Kate Fodor

Last updated

Kate Fodor
NationalityAmerican
Occupation(s)Playwright, writer
Notable workHannah and Martin, 100 Saints You Should Know, RX, Fifty Ways
Spouse Michael Gaston
Children2
AwardsGuggenheim Fellowship, Joseph Jefferson Citation for New Work, Roger L. Stevens Award (Kennedy Center for New American Plays)

Kate Fodor is an American playwright and television writer. Her debut play, Hannah and Martin, opened Off-Broadway on March 20, 2004 by the Epic Theatre Ensemble. The play, based on the relationship between political theorist Hannah Arendt and philosopher Martin Heidegger, received favorable reviews: Margo Jefferson in The New York Times called the play "thoughtful and ambitious"; [1] in Variety , Marilyn Stasio said, "Strong on craft, Fodor handles the structural logistics like a clever mathematician patiently working her way through a tricky formula." [2] The play won the Roger L. Stevens Award from the Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays and a Joseph Jefferson Citation for New Work. [3] It was also a finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. [4]

Fodor followed this with the play 100 Saints You Should Know, also Off-Broadway, at Playwrights Horizons, in September 2007, about a priest in the midst of his own spiritual crisis interacting with a small galaxy of people experiencing theirs as well. [5] Ben Brantley of The New York Times took issue with what he described as the play's "Platonic" tone that resulted in "a static collection of portraits," but acknowledged, "Ms. Fodor has a fine sense of the forms of emotional aggression, passive and otherwise, that can infuse even the most banal exchanges between parents and children" and "a good ear for the kinks and curls of speech of people of different generations and education." [6] The play was called "one of the year's 10 best" by Entertainment Weekly and TimeOut New York in 2007 and went on to productions in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and St. Louis, among others. The play won the Roger L. Stevens Award from the National Theatre Conference. [7]

Her next play, the romantic comedy Rx, represented a shift in tone, exploring in a satiric way the vagaries of the powers of the pharmaceutical industry; it also debuted Off-Broadway, at Primary Stages, on Jan. 24, 2012. [8] Its reviews were positive, with Charles Isherwood from The New York Times praising its "winning combination of light satire and romance" and deeming the production a "Critic's Pick" [9] [10] Writing in The Village Voice, Michael Feingold called Rx "a sharp, tenderly sardonic new comedy" and "a thornily funny image of today's screwed-up world." Feingold compared the play to the films of Ernst Lubitsch "with their enchanting mixture of sweetness and sting." [11]

Fodor's play "Fifty Ways" was the inaugural commission in the new plays program at Chautauqua Theater Company, the professional theater company of the Chautauqua Institution. The play was produced there in 2012. [12]

Fodor's plays have been published or excerpted in a number of anthologies and are published by Dramatists Play Service. [13]

Fodor was a 2013 Guggenheim fellow in playwriting [14] and has been a fellow at the Playwrights Center in Minneapolis, a resident playwright at New Dramatists in New York and a member of the New Play Frontiers program at People's Light & Theater Company in Malvern, Pennsylvania. She has taught playwriting at the University of Pennsylvania. [15]

As a television writer, Fodor has developed pilots for AMC and Starz.

Fodor is the daughter of the cognitive scientist and philosopher Jerry Fodor and the linguist Janet Dean Fodor. Her husband is theater and television actor Michael Gaston. Fodor has a daughter named Lucy, born in 2005, to whom she dedicated the published version of her comedy Rx, calling her "the funniest person I know."

Fodor is a graduate of Oberlin College.

Related Research Articles

Christopher Ferdinand Durang was an American playwright known for works of outrageous and often absurd comedy. His work was especially popular in the 1980s, though his career seemed to get a second wind in the late 1990s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Terrence McNally</span> American playwright (1938–2020)

Terrence McNally was an American playwright, librettist, and screenwriter. Described as "the bard of American theater" and "one of the greatest contemporary playwrights the theater world has yet produced," McNally was the recipient of five Tony Awards. He won the Tony Award for Best Play for Love! Valour! Compassion! and Master Class and the Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical for Kiss of the Spider Woman and Ragtime, and received the 2019 Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement. He was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 1996, and he also received the Dramatists Guild Lifetime Achievement Award in 2011 and the Lucille Lortel Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2018, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the highest recognition of artistic merit in the United States. His other accolades included an Emmy Award, two Guggenheim Fellowships, a Rockefeller Grant, four Drama Desk Awards, two Lucille Lortel Awards, two Obie Awards, and three Hull-Warriner Awards.

