By Samantha Rowan
There were jazz hands. And singing.
That’s what happens when you bring together four authors—Libba Bray, John Green, David Levithan and E. Lockhart—with a flair for the dramatic. The event, held last night at the packed South Court auditorium of the main branch of the New York Public Library, was aptly subtitled An Evening of Readers’ Theater. It showed the audience that if this whole writing thing doesn’t work out, all four of the authors could probably have new careers as readers—especially if they read together.
Each of the authors read a selection from their most recent work: Bray’s Going Bovine, Levithan and Green’s co-authored Will Grayson, Will Grayson and Lockhart’s The Treasure Map of Boys. The twist, however, was that they were each assigned parts and read the selection almost as if it were a play.
The Treasure Map of Boys was the first up, with Bray reading the part of the narrator and heroine Ruby Oliver, Green reading the part of Ruby’s semi-love interest, Noel, Levithan reading the part of Hutch, another student, and Lockhart reading Nora, who is a close friend of Ruby’s. The scene was an important one because it illustrates one of Ruby’s fatal flaws: being unable to keep herself from flirting with someone who is technically off limits.
The authors read together exceedingly well; it was clear that they not only rehearsed but also deeply understood each other’s work. I’ve read The Treasure Map of Boys but found the reading to be extremely vivid, almost to the point where it changed the way I perceived the scene. As a reader, I knew that Nora was seriously annoyed with Ruby. But hearing it out loud—particularly with Lockhart’s delivery and inflections as Nora—made what Ruby did seem even worse.
The authors proceeded onto a selection from Green’s Will Grayson, with Levithan reading the part of Tiny Cooper. His delivery got the biggest laughs from the audience and his pronunciation of the word “boobs” particularly amused Green, who commented on it afterward. The back and forth following this reading gave Bray a case of the giggles, which persisted into the next reading (a selection from Levithan’s Will Grayson) and eventually led Green to say, “Don’t make me take narrator! Because I’ll do it.” This helped Bray to recover and get through the rest of the selection without laughing.
The second part of the reading was vastly different. The authors, Levithan explained, would be reading from unpublished works in progress. As a result, he asked that no notes be taken or video or audio recorded. What was interesting was that all of the authors are working on something different from what they had published before. Green, for example, is working with a female narrator while Lockhart is working on a book for middle-grade readers.
Despite the changes in genre and perspectives, it was still possible to hear the authors’ distinctive voices. This part of the reading felt much different than the light-hearted first part. The authors read more slowly and seemed almost shy and tentative, possibly because of the unfinished nature of what they were reading.
Samantha Rowan is a journalist and aspiring YA novelist in New York City. Her favorite novel is Little Women by Louisa May Alcott.
