Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

Boots!

Where would we be without boos?

Where would we be without good?

No, Timberd.

It's a rhetorical question, sir.

But where would we be without books?

From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm.

This is going to be a big summer for Los Angeles theater.

There's going to be a meeting of one of the biggest non-profit

theater consortiums in America. There are going to be several festivals going on. Since we

were all talking about theater around KCRW, I decided to invite John Stepling, who won this

year's playwriting award and has been deeply involved with Los Angeles

Theatre for the last 30 years. His newest play, which won the LA Weekly Award, is published

in a new anthology called Fever Dream, which is coming out soon from the Padua Playwrights Press.

And over these 30 years, he has been involved with most of Los Angeles' theater people.

He's taught internationally, including at the Polish Film School, and he has taught

playwriting. He's given a great deal of thought to theater as a ritual, to what a theater space is,

to what a theater company is composed of.

He's directed and ran theater companies in Los Angeles over the years.

And I've watched his work.

We were friends 30 years ago.

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