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Time Stands Still
In his “absorbing intelligent” (Los Angeles Times) and timely new play, Donald Margulies uncovers the layers of a relationship between a photojournalist and foreign correspondent—once addicted to the adrenaline of documenting the atrocities of war, and now grounded in the couple’s Brooklyn loft.
Photographer Sarah was seriously injured while covering the war in Iraq; her reporter partner James had left weeks earlier, when the stress and horrors became too much for him. Now James writes online movie reviews while Sarah recovers, mourning for her Iraqi driver (and former lover) killed in the explosion, and itching to get back behind the camera. With this play—coming to Broadway this winter—Margulies revisits themes of being an artist, as characters ask: What does it mean to capture suffering on film, rather than stopping to intervene?
Photographer Sarah was seriously injured while covering the war in Iraq; her reporter partner James had left weeks earlier, when the stress and horrors became too much for him. Now James writes online movie reviews while Sarah recovers, mourning for her Iraqi driver (and former lover) killed in the explosion, and itching to get back behind the camera. With this play—coming to Broadway this winter—Margulies revisits themes of being an artist, as characters ask: What does it mean to capture suffering on film, rather than stopping to intervene?
96 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 2010
About the author
Donald Margulies
37 books26 followersBorn in Brooklyn in 1954, Donald Margulies grew up in Trump Village, a Coney Island housing project built by Donald Trump's father. Margulies was exposed early to the theatre. His father, a wallpaper salesman, played show tunes on the family hi-fi and, despite a limited income, often took his children to Manhattan to attend Broadway plays and musicals.
Margulies studied visual arts at the Pratt Institute before transferring to State University of New York to pursue a degree in playwriting. During the early 80s, he collaborated with Joseph Papp, and his first Off-Broadway play, Found a Peanut, was produced at the Public Theatre. In 1983, he moved with his wife to New Haven, Connecticut, so that she could attend Yale Medical School.
In 1992, Margulies' career really began to take off when Sight Unseen won an Obie for Best New American Play. Some of his other plays include The Loman Family Picnic; Pitching to the Star; Zimmer; Luna Park; What's Wrong With This Picture?; The Model Apartment; Broken Sleep; July 7, 1994, and The God of Vengeance. Dinner With Friends--which tells the story of a seemingly happy couple who re-examine their own relationship when their best friends decide to divorce--won Margulies a 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. He had previously been nominated for a Pulitzer for Collected Stories, a play about a Jewish writer who is betrayed by her young disciple.
Elected to the Dramatists Guild Council in 1993, Margulies has received grants from Creative Artists Public Service (CAPS), New York Foundation for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. His plays have premiered at Manhattan Theatre Club, South Coast Repertory, The New York Shakespeare Festival and the Jewish Repertory Theatre. He lives in New Haven, Connecticut, where he teaches playwriting at the Yale School of Drama.
Margulies studied visual arts at the Pratt Institute before transferring to State University of New York to pursue a degree in playwriting. During the early 80s, he collaborated with Joseph Papp, and his first Off-Broadway play, Found a Peanut, was produced at the Public Theatre. In 1983, he moved with his wife to New Haven, Connecticut, so that she could attend Yale Medical School.
In 1992, Margulies' career really began to take off when Sight Unseen won an Obie for Best New American Play. Some of his other plays include The Loman Family Picnic; Pitching to the Star; Zimmer; Luna Park; What's Wrong With This Picture?; The Model Apartment; Broken Sleep; July 7, 1994, and The God of Vengeance. Dinner With Friends--which tells the story of a seemingly happy couple who re-examine their own relationship when their best friends decide to divorce--won Margulies a 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. He had previously been nominated for a Pulitzer for Collected Stories, a play about a Jewish writer who is betrayed by her young disciple.
Elected to the Dramatists Guild Council in 1993, Margulies has received grants from Creative Artists Public Service (CAPS), New York Foundation for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. His plays have premiered at Manhattan Theatre Club, South Coast Repertory, The New York Shakespeare Festival and the Jewish Repertory Theatre. He lives in New Haven, Connecticut, where he teaches playwriting at the Yale School of Drama.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 47 reviews
September 18, 2016
A little stiff and contrived, but overall some very interesting discussions about the importance of documenting (versus interfering with) tragedies and questioning other people's life choices. Margulies does a good job of throwing his own arguments on their heads; Sarah's whole point is that she documents so that others can be aware, but Mandy and James criticize this awareness. To Mandy, the images are just downers and far-away atrocities about which she can do nothing. To James, they are fodder for entertainment to make liberals feel better about themselves because they are "informed".
