How an alum staged the unstageable

Playwright David Auburn, AB'91, returns to Court Theatre to debut Augie March. Playwright David Auburn, AB'91, slouches on a couch in director Charles Newell's office at Court Theatre , trying to decide if there's a way to get a talking eagle on stage. "I don't know how to theatricalize it," Newell says. It's July 2017, and the question of how to stage the unstageable is one Auburn and Newell have faced repeatedly since deciding more than a year ago to adapt Saul Bellow's The Adventures of Augie March . This month, the play opened at Court as the first theatrical adaptation of any work by Bellow, EX'39. Auburn didn't choose an easy way to start. The 1953 picaresque novel sprawls over years and countries; there are characters and episodes, but no traditional plot.