Chapter 19: Looking Ahead to Writing

Chapter 19: Looking Ahead to Writing

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Description

In this chapter, Dr. Holleman talks about his long love of playwriting. He talks about the plays that have been performed and his plans to work on others. He also talks about his plans to continue his academic study of physician burnout and he would like to write a book on life balance.

Identifier

HollemanWL_03_20170427_C19

Publication Date

4-27-2017

Publisher

The Making Cancer History® Voices Oral History Collection, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center

City

Houston, Texas

Topics Covered

The Interview Subject's Story - Post-Retirement Activities; Discovery, Creativity and Innovation; Faith, Values, Beliefs; Activities Outside Institution; Career and Accomplishments; Post Retirement Activities; Character, Values, Beliefs, Talents; Personal Background

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

Disciplines

History of Science, Technology, and Medicine | Oncology | Oral History

Transcript

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

Well, I also wanted to ask you kind of what you are looking ahead to, after retirement, and what's that going to be like for you?

Warren L. Holleman, PhD:

Yeah. Well, I think as I mentioned earlier, I mentioned how my father was kind of a renaissance man who was very involved in all kinds of civic and community activities. I think I inherited that from him. I have lots of interests beyond my job description. So I'm looking forward to doing some projects that I've kind of put on the back burner.

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

Well, one thing that you've demonstrated here is, what a great storyteller you are. And I've had the pleasure of listening to you tell stories at The Moth, so there's that.

Warren L. Holleman, PhD:

Thank you.

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

So there's that.

Warren L. Holleman, PhD:

Yeah. So one, okay, let's—so first, as an artist, I want to tell more stories. I have a couple of thoughts about how to develop that further. And the other artistic side of me is telling stories through playwriting. I've written several plays, but I haven't really had time to develop them. Theater isn't just writing a play in your study or on your sofa, it's getting into a real theater with real actors and directors, and developing the play through rehearsals and developmental process, and I haven't had time to do that.

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

Now, a play of yours was—wasn't one of your plays performed, however?

Warren L. Holleman, PhD:

I've had several plays performed.

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

Oh, okay. Cool.

Warren L. Holleman, PhD:

Yeah.

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

What are some of the titles?

Warren L. Holleman, PhD:

""Beyond the Pale"" is—it's evolved from a play that was originally titled, ""The Prime of Her Life."" ""The Prime of Her Life"" was first—it's a play about a Russian family in 1911, struggling with a serious illness of the patriarch of the family, the demise of the family, so to speak, not only from the illness but from the impending Russian revolution. And it's about their relationship with his nurse, who's a Jewish girl from Ukraine, which was then called The Pale, The Pale of Jewish Settlement. It's about the interaction between those two cultures and the relationship between the patriarch's daughter and the Jewish nurse, who were both about 19 years old. And it's two young women who have seen the deaths—who are dealing with the death of their fathers, their families and their cultures. And they're trying to sort of fight for their future, and figure out where that's going to be, and how that's going to be. So that play was first performed at Meredith College in North Carolina, about 15 years ago. But since then I've gone back to the drawing board and rewritten it, many times, and workshopped it many times in various workshops. And the workshop is where you have actors read a play, and the audience and actors give feedback. And it helps you rewrite the play.

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

And develop a tough skin.

Warren L. Holleman, PhD:

Yeah. It's funny, I cherish it, because it helps a lot, yeah. As long as—yeah, I'd be careful not to present a play in a workshop that I didn't feel pretty good about.

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

Yeah.

Warren L. Holleman, PhD:

So anyway, most recently, Wordsmyth Theater in Houston did a workshop with it. And it got a really positive response. And they wanted to partner with me to write a grant for the National Endowment for the Arts, which I did. And in June, I'll find out if I got the grant. I made it through the first hoop, or hurdle, and now we'll see if I make it to the end and get funded.

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

Cool!

Warren L. Holleman, PhD:

A little bit of nervousness, because the Trump administration has said they want to stop funding for the National Endowment for the Arts. But I don't think that would—I think that would affect the next year's cycle, I'm hoping, if that happens. But any rate, so if I get that funding, then we will partner with a local theater to do what's called a ""developmental production,"" and then that would—should lead to what's called a ""full production."" So that's pretty cool.

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

Yeah. That's very cool.