March 27, 2022
برای من یه کتاب تو خالی به نظر میومد که نویسنده سعی داشت اتفاقات وحشتناک جنگی که توی خاورمیانه میفته رو بیان کنه که متاسفانه موفق نشده و این تلاشش در ذهنیتش که با فرهنگ غربی رشد کرده، گم شده.
و این فانتزی غربی ها رو که توش یه آمریکایی برای کار میره به خاورمیانه و اونجا وسط جنگ با یکی از بومی ها وارد رابطه ی عاشقانه میشه و بعد از دستش میده رو درک نمیکنم.
و این فانتزی غربی ها رو که توش یه آمریکایی برای کار میره به خاورمیانه و اونجا وسط جنگ با یکی از بومی ها وارد رابطه ی عاشقانه میشه و بعد از دستش میده رو درک نمیکنم.
January 4, 2022
I really wanted to give this script another star. A war photographer (woman) haunted by what she's seen, the loss of a close friend in the field, and trying to recover from her injuries (physical and otherwise). Her erstwhile live-in boyfriend wants to help, but doesn't know how.
So, why the low rating? Because, for no good reason, the other male character, listed as 55 in the description, dates and impregnates a 25 year old. I cannot tell you how exhausted I am by this trope. So. Very. Exhausted. It turns an otherwise timely and emotionally deep story into a retro-male fantasy. DM pulls a similar stunt in The Country House, which makes me think he's got a Philip Roth complex. Get over it.
So, why the low rating? Because, for no good reason, the other male character, listed as 55 in the description, dates and impregnates a 25 year old. I cannot tell you how exhausted I am by this trope. So. Very. Exhausted. It turns an otherwise timely and emotionally deep story into a retro-male fantasy. DM pulls a similar stunt in The Country House, which makes me think he's got a Philip Roth complex. Get over it.
January 24, 2023
this is a play i read for class hehe
January 11, 2012
Focusing on the recovery of a photojournalist (Sarah) injured in a roadside bombing in Iraq, Margulies's play is split roughly evenly between the "big" themes (the responsibility of journalists to their subjects; the moral implications of witnessing atrocity from a distance) and the domestic drama of the central figure and her partner (Jamie/James), a word journalist who had left the combat zone a while before she was wounded. While Margulies doesn't have a lot to add to the discussion of the moral issues, he frames them in a clear manner that brings issues common in Vietnam literature up to date. His treatment of the characters' personal relationships, clearly intended to reflect on the moral issues, is quite a bit less successful. The couple he introduces as a foil for Sarah and James (Richard and Mandy) border on cardboard. It's possible that great actors could overcome the problems with the script, but it's nowhere near as good as Margulies' Collected Stories. Still waiting for the first effective play about Iraq/Afghanistan. The films (Restropo and The Wounded Platoon for instance) are way way out in front.
February 23, 2013
One of the best modern plays I have ever read (and personally my favorite - I've been using one monologue in particular from it for about two years now for all sorts of auditions). This piece is so real in its dialogue and its not-so-happy ending - true to life as we know it today. Presents characters who have a definite side on an issue, but it's up for you to decide who is right and who is wrong - most of the time, they don't even know themselves. I would encourage people who don't usually read plays to read this one. Phenomenal.
October 1, 2013
One of the best things about rehearsing a Donald Margulies play is the opportunity one is given of reading and re-reading and re-reading it.
Since July I've read (and re-read and re-read) it more than I can count and it only gets better. Margulies writes people, who talk like people. They are real and human and complicated and doing the best they can.
I also love the quiet parallels that run through his stories so that you can see something one way in one scene and another later on. And then go back and re-read it and see it both ways.
Since July I've read (and re-read and re-read) it more than I can count and it only gets better. Margulies writes people, who talk like people. They are real and human and complicated and doing the best they can.
I also love the quiet parallels that run through his stories so that you can see something one way in one scene and another later on. And then go back and re-read it and see it both ways.
March 12, 2020
I think I would give this a 3.5 if I could.
I thought that the pacing and writing style were great. I loved the comic relief characters journey throughout - which was sort of from meaningless menial life to a fulfilled one - that the other characters acknowledged and even respected with time. (Even if they didn't quite understand the choices they still respected her by the end)
I thought that the Sarah character was the least easy to relate to / like and she really only showed her humanity a couple of times in the play.