David Auburn is an American playwright, screenwriter and theatre director. He is best known for his 2000 play Proof, which won the 2001 Tony Award for Best Play and Pulitzer Prize for Drama. He also wrote the screenplays for the 2005 film version of Proof, The Lake House (2006), The Girl in the Park (2007), and Georgetown (2019).

Theresa Rebeck is an American playwright, television writer, and novelist. Her work has appeared on the Broadway and Off-Broadway stage, in film, and on television. Among her awards are the Mystery Writers of America's Edgar Award. In 2012, she received the Athena Film Festival Award for Excellence as a Playwright and Author of Films, Books, and Television. She is a 2009 recipient of the Alex Awards. Her works have influenced American playwrights by bringing a feminist edge in her old works.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lynn Nottage</span> American playwright (born 1964)

Lynn Nottage is an American playwright whose work often focuses on the experience of working-class people, particularly working-class people who are Black. She has received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama twice: in 2009 for her play Ruined, and in 2017 for her play Sweat. She was the first woman to have won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama two times.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">J. T. Rogers</span> American dramatist (born 1968)

J. T. Rogers is an American playwright. He is best known for his play Oslo (2016) about the 1990s Oslo Peace Accords between Israel and Palestine. The play received widespread acclaim as well as the Tony Award, Drama Desk Award, and Obie Award for Best Play. He is also known for his plays Madagascar (2004),The Overwhelming (2006), Blood and Gifts (2010), and Corruption (2024).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tina Howe</span> American playwright (1937–2023)

Mabel Davis "Tina" Howe was an American playwright. In a career that spanned more than four decades, Howe's best-known works include Museum, The Art of Dining, Painting Churches, Coastal Disturbances, and Pride's Crossing.

Christopher Shinn is an American playwright. His play Dying City (2006) was a finalist for the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and Where Do We Live (2004) won the 2005 Obie Award, Playwriting.

Lucy Thurber is an American playwright based in New York City. She is the recipient of the first Gary Bonasorte Memorial Prize for Playwriting, a Lilly Award and a 2014 OBIE Award for The Hill Town Plays.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lisa Kron</span> American actress and playwright (born 1961)

Elizabeth S. "Lisa" Kron is an American actress and playwright. She is best known for writing the lyrics and book to the musical Fun Home for which she won both the Tony Award for Best Original Score and the Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical. Fun Home was also awarded the Tony Award for Best Musical in 2015 and the 2014 Obie Award for writing for musical theater.

Adrienne Kennedy is an American playwright. She is best known for Funnyhouse of a Negro, which premiered in 1964 and won an Obie Award. She won a lifetime Obie as well. In 2018 she was inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Annie Baker</span> American playwright and teacher

Annie Baker is an American playwright and teacher who won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for her play The Flick. Among her works are the Shirley, Vermont plays, which take place in the fictional town of Shirley: Circle Mirror Transformation, Nocturama, Body Awareness, and The Aliens. She was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2017.

Halley Feiffer is an American actress, playwright and television writer, known for her award-winning plays I'm Gonna Pray for You So Hard, Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Gynecologic Oncology Unit at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center of New York City, and for showrunning and writing the entire season of American Horror Story: Delicate starring Emma Roberts and Kim Kardashian.

Bathsheba Sarah Lee "Bash" Doran is a British-born playwright and TV scriptwriter living in New York City.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stephen Kunken</span> American actor

Stephen Michael Kunken is an American actor. He is known for the roles of Ari Spyros on Showtime's Billions and Commander Putnam on Hulu's The Handmaid's Tale. His film work includes work with Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Woody Allen, Paul Greengrass, Ang Lee, Barry Levinson, Ron Howard and others. Graduating with top honors from The Juilliard School, Kunken has an extensive and celebrated theater career appearing on Broadway in 7 different Productions and countless off-Broadway and Regional productions. He is most readily known for playing Andy Fastow in the Broadway play Enron, for which he received a Tony Award nomination for Featured Actor in a Play. Other Broadway credits include Frost/Nixon and Rock 'n' Roll'.

