Love, Loss, and What I Wore

Nora Ephron was a writer, director and producer best known for writing the screenplays of romantic comedy films. She received three Academy Award nominations for Original Screenplay, for Silkwood (1983), When Harry Met Sally... (1989) and Sleepless in Seattle (1993). She wrote five best-selling books Nora Ephron wrote the introduction to Beckerman's eponymous 1995 book, which she immediately thought had dramatic possibilities. She identified with the stories in Love, Loss, and What I Wore because the book "is not about fashion; it is about what clothes really are to us, those moments when we are constantly trying to find our identity through them." Soon after its publication, Ephron gave the book to eight of her friends for Christmas. She became interested in writing her own version of the book. Once she decided to adapt Love, Loss, and What I Wore into a play, she and her sister emailed 100 women for stories. The show's monologues were sourced largely from Beckerman's book. The Ephrons wove together a collection of stories adapted from the book with recollections of friends, including Rosie O'Donnell. One of the monologues that became a highlight of the original production was based on Nora Ephron's 2006 best-seller, I Feel Bad About My Neck. ==Plot==

A character called "Gingy" acts as the narrator. The Los Angeles Times spent a full paragraph on a vignette about two high school prom dresses. The junior prom dress was a conservative powder blue gown to wear with a nerdy date. The senior prom dress was a sexy black mini dress that was befitting of her more desirable date. The dresses presented an identity crisis to one character: "Here's the thing – I've never really known for sure which of those two people I am – the girl who almost doesn't get asked to the prom at all or the girl who gets to go with the really cute guy. Every time I thought I knew which one I was, I turned out to be the other. Which is one reason I think I got married, to, like, end the confusion." The New York Times presented three stories that it felt were particularly emotional: the first about a woman who removed miniskirts from her college wardrobe after being raped, but continued wearing her favorite boots; another about wedding attire anxieties; and the third about the choice of adorning a newly reconstructed breast with a tattoo. The same article also noted a humorous ode to black as a part of a wardrobe or in fact as a wardrobe, as one character notes: "Sometimes I buy something that isn't black, and I put it on and I am so sorry." Other stories include recollections about the dress purchased for the date with a guy who subsequently married someone else; the foibles of spandex bras that result in a look known as the monoboob; issues involving toe cleavage; the Juicy Couture tracksuit that is a prominent staple of California wardrobes; wardrobe choice on the wrong day of the month; and the story about an incarcerated lover and the strategic hole in a certain pair of pants. ==Production history==

