11 Tony nods for local author

Who says Southern charm and European sass don’t mix?

Chapel Hill resident Elizabeth Spencer’s 1960 novella, “The Light in the Piazza,” is gaining new recognition as a Broadway musical.

Piazza recently received 11 nominations for the 2005 Tony Awards.

Spencer’s tale of a Southern woman and her daughter traveling in 1950s Florence, Italy swiped nominations for Best Musical among other prestigious Tonys, including best score and best leading actress.

Spencer isn’t an avid fan of Broadway and never envisioned how the story might be turned into a musical, but she said composer Adam Guettel's and writer Craig Lucas’ production was wonderful.

“I’ve just been hopeful for them all along,” she said. “Between the two of them, I think they found a way to make it work.”

The musical was produced first in 2003 at the Intiman Theatre in Seattle and opened on Broadway in April at the Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center.

Spencer said there had been interest in turning “Piazza” — also a 1962 film — into a musical all along, but legalities prevented it from happening until recently.

“It was hung up in a contract that I shouldn’t have signed,” she said.

Spencer, a native of Carrollton, Miss., taught in the University’s English department from 1986 to 1992.

Friends and former colleagues of Spencer are excited by the recognition the musical has brought the author.

“I think it’s a fine work, and I think that it’s just delightful that they made the musical,” said Louis Rubin Jr., a former UNC professor and founder of the local publishing company Algonquin Books.

Rubin said he read the novel before he met Spencer as a visiting scholar in the 1970s, but he probably wouldn’t be able to make it to the musical.

“I couldn’t hear it anyway because I’m half deaf,” he joked.

Spencer, who lived in Italy from 1953 to 1958 after she went on a Guggenheim Fellowship, said she chose Florence as the setting for the novella because she had loved it since she first visited the city.

“I guess that’s where I thought it took place,” she said. “I couldn’t have written a story about Italy unless I knew something about Italy intimately.”

Some say Spencer's own life in Italy probably factored into the story.

“She certainly draws on her own experiences as an American and a Southerner in Italy,” said Fred Hobson, a UNC English professor.

But, when asked about the book’s basis in her own life, Spencer maintained that the work is pure fiction.

“I much prefer a gauzy disguise over things,” she said coyly.

Still, having one's work turned into a headline-catching musical can’t hurt a writer’s career.

Asked how the the Tony attention has impacted her exposure, Spencer said, “Well you called me up didn't you?”

Contact the A&E Editor at artsdesk@unc.edu