Böcker av Jack O'Brien

Ecclesiastical muralist jack O'Brien began a 3 year torrent of writing in 1970 using his artist's pallet of colors, textures and compositions to make you 'feel' like you are there on the battlefield, in the bedroom or in his mind.

The Tony Award-winning director gathers memories of people, productions, and problems surmounted from his fifty-year career in this one-of-a-kind how-to handbook. What do directors do? Jack O'Brien, the winner of Tony and Drama Desk Awards and the former artistic director of San Diego's historic Old Globe theatre, describes it like this: "You stand before a situation in which something is presented to you. You're afforded a challenge. Like catching an enormous ball. And you respond. You come up with a vision of some kind. That is, if you respond to the material at all, and one must, or it's doomed. You sort of feel that since you relate to the material at hand, you might as well try to be helpful."In Jack in the Box, O'Brien's follow-up to his memoir Jack Be Nimble, the director collects stories from the many productions he has worked on, the great talents he encountered and collaborated with (including Tom Stoppard, Mike Nichols, Jerry Lewis, Marsha Mason, and many others), and the choices he made, on the stage and off, that have come to define his career. With humor, warmth, and contagious excitement, O'Brien takes the reader by the shoulder, pulls them in, and tells them how to become a director-or, at the very least, relates an unfailingly honest story of how he did.

"The Faithful Remnant on Earth, in Purgatory, in Heaven" Six lifelong friends, now in their 60's, meet in the basement of Mulcahy's Funeral Parlor in the Savin Hill section of Dorchester, an inner city suburb of Boston. They have just attended the wake upstairs of their boyhood friend, Arthur "AW" O'Malley. "AW" had cerebral palsy all his life. The six men are: Peter "Quarter To Two" Fignatti - a retired "bookie" or numerologist. Mike "Mucka" Lydon - a retired line worker from Boston Edison. Charles "Three Balls" Cahill - a state senator, still active. George "Giraffe" Geoghan - a retired world-class jockey. Steve "Inkwell" Jablonski - owner of a public relations firm. Father Frank "Farts" Fahey - a retired priest still serving part-time. Each has his own guardian angel. Peter Fignatti - Richard aka "Parley" Mike Lydon - Bartholemew Charles Cahill - William George Geoghan - John aka "Seabiscuit" Steve Jablonski - Murphy Father Frank Fahey - Max Unknown to the men the supervisor of guardian angels Malchus is sent by God to listen to their stories because how they lived their lives will determine the destruction of salvation of the world. At the conclusion of their stories, Malchus makes his report to God with no clear recommendation to save or destroy the world. God calls AW before him and their conversation decides the fate of mankind. When they die all but "AW" go to purgatory he goes straight to heaven as most disabled people do. The six eventually all meet again in heaven and "AW" wants to know of each one's purgatory experience.