Initial benefit productions Love, Loss, and What I Wore was first presented on August 2, 2008 at the Bridgehampton Community House as a benefit for the renovation of the John Drew Theatre/Guild Hall in East Hampton, New York. The production, directed by Karen Lynn Carpenter, starred Linda Lavin, Karyn Quackenbush, Leslie Kritzer, Kathy Najimy, and Sara Chase. Then Daryl Roth produced the play in a Monday night series of benefit performances for 'Dress for Success', a charity organization that serves low-income women by enabling them to afford work clothing and providing job support, again under the direction of Karen Lynn Carpenter. The first seven performances had seven different casts. The first cast at DR2 Theatre was Marian Seldes, Joy Behar, Katie Finneran, Heather Burns and Lucy DeVito. Other participants in the original readings included Tyne Daly (who created the narrator character, Gingy, for the New York Production), The production officially opened on October 1, 2009 at the Westside Theatre. The cast originally included Daly, O'Donnell, Bee, Katie Finneran and Natasha Lyonne. The rotating cast also included Mary Birdsong, Kristin Chenoweth, Lucy DeVito, Jane Lynch, Rhea Perlman, Mary Louise Wilson and Rita Wilson. The production benefited 'Dress for Success'. Karen Lynn Carpenter directed, with scenic design by Jo Winiarski, costume design by Jessica Jahn, lighting design by Jeff Croiter, sound design by Walter Trarbach and make-up design by Maria Verel. Other well-known actresses who have performed in the Off-Broadway production include the following: Carol Kane, Debra Monk, Janeane Garofalo, Fran Drescher, Melissa Joan Hart, Brooke Shields, Victoria Clark, Alison Fraser, Tovah Feldshuh, Loretta Swit, Mary Testa, Nikki Blonsky, Donna McKechnie, B. Smith and Marla Maples. , it was the second-longest running show in the history of Westside Theatre. The show's 1,000th performance played on March 15, 2012. The production closed on March 25, 2012 after 1,013 performances. Thirty-two rotating casts and 120 actresses participated in the production over its entire run. The final cast was Sierra Boggess, Joyce Van Patten, Karyn Quackenbush, Erica Watson and Ally Walker. US National Tour Carpenter directed a US national tour that began in Chicago in September 2011 with an engagement at the Broadway Playhouse at Water Tower Place. Roth produced the Chicago production. Although the show was originally scheduled to run through October 23, 2011, and later extended again to January 1, 2012. The post-Chicago national tour performances were set to be headlined by the December 7–30 Off-Broadway cast that included Daisy Eagan, Sonia Manzano and Loretta Swit. Other productions The play was next produced at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles. The Geffen production ran from May 12 through November 19, 2010, breaking box office records. Bonnie Franklin, Meredith Baxter, Florence Henderson, Marissa Jaret Winokur, María Conchita Alonso, Christine Lahti, Jenny O'Hara, Lauren Hutton, Harriet Harris, Teri Garr, Mimi Rogers and Sally Struthers. Carpenter directed the international production that has run in many countries. The play was presented in Sydney from January 3 through January 30, 2011 at the Sydney Opera House with an opening cast of Natalie Bassingthwaighte, Judi Farr, Amanda Muggleton, Magda Szubanski and Mirrah Foulkes, under the direction of Wayne Harrison, with some minor modifications to localize some of the Americanisms. In South Africa, the show was performed from April 8 through June 12, 2011 at Studio Theatre, Montecasino near Johannesburg and at the Theatre on the Bay in Cape Town from June 15 through July 2 under the direction of Moira Blumenthal. It made its Asian premiere in Manila from July 14 through July 17, 2011 at RCBC Plaza with a cast that included Bituin Escalante; the production was directed by Michael Williams and Azanza-Dy. ==Themes==

The show, with a running time of about 90 minutes, Generally consisting of humorous incidents, the show often addresses sad, bitter or sentimental issues. Beckerman's memoir takes as its departure the clothing worn at pivotal times of her life and serves as the play's. The Ephrons augmented this with a collection of similarly themed stories presented by four additional characters. The show is staged in an "unapologetically low-tech" manner, using clothing as a metaphor for women's experiences. In addition to clothing, accessories such as a purse are important, and Charles Isherwood of The New York Times noted that when Nora Ephron viewed a purse: "In the chaos of its interior she sees a symbol of herself, as in a dark mirror smudged with old lipstick and smelling of spilled perfume." The show consists of five women's monologues about wardrobe malfunctions, puberty's relationship with personal wardrobe, first date outfits, lucky underwear, prom dresses, favorite boots, irreplaceable shirts, the detested, disorganized purse, and experiences in the dressing room. The recollections about the clothing prompt the women's memories about their mothers, boyfriends, husbands, ex-husbands, sisters and grandchildren. ==Critical reaction==

Broadway.com described the original benefit series as "intimate and starry". New York Times reviewer Isherwood described the Off-Broadway play as a "show about matters of the heart and matters of the closet". In Bloomberg News, the critics commented that the playwrights were "literary alchemists expert at mixing the sentimental and the satirical and turning out something poignant" and noted that the clothing and accessories dominated the memories while the "men are extras." The Los Angeles Times described the show as a cross between The Vagina Monologues and What Not to Wear. Isherwood has noted that this serves a female audience. "If there are chick flicks and chick lit – derogatory though some might find those terms to be – Love, Loss, and What I Wore should clearly be classified as chick legit... for the women who can share deeply in the particulars of experience dissected and discussed." ==Notes==