Tagged : jason grote

For playwright Jason Grote, writing for NBC’s ‘Smash’ blows away all the clichés about working in television.

Playwright-scriptwriter Jason Grote on the set of the show "Smash."

As an East Coast “experimental” playwright, I’m often faced with disbelief when I tell my peers that I landed a staff job on NBC’s new series “Smash.” Partially it’s the strange-bedfellows notion of an allegedly avant-garde writer paired with a big, glitzy TV show about Broadway produced by Steven Spielberg. Even more prevalent, however, is the perception among theater folk that writing TV is slumming, or torturous, or at the very least a cynical sellout. It’s a cliché, but it doesn’t come from nowhere. Hollywood did burn the likes of Bertolt Brecht and F. Scott Fitzgerald, and the martyred writer is part of film iconography: the floating corpse of William Holden in “Sunset Boulevard” and John Turturro shambling through a flaming hotel in “Barton Fink.”

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Playwright Jason Grote has joined the writing team for NBC’s Smash, according to a report in The Washington Post.

Grote’s play Civilization (all you can eat) is currently playing at The Woolly Mammoth Theatre. Among his other plays are Maria/Stuart, Hamilton Township, This Storm Is What We Call Progress, Box Americana, and 1001.

Among Grote’s contributions toward Smash is creating the character to be played by previously announced guest star Bernadette Peters.