Thread by @dadjmi

One of the weirdest things that ever happened to me. In 2000, I was in residence at the Royal Court in the UK and met an associate at the Schaubuhne in Berlin. He saw a staged reading of an early play of mine, an adaptation of Ibsen's A DOLL HOUSE, loved it, and asked if he could

2. bring it to Thomas Ostermeier, who ran that theatre in Berlin. I'd seen s a couple of productions Ostermeier directed and thought he was really great, so I was very excited about this. But I never heard from him or anyone at that theatre again. In 2003, I moved to Berlin, and

3. saw that they were doing a play called NORA, which was Thoma Ostermeier's adaptation of A DOLL HOUSE. I bought a ticket, and sat in the theatre watching MY PLAY with Ibsen's language grafted back onto it. All the references and ideas that I used to skew the original play were

4. there: the Prada, the Barbie dolls, the hysteria and black comedy, the closeted husband who contracts HIV, the masochism and violence in the tarantella. I remember sitting in the theatre & sobbing, because my work was outright stolen, and I was broke and living in a tiny

5. apartment in Prenzlauer Berg. I called my agent in New York and she said there was nothing we could do, because the ideas in a play can't be copyrighted. I called the director I'd given my play to and he insisted Ostermeier never read my script. I never met Thomas Ostermeier

6. and I never saw another play at the Schaubuhne. NORA was the production that cemented Ostermeier's international's reputation as one of the greatest modern theatre directors. To quote Flaubert: "Never touch your idols, the gilding will stick to your fingers." /END