Lila Rose Kaplan is a 21st-century American playwright. She currently lives in Somerville, MA, where she was a Huntington Playwriting Fellow with the Huntington Theatre Company (2012-2014) as well as a Next Voices Playwriting Fellow with New Repertory Theatre (2015-2016).

Stephen Karam is an American playwright, screenwriter and director. His plays Sons of the Prophet, a comedy-drama about a Lebanese-American family, and The Humans were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2012 and 2016, respectively. The Humans won the 2016 Tony Award for Best Play, and Karam wrote and directed a film adaptation of the play, released in 2021.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Martyna Majok</span> Polish-American playwright (born 1985)

Martyna Majok is a Polish-born American playwright who received the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play Cost of Living. She emigrated to the United States as a child and grew up in New Jersey. Majok studied playwriting at the Yale School of Drama and Juilliard School. Her plays are often politically engaged, feature dark humor, and experiment with structure and time.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Feingold</span> American theater critic, translator and playwright (1945–2022)

Michael E. Feingold was an American critic, translator, lyricist, playwright and dramaturg. He was the lead theater critic of The Village Voice from 1982 to 2013, for which he was twice named a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism finalist, and was a two-time recipient of the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism. He was a judge for the Obie Awards for 31 years, and the chairman for nine years. For his work as the translator and adapter of the book and lyrics of the Kurt Weill, Elisabeth Hauptmann, and Bertolt Brecht musical Happy End, he was nominated for two Tony Awards in 1977.

Deborah Zoe Laufer is an American playwright and theatre director. Her plays have been performed at the Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, the Everyman Theatre in Baltimore, the Humana Festival of New American Plays, and Off-Broadway at The Duke on 42nd Street and the Ensemble Studio Theatre. She won a Harold and Mimi Steinberg New Play Citation from the American Theatre Critics Association for her play End Days in 2008. Reviewer Patricia Mitchell writes that Laufer is known for "dealing with serious, existential questions in seriously hilarious ways."

References

  1. ↑ The New York Times , April 2, 2004
  2. ↑ Variety , April 14, 2004
  3. ↑ "Calendar | Kennedy Center".
  4. ↑ "The Prize". Archived from the original on June 8, 2009. Retrieved March 5, 2009.
  5. ↑ Weinert-Kendt, Rob (August 18, 1999). "Kate Fodor explores longings, religious and otherwise, in '100 Saints You Should Know'". Los Angeles Times . Retrieved January 31, 2014.
  6. ↑ Brantley, Ben (September 19, 2007). "Seeking Spiritual Bonds and Earthly Ones, Too". The New York Times .
  7. ↑ "Kennedy Center: Fund for New American Plays Grant Recipients". Archived from the original on May 23, 2012. Retrieved June 7, 2012.
  8. ↑ Raden, Bill (October 3, 2013). "Kate Fodor's Play Rx Satirizes Your Tendency to Overmedicate". LA Weekly . Retrieved January 31, 2014.
  9. ↑ Isherwood, Charles (February 7, 2012). "Dr. Feelgood Isn't Feeling Quite Like Himself". The New York Times . Retrieved January 31, 2014.
  10. ↑ Feingold, Michael (February 15, 2012). "Rx: A Prescription for Laughter". Village Voice . Retrieved January 31, 2014.
  11. ↑ Feingold, Michael (February 15, 2012). "Rx: A Prescription for Laughter". Village Voice. Retrieved October 25, 2016.
  12. ↑ Fifty ways Art Voice [ dead link ]
  13. ↑ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on February 23, 2014. Retrieved February 20, 2014.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  14. ↑ "John Simon Guggenheim Foundation | Kate Fodor". www.gf.org. Retrieved October 26, 2016.
  15. ↑ "Kate Fodor | New Dramatists".
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.