Confessions of a Sorkin Addict

My name is Brittany (hi Brittany), and I'm addicted to Aaron Sorkin.

Phew, that felt good. Okay, so if you don't know who I'm talking about, you're about to get a crash course. (Just go with it.) Sorkin is a writer whose most famous work is a little show called The West Wing. The show ran for seven seasons and won more awards -- including 27 Emmys -- than you can fit on even the most impressive mantle. I mean, hot damn. It was basically one of the best shows ever on the air. (omg West Wing clips) His other TV series -- Sports Night* (1998-2000) and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (2006-2007) -- featured a similarly witty, intense, character- and dialog-driven television experience, though neither lasted more than a couple seasons. He's also written screenplays: The American President, A Few Good Men (which was actually a play a few years before Jack Nicholson yelled, "You can't HANDLE the truth!!" at Tom Cruise), Charlie Wilson's War, and this fall's feature on the founding of Facebook, The Social Network, among others. His characters are consistently brilliant, articulate, and self-aware. Sorkin somehow makes even the dullest discussion of political theory engaging, and I'm not ashamed to admit that I learned more about the American political system from the West Wing than in my freshman year American Politics class.

Basically, he's a BAMF.

So you can imagine how psyched I was when my friend Jason asked if I wanted to attend a production of Sorkin's newest play, The Farnsworth Invention, which is about the invention of television. The play ran on Broadway for fewer than six months (starring Hank Azaria as media mogul David Sarnoff; check out the trailer) back in '06-'07, and has since only been shown in small theaters in a few cities around the country. The TimeLine Theater Company in Lakeview is currently staging the Chicago premiere.

Okay, so I may be fundamentally biased because of my undying love for everything Sorkin, but this was quite possibly the best play I've ever seen. The scenes and transitions were crisp, the characters were lovable and flawed, and the acting and staging were phenomenal. Most of the engineering stuff went over my head, but that didn't matter in the slightest. The confrontation between Sarnoff and Philo Farnsworth -- a small-town kid from Idaho that invented television without so much as a college degree -- is played out to perfection. The two narrate each others' stories, bickering in the middle of scenes in the way that brings to mind a regular Monday meeting between Toby Ziegler and Josh Lyman. And as with everything Sorkin, you walk out of the theater knowing something new. (Of course, you have to take into account that the play is ficitonalized, but there are enough nuggets of truth to create a fairly complete tapestry, and the program notes belabor the actual facts if you're interested.) TimeLine took a really good script and put on a top-tier production.

Point is, if you're in Chicago, you gotta go. Soon, because it closes this month.

[Side note: In the process of writing this post, I've watched at least 20 minutes worth of WW and SN clips. It's a disease, I'm telling you. And it feels so good.]

* You can watch the entirety of Sports Night on YouTube. Begin your conversion here.