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Time Stands Still Study Guide

Time Stands Still is a play by Donald Margulies that centers around two journalist couples - James and Sarah, who are recovering from their work covering conflicts abroad, and Richard and his younger girlfriend Mandy. The play explores their difficulties adjusting to domestic life in New York after experiencing war, as well as the challenges of their relationships. Donald Margulies is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American playwright born in Brooklyn who drew from his interest in theater from a young age to write successful plays that tackle complex social and political issues.

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464 views2 pages

Time Stands Still Study Guide

Time Stands Still is a play by Donald Margulies that centers around two journalist couples - James and Sarah, who are recovering from their work covering conflicts abroad, and Richard and his younger girlfriend Mandy. The play explores their difficulties adjusting to domestic life in New York after experiencing war, as well as the challenges of their relationships. Donald Margulies is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American playwright born in Brooklyn who drew from his interest in theater from a young age to write successful plays that tackle complex social and political issues.

Uploaded by

xanderkhan
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Time Stands Still By Donald Margulies

Study Guide
Everyman Theatre, August-October 2012

About the Play:

Photo from Full Spec Photography1

Time Stands Still is a drama set in the neighborhood of Williamsburg in


Brooklyn, New York. The play centers around two very different couples:
James and Sarah, and Richard and Mandy.
James, a writer, and Sarah, a photographer, are journalists who cover
conflict in war zones. Sarah has recently been released from the hospital
after surviving a roadside bomb explosion in Iraq. Sarah finds it difficult not
only to adjust to life with her new injuries, but also to settle in to the
domestic
lifestyle she left behind. While James is content to write from home and watch Netflix, Sarahs heart
1
is already back in Iraq.
Richard is a close friend of James and Sarah and is also their editor at a magazine. He has recently started
dating a much younger woman named Mandy. She works as an event planner, a profession that seems quite
shallow after seeing the devastation of war, and her youth and inexperience is almost unbearable to the
worldly Sarah and James. As Sarah so acerbically puts it, Theres young, and theres embryonic. Theres
more to Mandy and Richards relationship than is immediately apparent, however, as the couples dynamic
evolves over the course of the play.
1

About the Playwright:


Donald Margulies is a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and adjunct professor at
Yale University. His best-known works include Sight Unseen, Shipwrecked!, Time
Stands Still, and Dinner with Friends2.
Donald Margulies was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1954 to mother Charlene, a
homemaker and later bookkeeper, and father Bob, who worked long hours as a
wallpaper salesman3. As a child, Margulies often went to see plays on Broadway with
his family. As Margulies articulates, My family didnt go to synagogue but we went to
Broadway4.
In high school, Margulies connected mostly with the art students5. He wrote a
Photo by Ethan Hill13
short story for his schools art and literary magazine that included explicit language
and caused a controversy on a national level6. When his schools principal confiscated all copies of the
magazine because of the story, the ACLU stepped in and took a case to the U.S. District Court. The judge not
only ruled in favor of Margulies, he also praised his writing ability7.
Margulies earned his B.F.A. in Visual Arts in 1977 from the State University of New York at Purchase. He
developed an interest in playwrighting while in school and continued to pursue it after graduation. In 1984,
he produced his first Off-Broadway play, Found a Peanut. His breakthrough came in 1992 with Sight Unseen,
which would become a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize8. Though he didnt win the Pulitzer that year, he would
go on to win for Dinner with Friends a few years later in 20009.
His recent play Time Stands Still closed its successful run on Broadway in January of 201110. The
production featured Laura Linney as Sarah, Alicia Silverstone as Mandy (later replaced by Christina Ricci),
Eric Bogosian as Richard, and Brian dArcy James as James11. Currently, Margulies lives in New Haven, CT
with his wife Lynn Street, a doctor, and their son Miles12.
This study guide was made by Abby Grimsley for use in the Everyman Theatre Education Outreach Program

Discussion Questions:
Whats the difference between a photographer and a
photojournalist?

Photo by Ali Hader14

When do you take pictures and why?

Would you want to be a photojournalist? Why or why not?


How often are you exposed to violence or violent images or
stories? How does it affect you?
How do you feel when you see violence in movies or video
games? What about when you see it on the news?
Photo by Zoriah15

Why do you think a reporter whos been injured covering a


war would want to go back into a war zone? What would you
do if you were in that situation?

In the play, the character Mandy doesnt understand how a


photojournalist covering a war could see people dying and
suffering without helping. Sarah, however, says shes just
there to take pictures, not change anything. Which of these
characters do you think is right?

In an interview with Newsweek, the playwright said, There is


compassion fatigue in our society I think its
understandablewith mass media and the instantaneous
nature of it, the pervasive nature of it all, theres no escape. It
almost has a numbing effect on people17. How does such
widespread suffering in the world make you feel? Do you feel
numb in the way the playwright says or do you feel the need
to change the world?

Photo by Steve Mellon16

How old were you when the Iraq War started? Do you
remember a time when the United States wasnt at war?

The Everyman Theatre Education Department thanks the following people and organizations for their generous contributions:
Constellation
Edward St. John Foundation
The Goldsmith Family Foundation
Henry & Ruth Blaustein Rosenberg
Foundation

The Jean & Sidney Silber


Foundation
Lockhart Vaughan Foundation
Muller Charitable Foundation
The Dillon Fund
Dr. E. Lee and Bea Robbins

T. Rowe Price
Venable Foundation
Wells Fargo
Baltimore County Commission on
Arts and Sciences

1) Online Photography Schools. Full Spec Photography. Web. 12 Aug 2012. 2) Donald Margulies. American Theatre Wing May 2010. Web. 9 Aug 2012.
3) Berger, Joseph. Brooklyn Boy Playwright Returns to Borough After 25 Years. New York Times 10 Feb 2005: B1. Web. 9 Aug 2012, Donald
Margulies. Authors and Artists for Young Adults. Vol. 57. Detroit: Gale, 2004. Gale Biography in Context. Web. 9 Aug 2012. 4) Kavner, Lucas. Donald
Margulies. The Days of Yore Feb 2011. Web. 9 Aug 2012. 5) Ibid. 6) Berger, Joseph. 7) Authors and Artists 8) Ibid. 9) Kavner, Lucas. 10) Piepenburg, Erik.
Time Stands Still to Close. New York Times 9 Dec 2010. Web. 9 Aug 2012. 11) Scheck, Frank. Time Stands Still. Hollywood Reporter 8 Oct 2010: 31.
Gale Biography in Context. Web. 9 Aug 2012. 12) American Theatre Wing 13) Hill, Ethan. Donald Margulies. Photograph. The Days of Yore. 28 Feb 2011.
Web. 9 Aug 2012. 14) Hader, Ali. Women reacted to the scene of a car bombing that killed four people in Baghdad on Oct. 23. Photograph. New York
Times 21 Dec 2011. Web. 10 Aug 2012. 15) Zoriah. Iraq Raid. War Photographer. Web. 10 Aug 2012. 16) Mellon, Steve. Dozens of people block Fifth
Avenue at Craig with a Die-In, a human representation of the potential casualties in a U.S.-Iraq war. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 2003. Web. 10 Aug 2012.
17) Ball, Sarah. When We Look at Disaster Newsweek 27 Jan 2010. Web. 10 Aug 2012.

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