David Berkson Adapts Novel Into One-Man Play

David Berkson, English and theater teacher, starred in a one-man show that he adapted from the book Dear Committee Members.

The novel, written by Julie Schumacher, consists entirely of letters of recommendation by fictional creative writing teacher, Jason T. Fitger.

“Fitger is advocating for one of his students who is writing a novel,” Berkson said. “He wants his agent to pick up the student’s novel and represent him.”

Berkson first heard about the book on the internet.

“I listen to a podcast called Pop Culture Happy Hour and one of the people on there was raving about the book,” Berkson said. “So I picked it up, read it and totally fell in love with it.”

While reading the book, Berkson started to envision it as a one-man show.

“While I was reading [Dear Committee Members], I thought, ‘This would make a terrific one-man show,’” Berkson said. “I read it further and I thought ‘I would love to adapt it and be in this one-man show’ and I thought, “Someone must have thought of this already.”

It turned out that nobody had adapted it. From there, Berkson went about contacting Schumacher’s agent and got the rights for the book.

Before adapting the novel, Schumacher had a few conditions for Berkson.

“I was asked, ‘Do you plan on adding any characters to the story or do you plan on adding any additional dialogue to the story?’” Berkson said. “[The letters that make up this novel are] all written by this creative writing teacher Jason T. Fitger, you don’t hear anybody else’s voice. My response was, ‘I never saw this as more than a one-man show’ and I suspect if I had answered differently they would have been less agreeable with me.”

While adapting the book, Berkson had to trim the show down from what was about five hours in audiobook form to around 90 minutes.

“There are so many factors in figuring out what to keep and what to cut,” Berkson said. “There was not a letter where I was like, ‘That’s a letter that needs to go.’ It was more, ‘What do I need to keep?’”

Not only did Berkson adapt the book, but he is also stared in the play, a process that had its own unique challenges.

“This one-man show is particularly challenging because the sentences are long,” Berkson said. “Some of the sentences are half a page long you have to figure out what your operative words are. You have to figure out ‘Where am I going to breathe?”

The show resonated with some of the teachers in attendance.

“I can relate as a teacher who writes many letters of recommendation,” Molly Sultany, a science teacher said. “I thought it was witty, but also a very raw, honest look at the intersection of someone’s professional and personal life.”