The American Place Theatre

Last updated

The American Place Theatre was founded in 1963 by Wynn Handman, [1] Sidney Lanier, [2] and Michael Tolan at St. Clement's Church, 423 West 46th Street in Hell's Kitchen, New York City, and was incorporated as a not-for-profit theatre in that year. Tennessee Williams and Myrna Loy were two of the original board members.

Contents

Achievements

The first full production at this off-Broadway theatre was The Old Glory , a trilogy of three one-acts by the poet Robert Lowell, produced in November 1964. The play would go on to win five Obie Awards the following year, including "Best American Play." [3] [4]

In addition to producing Robert Lowell's first play, The American Place Theatre has produced and developed the first plays of outstanding writers from other literary forms including Donald Barthelme, Robert Coover, Paul Goodman, H. L. Mencken, Joyce Carol Oates, S. J. Perelman, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, May Swenson, and Robert Penn Warren.

Significant playwrights have been nurtured and, in many cases, initially produced at The American Place, such as:

Also, major attention has been brought to unconventional, contemporary actor/writers such as Eric Bogosian, Bill Irwin, John Leguizamo, Aasif Mandvi, and Dael Orlandersmith.

History

The American Place Theatre played an important role in the emerging African-American theatre beginning in the early 1960s by producing the first productions of plays by Michael Bradford, Ed Bullins, Kia Corthron, James de Jongh, Joseph Edward, Lonne Elder III, Phillip Hayes Dean, Elaine Jackson, Alonzo D. Lamont Jr., Ron Milner, Matt Robinson, Charlie L. Russell, and Vincent Smith.

Its American Humorists' Series has transferred from the page to live performance the work of outstanding humorous writers, among them George Ade, Robert Benchley, Roy Blount Jr., A. Whitney Brown, Jules Feiffer, Bruce Jay Friedman, Cynthia Heimel, Dorothy Parker, Roger Rosenblatt, Damon Runyon, Jean Shepherd, James Thurber, and Calvin Trillin.

The theatre later moved to 111 West 46th Street. In 1978, The Women's Project, directed by Julia Miles, was designed to encourage, develop, and produce women playwrights and directors. After nine years of producing many groundbreaking works at The American Place Theatre, the project grew into a separate entity, Women's Project Theater.

Actors for whom The American Place Theatre has been a launching pad include Mary Alice, Ellen Barkin, Roscoe Lee Browne, Kathleen Chalfant, Michael Douglas, Faye Dunaway, Sandy Duncan, Morgan Freeman, Aasif Mandvi, Connie Britton, Kim Raver, Raul Julia, Mira Sorvino, Jou Jou Papailler, Anna Deaver Smith, Denzel Washington, Richard Gere, Joel Grey, Dustin Hoffman, Frank Langella, Mary McDonnell, Lauren Graham, Zakes Mokae, Howard Rollins, John Spencer, Ralph Waite, Sam Waterston, and Sigourney Weaver.

Awards

Literature to Life

A new chapter for the American Place Theatre began with its first Literature to Life performance in 1994 of Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye . Literature to Life, the American Place Theatre's performance-based literacy program, presents professionally staged verbatim adaptations of significant American literary works. This educational program gives students a new form of access to literature by bringing to life the world of books with performances that create an atmosphere of discovery and spark the imagination. [5]

Literature to Life has received multiple grants from the Carnegie Corporation, an organization that has supported more than 550 New York City arts and social service institutions since its inception in 2002, and which was made possible through a donation by New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg. [6]

Books that have been adapted for Literature to Life's theatrical performances include Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 , Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried , [7] Richard Wright's Black Boy , Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close , Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees , Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner , and Lois Lowry's The Giver .

Project 451, the funding initiative of Literature to Life, was starting during the 2008/2009 season to ensure that reading, writing, and the arts remain a primary component of the education of young American citizens. Spokespeople for Project 451 include Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin, Sam Waterston, and Jessica Lange.

