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SPOTLIGHT: Rudolf at Budapest's
Margaret Island Open Air Theater (Lyrics by Nan Knighton)
FEATURED INTERVIEW
Nan Knighton, Frank Wildhorn, and Gabriel Barre talk MCP's Scarlet Pimpernel with BWW's Richard Ridge - View Here
FEATURED ARTICLE
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Playbill.com: "The Unprecedented Story of How 3 Versions of 1 Musical Played Broadway for 2 Years"
"The Scarlet Pimpernel turned 20 this year—that is, its third and final revision did. Inside the crazy story of the Broadway show that opened in 1997 and changed nearly every day for two years."

Book Release:
Opening the Shutters 

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Nan Knighton's new collection of poetry, Opening the Shutters, was released in hardcover on June 30, and is also available in ebook edition.

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OPENING THE SHUTTERS is a book of poems by Nan Knighton which has been called "extraordinary" by author Delia Ephron, "glorious" by playwright Ken Ludwig and "stunning" by Richard Ridge of Broadway World. Charles McGrath, former Editor of The New York Times Book Review says, "Reading Nan Knighton is like reading a 21st century Edna Millay" and Elizabeth Goodenough of Secret Spaces of Childhood says, "Her poems fly. They take risks...with arresting images, kick-ass verbs, hilarious dialogue and dramatic power. Brilliant."

 

Knighton's poems are conversational. Alfred Uhry, Pulitzer Prize winner for Driving Miss Daisy says, "Nan Knighton's poems celebrate the ebb and flow of everyday life." Her poems live in that arena - conversational, easily grasped. As she says, they are for those who say, "I'm not really a poetry person" as much as they are for poetry lovers. Her poems travel from Skee Ball on the boardwalk to a tango by the river, from drunken prayers in a taxi to writing songs in the nude, from parents who drive you nuts- ("I'll be dying, they'll be drinking Mint Juleps")- to a man on his knees begging his lover to stop making him laugh. Whether in rhyme, free verse, haiku, prose poem or dialogue, Knighton's poems are sure to hit a nerve.

Nan Knighton's Flaco Encounter

Nan was lucky enough to have a visit from Flaco, the famous Central Park Zoo escapee who was being tracked by thousands of New Yorkers. He landed on her kitchen window ledge and stayed for hours. She was thrilled. A video can be found on Twitter/X where it’s gone viral. She and her husband John Breglio were also interviewed on WABC Channel 7 and Inside Edition about their visit from Flaco. Nan has also been posting that interview and other updates on her Facebook page. Nan totally fell in love with Flaco. More here.

Featured Article: Flaco: A Triptych ~ Part 3: Visitation

David Gessner conducts a sprawling and thoughtful interview with Nan on Flaco, his impact, and his loss:

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“Not long ago, Frank, the composer I work with, sent me a new melody. He’s doing an album of jazz standards, so he sent me this melody, and I wrote this lyric, and I sent it back to him. And he said ‘This isn’t quite what I had in mind for a jazz standard.’ And I read it over and I realized that what I had written was a love song to Flaco. I mean it really was, it was a love song to an owl.

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“I realized that there was this huge cave inside of me that… I remember thinking it’s like a bullet hole. It was like an empty spot. And I remember writing to David [Barrett of Manhattan Bird Alert], ‘Well, if I have a bullet hole, you have a vast heart hole.’”

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-Nan Knighton, excerpt from article

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Publicity Photos from Lincoln Center's Concert Production of The Scarlet Pimpernel  (View Scrapbook)
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The one-night only performance was presented on February 18, 2019 at Lincoln Center

© 2023 by Nan Knighton

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