A Window Into… Tiny Beautiful Things
Dramaturgy Note by Jocelyn L. Buckner
Have you ever wanted advice on something, but didn’t know who to ask? Have you ever sought comfort in the wisdom of a stranger, someone you’ve never met, and whose face or name you don’t know? Have you ever sought advice from the internet, or by perusing a weekly advice column? You’re not alone. Millions of people do-and have for centuries.
Cultural historians date the first advice column to a newspaper called The Athenian Mercury published in London in the 1690s. According to Smithsonian Magazine and Jessica Weisberg, author of Asking For A Friend: Three Centuries of Advice on Life, Love, Money, and Other Burning Questions From a Nation Obsessed, the first best-selling advice book on both sides of the Atlantic “hit the shelves in 1774, [and] was written by Lord Chesterfield, a scheming British social climber . . . Americans also reached for Benjamin Franklin’s annual Poor Richard’s Almanack—which delivered instructions on virtue and vice with characteristic Franklin wit during its run from 1732 to 1758” for the same reason: “they wanted guidance.”
In the U.S., advice columns flourished in the nineteenth century as women’s journals, magazines, and newspaper sections proliferated, targeting predominantly white middle- and upper-class women with advice on everything from Sunday dinner to childrearing to courtship etiquette. In the twentieth century columnists continued doling out advice, perhaps the most famous being twin sisters Esther Pauline Friedman and Pauline Esther Friedman who penned the dueling columns “Dear Abby” and “Ask Ann Landers” across decades of seismic social and cultural shifts. In the new millennium those in search of advice still seek out an authoritative voice, and those voices have become more diverse, more versed in a range of issues beyond the domestic sphere, and readily accessible across numerous media platforms.
In a 2019 Time Magazine article titled “Why We Love Advice Columns, According to Psychologists,” Lori Gottlieb the psychotherapist who writes The Atlantic’s “Dear Therapist” column notes, “the appeal stems from the fact that, though we all feel unique, our problems tend to be shared, at least to some degree… Readers might say to their friends, ‘I’m reading it because it’s voyeuristic and fun,’ but I think that people are really reading it the same way they’re ‘asking for a friend.’ They really find pieces of their own lives in every single letter.” In an age in which we are instantly connected and simultaneously chronically isolated by technology’s presence in our lives, the human need for advice, reassurance, and perspective remains as pressing as ever. We are, as The New Yorker stated in 2021, living in an “Age of Peak Advice.”
This new age of advice columns was established in no small part by author Cheryl Strayed. Beginning in 2010, Strayed, or “Sugar,” created a renaissance in the advice column tradition by sharing arresting personal anecdotes carefully curated to synchronize with the cares and concerns of her letter writers and readers. Such vulnerability fed readers’ appetites for voyeuristic access to the intimate details of others’ lives, mirroring the practice of self-exposure normalized on social media.
Tiny Beautiful Things is based on Cheryl Strayed’s memoir of the same name, which also inspired a hit TV series, all chronicling Strayed’s experience penning the column “Dear Sugar” for more than a decade. Adapting an advice column for the stage, at first glance, might seem easy, or simplistic, or “fluff.” But the true stories revealed in the letters illuminate so much about who we are, how we endure, and how we perceive ourselves and one another. “Trouble is the common denominator of living,” Ann Landers declared in her memoir, Since You Ask Me. The theatrical version of Tiny Beautiful Things invites audiences to sit in communion with the stories, to recognize and empathize with the human condition of struggle, and to perhaps reflect upon our own lives, recognizing ourselves in the tiny, beautiful things that connect us all.
» Subscribe Today | » Buy Tickets | » Learn MoreAdvice Columns Through the Years
1691: Widely considered to be the first advice column is published in London’s newspaper, The Athenian Mercury
1774: The first bestselling advice novel is published — Lord Chesterfield’s Letters. Not originally intended for publication, the celebrated and controversial correspondences between Lord Chesterfield and his son Philip, dating from 1737, were praised in their day as a complete manual of education.
19th Century: Advice Columns flourish in US. Women’s Journals, magazines, and newspaper sections, targeting predominantly white and middle class women. Advice topics range from Sunday dinner to child-rearing to courtship etiquette.
20th Century: “Dear Abby” and “Ask Ann Landers” (actually twin sisters named Esther Pauline Friedman and Pauline Esther Friedman) advice columns gain mainstream popularity.
21st Century: According to a 2019 Time Magazine article, “The internet has played a big part in the recent expansion, simply by providing a platform and allowing a more diverse array of columnists to have a voice and build a following, Gottlieb says. Old-school columns like ‘Miss Manners’ and ‘Dear Abby’ — which are still syndicated by news outlets across the country — are now joined by the wide range of voices and backgrounds reflected in columns like Out’s LGBTQ-geared ‘¡Hola Papi!’ and Dame magazine’s advice podcast ‘Sip on This,’ which is hosted by a woman of color”
Jocelyn L. Buckner (Dramaturg for Tiny Beautiful Things) has served as a production and new works dramaturg at the Chance since 2014. She has also worked with Native Voices at the Autry, South Coast Repertory Theatre, Shakespeare Orange County, and Center Stage Theatre in Southern California, and The Donmar Warehouse and Theatre 503 in London. She is the editor of A Critical Companion to Lynn Nottage (Routledge), and has published numerous book chapters as well as articles, editorials, book reviews, and performance reviews in peer reviewed scholarly journals. She is also the current editor of Theatre History Studies journal. She is an associate professor of theatre at Chapman University. Ph.D.: University of Kansas, M.F.A.: Virginia Commonwealth University, B.A.: Converse College.
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