LOVE IS BLONDE Starts Fundraiser To Finance Industry Reading In Spring 2019

LOVE IS BLONDE is launching its "Taking Marilyn's Untold Truth to Broadway" fundraiser Thursday, October 18th on www.womenyoushouldfund.com.

Our goal is to finance a full Industry Reading at the Signature Theatre in NYC in the spring of 2019, and showcase our play to producers and investors. We really ARE Broadway bound!

Love Is Blonde by Argia Coppola is the theater adaptation of the best-selling novel Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates. It is a new, bold, contemporary play (with an original soundtrack) about the lives of "two" women: Norma Jeane Baker and Marilyn Monroe.

Norma Jeane Baker was an ordinary girl with an unknown father, an unloving mother, and a BIG DREAM to pursue: being an actress. But Norma never had the opportunity to share the truth about what she wanted: being loved as herself.

Love Is Blonde wants to voice this untold truth.

HOW DOES THE PLAY 'LOVE IS BLONDE' IMPACT WOMEN TODAY?

In Coppola's own words: "I didn't adapt Blonde to tell the story of the best-known celebrity of all time, but rather to reveal the injustice perpetrated in Hollywood against a girl who grows into a woman, becomes a star, and is then, probably, a target of assassination. I wrote the play so we can all understand America's impact on its most abused icon".

What originally struck me about the novel, and inspired my adaptation work, was the timeless relevance of Monroe's life and tragedy in today's climate and discourse around women in the entertainment industry, male dominance (and abuse), and the politics of it all".

Ultimately, Love Is Blonde is the story of a resilient victim turned into a ghter.

WHAT MAKES THIS STORY DIFFERENT?

Love Is Blonde is not at all about the ideology of exploiting gender politics and the day's news cycle to attract an audience. It's about revealing the inner soul - its demons and its indestructible beauty - caged in an alien- ated body turned into a global icon. It's about the intimacy and the pain of that lost battle. It's an elegy, and a prayer, along with the tears and laughter that were part of Marilyn Monroe's incredibly textured and rich life. And it is, above all, a war journal about the truth.

WHAT IS THE ORIGIN OF THE PLAY?

Coppola recalls: "One day Joyce said to me: 'Marilyn chose you to tell her truth, not vice versa.You are simply a tool, an impressive tool'. I realized that Marilyn had called to her too, and she, like me, could not stop writing. So I followed this emotional force: I left Turin, made NewYork my home, and adapted Blonde for the stage. In 2014, I obtained the of cial stage rights for the US and Italy. As I wrote, Norma Jeane's voice spoke to me as well. So I simply let them both talk, cry, laugh, shout their truth inside my body and on paper".

WHY DOES THIS STORY NEED A STAGE NOW?

The moment feels just right to renew the telling of this distinctive American epic: the play does not only dramatize Marilyn/ Norma's inner struggle, but the struggle of every woman in today's still very unequal, very unfair, very biased America.

There is no other theatrical work that explores Marilyn's entire life, the mystery of her death, and the duality of her personality.

The play - as work-in-progress - opened in Italy in November 2017, at the Astra Theater of Turin, where it was well-received by audience and critics. It is set to run in Milan in 2019.

To post a comment, you must register and login.