Monday, July 20, 2009

Frank McCourt, Author of ‘Angela’s Ashes,’ Dies at 78 - Obituary (Obit) - NYTimes.com:

Many don't know that Mr. McCourt's work was intimately informed by the theater:

In 1977, Mr. McCourt and his brother Malachy, who was acting and bartending in New York, cobbled together a series of autobiographical sketches into a two-man play, “A Couple of Blaguards,” which opened off Off Broadway at the Billymunk Theater on East 45th Street. They performed a revised version at the Village Gate in 1984 and again at the Billymunk in 1986 and took their show to several other cities.

This excursion into the past, along with his nagging sense that a writing teacher should write, motivated Mr. McCourt to undertake his childhood memoirs after he retired from teaching in 1987.