following revelations of sexual harassment claims<\/a> by a TV producer against him. Raicek then decamped to New York and started down the path of rebuilding. \u201cThis book came out of a dark period in my own life when I was grappling with loss and really thinking about the process of starting over,\u201d she explained. \u201cI wanted to explore a character who has to almost go to an even darker place to find herself again.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\tThe novel\u2019s protagonist, Liv, a Hollywood writer of about Raicek\u2019s age, flees L.A. after her problematic fianc\u00e9 is fired from his job then dies in a car accident mere weeks before their wedding. Back in Manhattan, Liv is drawn into a sordid love triangle against a backdrop of hedonism and glamour spanning Manhattan, the Hamptons, and Lake Como. Liv\u2019s path to reinvention is messy, unruly, and nonlinear in a way that \u201cI think hasn\u2019t been explored very often,\u201d continued Raicek, but one that has consumed her recent work. \u201cTo have an authentic, raw voice, you have to go to the thing that obsesses you.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tFor anyone who has seen My Master Builder, the themes of desire, betrayal, and the mistakes of the past may seem familiar. In the play \u2014 which Raicek based on Ibsen\u2019s The Master Builder \u2014 an old affair between a famous architect (McGregor) and his student (Debicki) is reignited when the architect\u2019s wife (Fleetwood) arranges a dinner party the former student is invited to.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cI\u2019ve been interested in exploring a world through an outsider perspective \u2014 somebody who\u2019s lured into a world that they are not familiar with, and how do those very combustible elements end up playing out?\u201d says Raicek. \u201cAs a female writer, it\u2019s a really exciting time to mine the depth and messiness of female desire. I think it appears in my work whether I want it to or not.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tShe wrote My Master Builder in a sudden creative burst after receiving the commission, and within six months it was going to the West End. \u201cIt was a wild dream,\u201d recalled Raicek. \u201cA rollercoaster of a process that I was lucky to have.\u201d The play sold out for 13 weeks and was well reviewed.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cIt is so exciting to have that dialog and conversation with an audience, and sit in the theater while they were gasping and crying and yelling at the stage,\u201d continued Raicek. With a novel, the experience is almost entirely interior and quiet, she admits, \u201cbut I\u2019m hoping that it will touch people and move people, and the characters will mirror the reader\u2019s own experiences of pain and loss and incongruent desires and all the things that the novel is about.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tSo will Raicek adapt The Plunge to screen or stage? \u201cI\u2019ve already been developing it for film with a very exciting star,\u201d said Raicek, though she was tight-lipped on who. \u201cIt\u2019ll be announced in due time,\u201d but in the meantime she\u2019s focused on translating her work to screen. In other words, Raicek isn\u2019t slowing down anytime soon.<\/p>\n
\n\tThis story appeared in the April 8 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lila Raicek has been busy. Her play My Master Builder debuted last year at Wyndham\u2019s Theater in London\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":388753,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[412,146,85,46],"class_list":{"0":"post-388752","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-il","11":"tag-israel"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388752","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=388752"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388752\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/388753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=388752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=388752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=388752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}