The titles for the 2010/2011 season were Junot Díaz' The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao , adapted and directed by Elise Thoron, and Piri Thomas' Down These Mean Streets adapted and directed by Wynn Handman. Literature to Life's new adaptation for the 2009/2010 season was Greg Mortenson's best-selling book Three Cups of Tea . Also, adapted and directed by Wynn Handman, the show features sixty minutes of performance from this best seller. [8]

Every year, the American Place Theatre hosts its annual Gala, the Literature to Life Awards. The 2011 Literature to Life Awards took place on May 23, 2011. They began with an adapted theatrical performance of Down These Mean Streets starring actor Jamil Mena and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao starring Elvis Nolasco and honored Piri Thomas and Junot Díaz. The evening also included a performance written and performed by students from Newcomers High School, a high school for students who have recently immigrated to the US, in Long Island City. [9]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Frank Chin</span> American author and playwright

Frank Chin is an American author and playwright. He is considered to be one of the pioneers of Asian-American theatre.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Junot Díaz</span> Dominican-American writer, academic, and editor

Junot Díaz is a Dominican-American writer, creative writing professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and was fiction editor at Boston Review. He also serves on the board of advisers for Freedom University, a volunteer organization in Georgia that provides post-secondary instruction to undocumented immigrants. Central to Díaz's work is the immigrant experience, particularly the Latino immigrant experience.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ed Bullins</span> American playwright (1935–2021)

Edward Artie Bullins, sometimes publishing as Kingsley B. Bass Jr, was an American playwright. He won awards including the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award and several Obie Awards. Bullins was associated with the Black Arts Movement and the Black Panther Party, for which he was the minister of culture in the 1960s.

Ma-Yi Theater Company is a professional, not-for-profit, Obie Award and Drama Desk Award-winning theater company based in New York City that was founded in 1989. Ma-Yi Theater is headed by executive director Jorge Ortoll and artistic director Ralph Peña. Some of its recent notable productions include:

Robert Michael Leeshock is an American actor. He is best known in television for portraying the role of Liam Kincaid on the sci-fi drama series Earth: Final Conflict.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aasif Mandvi</span> British-American actor, comedian

Aasif Hakim Mandviwala, known professionally as Aasif Mandvi, is a British-American actor, comedian and author. He was a correspondent on The Daily Show from 2006 to 2017. Mandvi's other television work includes the HBO comedy series The Brink and the CBS/Paramount+ psychological drama Evil. His film roles include playing Mr. Aziz in Spider-Man 2 and Commander Zhao in The Last Airbender, and his stage work includes appearing on Broadway as Ali Hakim in Oklahoma!.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ruben Santiago-Hudson</span> American actor and screenwriter

Ruben Santiago-Hudson is an American actor, playwright, and director who has won national awards for his work in all three categories. He is best known for his role of Captain Roy Montgomery from 2009 to 2011 on ABC's Castle. In November 2011 he appeared on Broadway in Lydia R. Diamond's play Stick Fly. In 2013 he starred in the TV series Low Winter Sun, a police drama set in Detroit.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cherry Lane Theatre</span> Off-Broadway theater in New York City

The Cherry Lane Theatre is the oldest continuously running off-Broadway theater in New York City. The theater is located at 38 Commerce Street between Barrow and Bedford Streets in the West Village neighborhood of Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City. The Cherry Lane contains a 179-seat main stage and a 60-seat studio.

The Talking Band is an American Off-Off-Broadway theatre company specializing in experimental theatre, based in New York City, New York.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">María Irene Fornés</span> American writer

María Irene Fornés was a Cuban-American playwright, theater director, and teacher who worked in off-Broadway and experimental theater venues in the last four decades of the twentieth century. Her plays range widely in subject-matter, but often depict characters with aspirations that belie their disadvantages. Fornés, who went by the name "Irene", received nine Obie Theatre Awards in various categories and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama for 1990.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wynn Handman</span> American theatre director (1922–2020)

Wynn Handman was the Artistic Director of The American Place Theatre, which he co-founded with Sidney Lanier and Michael Tolan in 1963. His role in the theatre was to seek out, encourage, train, and present new and exciting writing and acting talent and to develop and produce new plays by living American writers. In addition, he initiated several Arts Education Programs, such as Literature to Life. His life and the history of The American Place Theatre are the subjects of the 2019 documentary It Takes a Lunatic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Irish Repertory Theatre</span> Off-Brodway theatre

The Irish Repertory Theatre is an Off Broadway theatre founded in 1988.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kathleen Chalfant</span> American actress

Kathleen Ann Chalfant is an American actress. She has appeared in many stage plays, both on Broadway and Off-Broadway, as well as making guest appearances on television series, including the Law & Order franchise.

