Written by Amy Nostbakken, Patricia Rozema, and Norah Sadava, based on the play by Amy Nostbakken and Norah Sadava
Directed by Patricia Rozema
Starring Amy Nostbakken, Norah Sadava and Maev Beaty
Running Time: 1 hour and 31 minutes
Unrated – nudity, language

by Audrey Callerstrom

Adapting a play for the screen can be tricky. If it’s a musical, there’s more room to breathe, opportunities for costumes, production design and choreography to expand the space. Smaller dramas, like Mouthpiece, are trickier. Audiences for a film don’t want to see characters spend a lot of time in one room. If characters are in one room, we don’t get the feeling that things are moving forward. This moment is an “in-between.” To mitigate this, filmmakers often move scenes of dialogue that originally took place in one room to a second or third, location and, for whatever reason, it’s almost always a grocery store. Additionally, some plays just don’t translate well to the screen. Either the theme is dated, the transitions are messy, the casting is off, or important plot points are lost.