I do think that I prefer reading this play than watching it get done - as I've only seen one scene done but I think on paper it lends itself better to the readers interpretation of the issues which I think is what the playwright wants - you to look at your own belief systems and your own 'issues' both with what happens in your own immediate world and what happens beyond it. And to question what it means to help others and what you can do from the comfort of your home reading a magazine as it were. Rather than watching it, where the director gets to spin it into what they want the audience to see / question. (both legitimate, but for me personally - I connected more with the material having read it then while watching it)
I didn't love it because of the characterization of Sarah and her own need to be okay with her work - but I do understand that without it (and without people like her who can actually do this in real life) we would be left in the dark about a lot of things -- so it's interesting that she's left in the dark of a lot of what life is because of her job which helps shed light on so much of the worlds darkness.
Overall a good read, would recommend if you like reading plays
I thought that the pacing and writing style were great. I loved the comic relief characters journey throughout - which was sort of from meaningless menial life to a fulfilled one - that the other characters acknowledged and even respected with time. (Even if they didn't quite understand the choices they still respected her by the end)
I thought that the Sarah character was the least easy to relate to / like and she really only showed her humanity a couple of times in the play.
I do think that I prefer reading this play than watching it get done - as I've only seen one scene done but I think on paper it lends itself better to the readers interpretation of the issues which I think is what the playwright wants - you to look at your own belief systems and your own 'issues' both with what happens in your own immediate world and what happens beyond it. And to question what it means to help others and what you can do from the comfort of your home reading a magazine as it were. Rather than watching it, where the director gets to spin it into what they want the audience to see / question. (both legitimate, but for me personally - I connected more with the material having read it then while watching it)
I didn't love it because of the characterization of Sarah and her own need to be okay with her work - but I do understand that without it (and without people like her who can actually do this in real life) we would be left in the dark about a lot of things -- so it's interesting that she's left in the dark of a lot of what life is because of her job which helps shed light on so much of the worlds darkness.
Overall a good read, would recommend if you like reading plays
July 26, 2020
Having just read Disgraced, I'm seeing a lot of parallels in the two plays. Both deal with two couples in one of the couple's homes. Infidelity is an underlying trigger point in the conflict going on. Both deal with someone struggling with an element of post 9-11 world. In Disgraced it is with being a former muslim in America, in Time Stands Still it is with a role as a war correspondent.
This book's biggest strength is the dialogue. That first scene with James and Sarah interacting with Richard and Mandy was great to me. I felt like I could really get a taste for the characters there. The intellectual elitism, the awkwardness of meeting someone for the first time and in a strained settings.
I think the big piece that is holding me back (and seeing a few other reviewers comment on it as well) is Sarah's character. I get the general vibe of her, I read My War Gone By, I Miss it So in high school. However, I feel like in the second half, she doesn't quite resolve correctly for me. She returns from the prison photo shoot and seems to have this existential crisis about who she is and why she's doing it. And then it seems to just be dropped and she goes back to what she was doing. What was her reasoning? Is she just an andrenaline junkie? Does she feel like she's a difference maker? While normally I can look away from an element like this, here it feels really important to resolve as this is the fundamental question of the play. Mandy calls out war correspondence as just showing her stuff she can't do anything about. James thinks it's just a way to sate the rich liberals who want to feel bad for themselves. And Sarah... she doesn't seem to offer a convincing counter.
Oh well, the dialogue has me interested to read more of Donald Margulies work.
This book's biggest strength is the dialogue. That first scene with James and Sarah interacting with Richard and Mandy was great to me. I felt like I could really get a taste for the characters there. The intellectual elitism, the awkwardness of meeting someone for the first time and in a strained settings.
I think the big piece that is holding me back (and seeing a few other reviewers comment on it as well) is Sarah's character. I get the general vibe of her, I read My War Gone By, I Miss it So in high school. However, I feel like in the second half, she doesn't quite resolve correctly for me. She returns from the prison photo shoot and seems to have this existential crisis about who she is and why she's doing it. And then it seems to just be dropped and she goes back to what she was doing. What was her reasoning? Is she just an andrenaline junkie? Does she feel like she's a difference maker? While normally I can look away from an element like this, here it feels really important to resolve as this is the fundamental question of the play. Mandy calls out war correspondence as just showing her stuff she can't do anything about. James thinks it's just a way to sate the rich liberals who want to feel bad for themselves. And Sarah... she doesn't seem to offer a convincing counter.
