3-10-19 Interview

Frank Galati is “in his bones a theatre person.” But despite many hints along the way: his delight in mugging before the picture window in his family home, entertaining friends and family with antic behavior, the play he wrote and directed in High School, and spending most of his time in College and Graduate school playing in the theater, he had “no ambition to work in the theater.” But life had other plans for Frank. In this first of my two interviews with Frank listen to him describe the ironic way he got his Equity Card while still in Graduate School, became part of the fledgling Steppenwolf Theater Company and wrote what would be his Tony Award Winning Adaptation of The Grapes of Wrath.

3-10-19 Interview

My second interview with Frank Galati, six years after the first, picks up where the first left off. In it Frank describes his theatrical adaptations of the works of Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami. Some of which were then translated back into the Japanese and other languages as well. He talks about his love of teaching, why he left teaching and the, to him, surprising turn his life has now taken. And he describes his newest endeavor; a theatrical piece called “Knoxville,” based on the novel “A Death in the Family,’ by James Agee which he is creating with Lynn Arens and Stephen Flagherty – with whom he collaborated on the Tony Award winning musical “Ragtime.” And which will debut at the Asolo Repertory Theatre in the spring of 2020