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45-535: Jean-Claude van Itallie (May 25, 1936 – September 9, 2021) was a Belgian-born American playwright , performer, and theatre workshop teacher. He is best known for his 1966 anti-Vietnam War play America Hurrah ; The Serpent , an ensemble play he wrote with Joseph Chaikin 's Open Theatre ; his theatrical adaptation of the Tibetan Book of the Dead ; and his translations of Anton Chekhov 's plays. Van Itallie

90-611: A gay pornographic film America Creams under a pseudonym, one of the first well-known writers to write a hardcore pornographic film. Van Itallie has written over thirty plays. He wrote the ensemble play The Serpent with Chaikin's Open Theater. The Serpent premiered at Rome 's Teatro dell'Arte in 1968. Van Itallie's Tibetan Book of the Dead, or How Not to Do It Again , based on the Bardo Thodol and with music by Steven Gorn , premiered at La MaMa in 1983. Other van Itallie plays include: In January 1967, van Itallie's Pavane

135-482: A murder mystery play which is the longest-running West End show , it has by far the longest run of any play in the world, with its 29,500th performance having taken place as of February 2024. Contemporary playwrights in the United States are affected by recent declines in theatre attendance. No longer the only outlet for serious drama or entertaining comedies, theatrical productions must use ticket sales as

180-403: A "network". It put together a weekly five-hour package of television programs , distributing them primarily on kinescope film to the affiliated stations by mail. By 1956, ETRC had 22 affiliated stations, expected to grow to 26 by March 1957. The programming was noted for treating subjects in depth, including hour-long interviews with people of literary and historical importance. The programming

225-512: A form of playwright. Outside of the Western world there is Indian classical drama , with one of the oldest known playwrights being Śudraka , whose attributed plays can be dated to the second century BC. The Nāṭya Shāstra , a text on the performing arts from between 500BC-500AD, categorizes playwrights as being among the members of a theatre company, although playwrights were generally the highest in social status, with some being kings. In

270-466: A grant from the Ford Foundation 's Fund for Adult Education (FAE). It was originally a limited service for exchanging and distributing educational television programs produced by local television stations to other stations; it did not produce any material by itself. In the spring of 1954, ETRC moved its operations to Ann Arbor , Michigan , and on May 16 of that year, it began operating as

315-553: A pejorative sense by Ben Jonson to suggest a mere tradesman fashioning works for the theatre. Jonson uses the word in his Epigram 49, which is thought to refer to John Marston or Thomas Dekker : Jonson described himself as a poet, not a playwright, since plays during that time were written in meter and so were regarded as the province of poets. This view was held as late as the early 19th century. The term "playwright" later again lost this negative connotation. The earliest playwrights in Western literature with surviving works are

360-654: A playwright, winning awards for his play The Phoenix at both the New York International Fringe Festival in 1999 and the Route 66 American Playwriting Competition in 2000. Today, theatre companies have new play development programs meant to develop new American voices in playwriting. Many regional theatres have hired dramaturges and literary managers in an effort to showcase various festivals for new work, or bring in playwrights for residencies. Funding through national organizations, such as

405-525: A source of income, which has caused many of them to reduce the number of new works being produced. For example, Playwrights Horizons produced only six plays in the 2002–03 seasons, compared with thirty-one in 1973–74. Playwrights commonly encounter difficulties in getting their shows produced and often cannot earn a living through their plays alone, leading them to take up other jobs to supplement their incomes. Many playwrights are also film makers . For instance, filmmaker Morgan Spurlock began his career as

450-562: A stricter interpretation of Aristotle, as this long-lost work came to light in the late 15th century. The neoclassical ideal, which was to reach its apogee in France during the 17th century, dwelled upon the unities , of action, place, and time. This meant that the playwright had to construct the play so that its "virtual" time would not exceed 24 hours, that it would be restricted to a single setting, and that there would be no subplots. Other terms, such as verisimilitude and decorum, circumscribed