<i>The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao</i> 2007 novel by Junot Díaz

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is a 2007 novel written by Dominican American author Junot Díaz. Although a work of fiction, the novel is set in New Jersey in the United States, where Díaz was raised, and it deals with the Dominican Republic's experience under dictator Rafael Trujillo. The book chronicles both the life of Oscar de León, an overweight Dominican boy growing up in Paterson, New Jersey, who is obsessed with science fiction and fantasy novels and with falling in love, as well as a curse that has plagued his family for generations.

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.

<i>Todays Special</i> (film) 2009 American film

Today's Special is a 2009 independent comedy film loosely inspired by Aasif Mandvi's play, Sakina's Restaurant. The film was directed by David Kaplan. The script was adapted by Aasif Mandvi and Jonathan Bines, and stars Mandvi, Madhur Jaffrey, Bollywood actor Naseeruddin Shah, Jess Weixler, Harish Patel, Kevin Corrigan, Dean Winters, and Ajay Naidu. The film was developed and produced by Nimitt Mankad of Inimitable Pictures, and Lillian LaSalle of Sweet 180.

<i>The Old Glory</i> Book by Robert Lowell

The Old Glory is a play written by the American poet Robert Lowell that was first performed in 1964. It consists of three pieces that were meant to be performed together as a trilogy. The first two pieces, "Endecott and the Red Cross" and "My Kinsman, Major Molineux" were stage adaptations of short stories by Nathaniel Hawthorne, and the third piece, "Benito Cereno," was a stage adaptation of the novella by Herman Melville.

Disgraced is a 2012 play by novelist and screenwriter Ayad Akhtar. It premiered in Chicago and has had Off-Broadway and Off West End engagements. The play, which won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, opened on Broadway at the Lyceum Theater October 23, 2014. Disgraced has also been recognized with a 2012 Joseph Jefferson Award for New Work – Play or Musical and a 2013 Obie Award for Playwriting. It is Akhtar's first stage play. The 2014 Broadway transfer earned a Tony Award for Best Play nomination in 2015.

<i>Human Capital</i> (2019 film) 2019 film directed by Marc Meyers

Human Capital is a 2019 American-Italian drama film directed by Marc Meyers. The screenplay by Oren Moverman is based on the 2004 Stephen Amidon novel of the same name, which was also adapted into the 2013 Italian film by Paolo Virzì. The film stars Liev Schreiber, Marisa Tomei, Peter Sarsgaard, Maya Hawke, Alex Wolff, Betty Gabriel, Aasif Mandvi, Paul Sparks and Fred Hechinger.

<i>Billy Budd</i> (play) Play written by Louis O. Coxe and Robert Chapman

Billy Budd is a play by Louis O. Coxe and Robert H. Chapman based on Herman Melville's novella of the same name. Originally titled Uniform of Flesh, the play premiered Off-Broadway in 1949. Coxe and Chapman restructured and retitled the work for its Broadway debut in 1951. The revised version was a critical success, winning the Donaldson Award for Best First Play and the Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Play in 1951. In 1952 the play was adapted for the television anthology series Schlitz Playhouse of Stars, and Peter Ustinov adapted the play into a film which premiered in 1962.

References

  1. ↑ Ryzik, Melena (May 20, 2007). "Nearly 60 Years and Counting, Working on the Art of Theater". The New York Times. Retrieved June 16, 2010.
  2. ↑ Vitello, Paul (October 5, 2013). "Sidney Lanier, 90, Experimental Stage Producer..." The New York Times.
  3. ↑ Publisher's play synopsis
  4. ↑ Obie Awards for 1965
  5. ↑ "Literature to Life: About". Retrieved on May 11, 2010
  6. ↑ Roberts, Sam (July 6, 2005). "City Groups Get Bloomberg Gift of $20 Million". The New York Times . Retrieved May 25, 2010.
  7. ↑ Hodara, Susan (January 27, 2010). "Asking the Whole Country to Embrace a War Story". The New York Times. Retrieved June 16, 2010.
  8. ↑ "Literature to Life Roster: Three Cups of Tea" . Retrieved May 11, 2010.
  9. ↑ Kolodner, Meredith; Kemp, Joe (December 10, 2009). "US News & World Report's 'Best High Schools' survey names Newcomers High tops in city, #6 in country". New York Daily News . Retrieved December 8, 2017.
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.