Oh well, the dialogue has me interested to read more of Donald Margulies work.
February 18, 2021
Incisive and probing, Donald Margulies explores the questions of the ethics of reporting atrocities without proposing easy answers
I read this for grad school and found the interplay of characters effective. Each of the four characters represents a "type" while also remaining true to humanity. Like any time I read a play, I have to read it aloud, and there are multiple moments that I will be going back over to puzzle through the questions raised. I do wish there was a way to see either of the two opening runs - Anna Gunn or Laura Linney as Sarah would have been amazing to see!
If you get a chance to see this performed, definitely go - and plan for a lively dinner conversation afterward.
I read this for grad school and found the interplay of characters effective. Each of the four characters represents a "type" while also remaining true to humanity. Like any time I read a play, I have to read it aloud, and there are multiple moments that I will be going back over to puzzle through the questions raised. I do wish there was a way to see either of the two opening runs - Anna Gunn or Laura Linney as Sarah would have been amazing to see!
If you get a chance to see this performed, definitely go - and plan for a lively dinner conversation afterward.
September 5, 2021
In one word: fine. I've been wanting to read this play for a couple of years now, because it is a commonly used title in college scene study classes, and I've liked what I've seen from it and wanted to know more. It does that thing in plays that I dislike, which is when a play tells instead of shows. The entire story is mainly the aftermath of some big accident, an accident we only ever hear about. It's extremely character driven, which isn't a bad thing entirely, but leaves much to the imagination. There isn't really a plot. It the story of two characters and their two friends as they deal with common human relationships. I don't think there is anything wrong with that, but it left me wanting more. I wanted to know more about Sarah and why she was the way she was. Why she felt she needed the adrenaline and the extremities to feel like she was doing something important? I wanted to know more about Jamie and his desires beyond a surface level. My favorite part of the whole play was Mandy's monologue. I think her character is the most compelling and acts as a straight man that questions the otherwise bizarre concepts being brought up by the main characters. I think it has some good scenes for classes, and that one good monologue, but I don't know if I would ever want to see this play staged? It feels like a filler to me. I wanted more, so I enjoyed it, but I wanted it to go deeper.
August 28, 2017
Margulies has a knack for dialogue, beautifully shaping his characters through the conversations between them—for the most part. In Time, the overt debates on journalistic ethics in war zones feel paint-by-numbers and thus quite tiresome (especially when the one-note Mandy is involved), but the implicit reflection of those debates in the strained relationships between the characters, particularly Sarah and Jamie, is much stronger and deeply poignant.
March 4, 2023
3.5 stars rounded down. This is my second play by Margulies and I’m once again struck by how real and whole his characters feel. His plays are such a treat to read (& I imagine even better performed).
I especially liked the commentary in this one about white liberals and their insistence on going to areas of conflict and documenting the events rather than actually helping. It felt a little too on the nose at points, but overall it didn’t detract from my reading.
I especially liked the commentary in this one about white liberals and their insistence on going to areas of conflict and documenting the events rather than actually helping. It felt a little too on the nose at points, but overall it didn’t detract from my reading.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 5, 2017
A powerful piece for sure. What I like about Margulies's stronger works, of which I would rank this one, is its subtlety, it's quietness. He allows space for the actors to fill in the blanks to create these fully-realized characters,
June 19, 2021
Great writing
I could relate to the characters. It was very well written. Very clear, moving and made me think about the current state of our world as well as many other things the book touched upon.
I could relate to the characters. It was very well written. Very clear, moving and made me think about the current state of our world as well as many other things the book touched upon.
December 19, 2017
simply gorgeous. time stood still reading it.
May 25, 2018
Good read. Felt a little like a rollercoaster with peakes and valley throughout and I have not reconciled the transformation at the ending. It seems too obvious.
November 17, 2019
Interesting, if not always smooth, exploration of themes—particularly in the character relationships. Generated lively discussion.
January 12, 2021
Really interesting viewpoints, but the Margulies' voice seemed to overcrowd the character's voices. They felt too contrived to me.
April 14, 2021
i have to make an entire directors book on this idk how im gonna do it it was so boring
December 27, 2021
spent the majority of it very angry at everyone for how shitty they were to Mandy and the rest wishing I could’ve seen Laura Linney and Brian D’arcy James in this
October 24, 2022
Marguliea fluidly brings up critical ethical questions of conflict photography and the role of photojournalism and photojournalists to document and report “the truth of history”
February 20, 2024
This guy is such a good writer. Love my girl Mandy
May 21, 2024
i watched civil war before reading this so i kept coming back to that movie and how the reading felt relevant to what’s going on now. really got me thinking after i put the play down.
