Carol Schlanger

Brooklyn born Carol Schlanger lives in both rural Oregon and West L.A. She has been married for 45 years, has two children and two grandchildren. As an award winning actress and writer, her work has been nominated for an Obie, an Emmy and her memoir Hippie Woman Wild, won the 2020 gold Independent Publisher’s award. She has 3 LA Dramalogue Critics Awards for performance and writing  and won the LA Playwright’s Monologue Slam. An artist-in-residence for the Jewish Woman’s Theater,  she  has been in serious demand as a storyteller and performed in varied well- known venues throughout Los Angeles and New York. An almost graduate of Yale Drama, she has written for Imagine Entertainment, two T.V. pilots for CBS and her plays have been published by the National Organization of Women’s Playwrights and the Theatre of Note. She can chop wood, light a fire and everyone loves her lasagna.

Twitter: @CarolSchlanger1

Instagram: @CarolSchlanger                         

Are there particular films that have influenced your writing?

I am proud and mortified to say that Seven Brides For Seven Brothers has influenced me more than any other film. I first saw it as a teenager and forty years later, on writing a memoir, I had the shocking realization that Howard Keel and Jane Powell’s technicolor romance outlined the the entire trajectory of my life. In my mid-twenties, as a hippie living in the Oregon wilderness with 10 men and women, I thought I was a revolutionary but in reality, I’d emulated almost all the film's turning points. It left me with an emotional imprint that I was not aware of until it was too late. Then there’s Slumdog Millionaire, a film I worship. It showed me that a hero, seen within an adversarial if not nightmarish context, creates a heartbreaking content. I clearly saw that a fabulous tension builds when one twisted cause elicits another and leads to a monumental effect  ( a great climax)   Of course, it made me also realize that  you can never go wrong if you end with the right song and dance number. Lastly, Little Miss Sunshine’s compassionate, hilarious, and beautiful climax told me that pathos and comedy can be joined. Ever since, I’d made that convergence my goal. It proved to me that what is told with humanity and insight is always indelible. Olive’s performance at her beauty pageant brilliantly wraps up the touching minutiae of the family voyage and promises that which ends with a whisper can produce the biggest bang. She will, now and forever, make me smile.

Favorite non-reading activity?

Getting dirty, digging in loamy soil, feeling the cool black earth under my fingernails, on my hands and beneath my toes. I love to garden—to water and grow. When you plant a seed and give it what it needs, it blossoms (just like writing).

Is there a work of art that you love. Why? Have you ever visited it in person?

Courbet’s Lady With A Parrot - because she is fleshy, because she is sensual, red-headed, and loves her own body--she taught me to love my own. I visited her at N.Y’s Metropolitan Museum of Art throughout my youth and always found her languor comforting. When I looked up at her in all her naked glory, she promised a world where I belonged and did not have to meet any superimposed standard of beauty. As I grow old and older, on revisiting her, she lets me know I’ve always been right. I also love Dali’s The Persistence of Memory. Go figure.

Do you collect anything? If so, what, why, and for how long?

Yes. Acting. I’ve worked at it for years and have been professionally successful. I discovered that acting is writing turned inside out. Both crafts require inner and outer knowledge and the mind and the emotion must connect in both. For me, writing is the most fun when it’s finished and acting the most fun when I’m totally engaged inside the story—or perhaps it's the other way around.  

What do you worry about?

I worry that our planet will die, that our country descend into chaos, that the bad guys will win and take over, that we will blow ourselves up, that my book won’t be made into a series, that the stock market will crash, that my children will not flourish, that my grandchildren will never see a live elephant, that Covid will attack those I love, that Facebook will change my settings, that I’ll never really learn Pinterest, that my pants are too tight and that I’m wearing the wrong shoes.