Warren L. Holleman, PhD:

And I've been working on this play my whole adult life. So then another play that I've been working with for a long time, up until recently was titled, ""The Comity of Eros,"" C-O-M-I-T-Y, of Eros. ""Comity"" means bringing together of two people by Eros, love. So it's obviously a play on the words. Now I'm calling it, ""All's Swell That Ends Swell,"" because that was a one-act play, and it was performed in several theaters around the country. But I've decided to expand it into a full length play. And I haven't had time to develop that yet. But once I retire, that's going to be a priority. I've written the second act, and the second act has been workshopped by itself. It was at a Pittsburgh New Works Play Festival last year—two years ago. But I've never put the two acts together into a full length. And that's a parody of Shakespeare's romantic comedies; it's written in Elizabethan English, more or less, in verse. Mostly iambic pentameter. And it's very silly, but it's about typical Shakespeare romantic comedy; two lovers who are very clumsy and do everything wrong, and somehow it all still works out in the end. And third project is a musical version of that—

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

Oh, that's cool.

Warren L. Holleman, PhD:

—with a high school friend of mine, who's a very talented musician. In fact, we're getting together in June to work some more on it. We've written about nine songs, we have about five to go. Then we'll try to turn that into a musical. I had a very short play that was performed in Houston last summer, called, ""The Existential Crisis Hotline."" You know, they have hotlines for everything else, why not for an existential crisis?

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

Why not?

Warren L. Holleman, PhD:

And then the other play, which has been presented—it's been presented once in a festival in Bangor, Maine, and it's called, ""Waiting for Boudreaux."" [Think] ""Waiting for Godot"" [ ] set in Beaumont, Texas. [ ] [ ]

Warren L. Holleman, PhD:

Those are my plays. So that's my artistic projects that I hope to focus on.

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

Yeah. That's great. It sounds like it's very creative, invigorating, all of that good stuff.

Warren L. Holleman, PhD:

Yeah. Then I still have a couple of semi-academic projects that I haven't finished. One is, I've written about half of a manuscript of a book on physician burnout, and I want to finish that. It's just a review of the research that's been done to discover the causes and solutions. So it's a very academic kind of evidence-based book. The other book that I want to write is on what most people call ""work-life balance,"" and I call it, ""life balance."" And I've done lots of workshops and commentaries and blogs on the topic. I'd like to put them together into a book.

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

That really sounds like a great palette of things to look forward to.

Warren L. Holleman, PhD:

Yeah, so if I can live another 10 or 20 years, I'll get all those done.

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

You'll finish all that? (laughs)

Warren L. Holleman, PhD:

Yeah, right.

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

And probably figure out projects for 20 years after that, too, right?

Warren L. Holleman, PhD:

Oh, yeah. I have all kinds of hopes and dreams. I would like to run the Grand Canyon.

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

Really?

Warren L. Holleman, PhD:

I want to start on one end, run down across, and up.

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

Oh, that's funny.

Warren L. Holleman, PhD:

And maybe even turn around and come back.

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

That's funny.

Warren L. Holleman, PhD:

That's one of my bucket list.

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

That's cool. Well, it's been really, really great talking to you.

Warren L. Holleman, PhD:

Yeah, it's been great talking with—you're a good listener! I feel like I should pay a therapist for this. I don't know—I don't think I can ever remember anybody listening to me for this long. (laughter) At The Moth you get five minutes.

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

Right. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Then you get the bell when you're running out of time.

Warren L. Holleman, PhD:

That's extraordinarily gratifying to have everyone's attention for five minutes. But it's only five minutes.

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

It's only five minutes, that's right. Well, I wanted to ask you if there was anything else that you wanted to add at this point. You know, lingering, ""Oh my God, this is for history,"" kind of moments.

Warren L. Holleman, PhD:

I'll think of that five minutes from now.

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

(laughs) You can send me an email. I'll append it to your interview.

Warren L. Holleman, PhD:

I mean, if you want—if you think of anything else, or if something else happens—

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

Here we go.

Warren L. Holleman, PhD:

I mean, I think things are evolving. I mean, there's still questions about how well the NCI will be funding, and the NIH. And in my case, the NEA.

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

The NEA. Yeah, absolutely. Oh, I know. It's the country and the institution are both works in progress, for sure.

Warren L. Holleman, PhD:

Yeah.

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

Yeah. Well, we'll have to stay tuned.

Warren L. Holleman, PhD:

Yeah.

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

Well, thanks so much!

Warren L. Holleman, PhD:

Thanks.

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

It's been great. (slap) We're doing a hand-slap here, for the benefit of the recorder. And I'm turning—

Warren L. Holleman, PhD:

And I'm doing the Funky Chicken, but you can't see it. (laughter)

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

Here we go! You are, after all, a comedy writer.

Warren L. Holleman, PhD:

Yeah. That's right.

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

So I'm turning off the recorder at about 27 minutes after 11:00.

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Chapter 19: Looking Ahead to Writing

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