May 20, 2016
"I live off the suffering of strangers. I built a career, a reputation, on the sorrows of people I don't know and will never see again."
The morality of photojournalism- "the kind of cannibalism that is part of being an artist drawing from the world. You're taking things, you're using them. I'm not making a judgment about artists being bad people. I just think it's the nature of being an artist, it's a response to the world."
!!! [the moral implications of witnessing atrocity from a distance => but: “Every edit is a lie.”― Jean-Luc Godard => therefore non- intervention: justifiable? ]
He asks aloud, "What's morally justifiable?" then answers. "It's all relative. That's part of the argument of the play."
"My plays often deal with the problem of being an artist," he says, meaning the crises of conscience that afflict creative people reckoning with the moral compromises their work sometimes entails.
Sarah's conscience: In the case of Sarah in "Time Stands Still," it's the growing fear that she has traded successfully on the impoverished victims of war and deprivation -- the subjects who end up in the pages of magazines and in handsome books resting on the coffee tables of Manhattan's affluent elite.
"It's what photography does, it captures and freezes time," Margulies says about the title. "I thought it a euphonious title. It seemed appropriate.
// solid but not wow- inducing
The morality of photojournalism- "the kind of cannibalism that is part of being an artist drawing from the world. You're taking things, you're using them. I'm not making a judgment about artists being bad people. I just think it's the nature of being an artist, it's a response to the world."
!!! [the moral implications of witnessing atrocity from a distance => but: “Every edit is a lie.”― Jean-Luc Godard => therefore non- intervention: justifiable? ]
He asks aloud, "What's morally justifiable?" then answers. "It's all relative. That's part of the argument of the play."
"My plays often deal with the problem of being an artist," he says, meaning the crises of conscience that afflict creative people reckoning with the moral compromises their work sometimes entails.
Sarah's conscience: In the case of Sarah in "Time Stands Still," it's the growing fear that she has traded successfully on the impoverished victims of war and deprivation -- the subjects who end up in the pages of magazines and in handsome books resting on the coffee tables of Manhattan's affluent elite.
"It's what photography does, it captures and freezes time," Margulies says about the title. "I thought it a euphonious title. It seemed appropriate.
// solid but not wow- inducing
June 7, 2010
This has my vote for the Tony Award (if only I were voting). It’s about the allure of war for journalists and photographers. They, like soldiers, get an adrenalin rush from being in harm’s way. The play grapples with issues that seem like clichés, but in the hands of Donald Margulies, the ideas are original, important, and very current. There are two couples—not unlike Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Here, however, the younger, seemingly innocent wife is not a simpering naïf; she’s got spine and she’s not afraid to express herself. While she’s not nearly as articulate as the others, she’s usually right!
March 23, 2016
After reading "Twelve Angry Men" and "Who is Afraid of Virginia Woolf" I didn't believe that I'll be able to find such a fantastic play. But I DID! I did!!! Absolutely fantastic, couldn't stop reading. And the characters were so strong and so distinctive. Yes we are all different (very different) under the one sun. I have to admit I found my life (my problems) in this book. Even from completely different background, different occupation similarities were very painful.
An excellent book. What a talented play writer! Great!
An excellent book. What a talented play writer! Great!
January 31, 2023
This is a brilliant play about two people who love each other intensely and have been through similar war-reporting trauma. But they handle in in very different ways and view their obligation to report war's atrocities to the public very differently. In they end, despite all the love and all the shared experience, they cannot be together. You can not fail to be moved to tears by this play, as I am every time I read it.
September 3, 2016
Well written, and I liked that current topic. There is some strong language, although it wasn't too gratuitous. I felt like the characters were pretty well developed (somewhat predictable), but that the playwright almost cared more about the ending then letting the characters tell and experience the story. Overall, though, very solid, and while not for everyone's tastes, I would recommend it.
October 5, 2015
Pretty solid play with some very natural sounding dialogue and an interesting look at four characters as they continue their lives in New York. The mundane nature of the play is in direct contrast to the experiences the characters have entertained during their career (war photographer, etc.). Feels more like an actors' play than anything else. Solid but not wow-inducing.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 47 reviews