theatre professional with a mature and distinctive voice. After I read his first script, I quickly requested copies of any other scripts he had written, which remain filed in my home office. Had he not lived more than 2,000 miles outside of the local eligibility requirements when I eventually founded my own theatre festival in San Diego, California, I have no doubt the New Perspective Festival would have been a regular producer of his work.
Warren has an uncommon ear for dialogue. His characters speak with a tight, natural rhythm that makes their conversations feel effortless. And the characters are not mere vehicles for a plot: their hopes, dreams and foibles drive it.
Early in our association, I noted that Warren’s works often grapple with the theme of loss – real, imagined, anticipated or imposed; yet his work approaches that theme with both a deep human understanding and an uncanny restraint from bleakness. Even as loss is spoken, hope is felt –managed through a unique sleight-of-phrase: Lines appropriate to the circumstance are often also genuinely laugh-out-loud funny. Finding (not forcing) the humor without distracting from the emotional truth is a writer’s talent I’ve found to be exceedingly rare – and use of that talent is the hallmark of an original Warren Gore script.
Perhaps this is because it was an award-winning actor who put the characters on the page to begin with. In truth, I was not introduced to Warren as a playwright. Nor was I a producer at the time. For more than a quarter century, I have had the privilege to both watch and work with Warren as an actor on the stage. His exceptional gift for lifting a playwright’s words off a page in performance is returned to the page tenfold as he writes for fellow actors, giving them fully formed characters to inhabit. I am recommending Warren's play to American Blues Theater because, for nearly three decades, I’ve known that anything he writes deserves serious consideration. His is a distinctive theatrical voice and he has a profound understanding of the way humor and heartbreak can coexist in the same human story.
Sincerely,
Kelly Lapczynski
Founding Director, New Perspective