495-632: Is Hans Sachs (1494–1576) who wrote 198 dramatic works. In England, The Second Shepherds' Play of the Wakefield Cycle is the best known early farce. However, farce did not appear independently in England until the 16th century with the work of John Heywood (1497–1580). Playwright William Shakespeare remains arguably the most influential writer in the English language, and his works continue to be studied and reinterpreted. Most playwrights of

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540-593: Is a former American educational broadcast television network owned by the Ford Foundation and later co-owned by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting . It operated from May 16, 1954, to October 4, 1970, and was succeeded by the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), which has memberships with many television stations that were formerly part of NET. The Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) provided funds for cataloging

585-438: Is an archaic English term for a craftsperson or builder (as in a wheelwright or cartwright ). The words combine to indicate a person who has "wrought" words, themes, and other elements into a dramatic form—a play. (The homophone with "write" is coincidental.) The first recorded use of the term "playwright" is from 1605, 73 years before the first written record of the term "dramatist". It appears to have been first used in

630-542: Is still useful to playwrights today is the " French scene ", which is a scene in a play where the beginning and end are marked by a change in the makeup of the group of characters onstage rather than by the lights going up or down or the set being changed. Notable playwrights: Greek theater was alive and flourishing on the island of Crete. During the Cretan Renaissance two notable Greek playwrights Georgios Chortatzis and Vitsentzos Kornaros were present in

675-605: Is what NET would have been reduced to. The Ford Foundation, interested Educational Television Stations , and President Johnson supported the recommendations of the Carnegie Commission in the Public Broadcasting Act, which was signed into law on November 7, 1967. The Public Broadcasting Service ( PBS ) began as an entity in November 1969, with NET continuing to produce several programs and to be

720-469: The Ancient Greeks . These early plays were for annual Athenian competitions among play writers held around the 5th century BC. Such notables as Aeschylus , Sophocles , Euripides , and Aristophanes established forms still relied on by their modern counterparts. We have complete texts extant by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides . The origins of Athenian tragedy remain obscure, though by

765-657: The BBC into the United States, starting with An Age of Kings in 1961. It increased its programming output to ten hours a week. Most NETRC network programs were produced by the affiliate stations because the NETRC had no production staff or facilities of its own. NETRC also contracted programs from independent producers and acquired foreign material from countries like Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, Yugoslavia,

810-948: The CBS television program Look Up and Live . In 1963, van Itallie's short play, War , was produced at the Barr Albee Wilder Playwrights Unit on Vandam Street , featuring Gerome Ragni and Jane Lowry and directed by Michael Kahn . War was later produced alongside John Guare 's Muzeeka at the Dallas Theater Center . Van Itallie joined director-actor Joseph Chaikin's Open Theater as Playwright-of-the Ensemble. Van Itallie's early plays were also produced at Ellen Stewart 's Café La MaMa , and at Joe Cino 's Caffe Cino , "birthplace of gay theater." His 1966 anti-war trilogy, America Hurrah ( Interview , TV , and Motel ), ran for almost two years at

855-610: The Carnegie Foundation to conduct a study on the future of educational television. The Carnegie Commission released its report in 1967, recommending educational television be transformed into " public television ". The new organization would be controlled by the nonprofit Corporation for Public Broadcasting (a corporation established by the federal government ) and receive funding from the government and other sources. Under this plan, funds were to be distributed to individual stations and independent production centers – which

900-1567: The Manhattan Theater Club and the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts . His translation of The Cherry Orchard premiered at Lincoln Center , featuring Irene Worth and Meryl Streep and directed by Andrei Serban , in 1977. His translation of Three Sisters premiered both at the American Repertory Theatre and at the Manhattan Theatre Club, featuring Sam Waterston and Dianne Wiest , in 1979. His translation of Uncle Vanya premiered at La MaMa, featuring F. Murray Abraham and Chaikin and directed by Serban, in 1983. In 1997, van Itallie performed with co-creators Kermit Dunkelberg and Court Dorsey in Guys Dreamin ' , as directed by Kim Mancuso and Joel Gluck. In 1999 and 2000, van Itallie performed his one-man show War, Sex, and Dreams at Highways in Santa Monica and at La MaMa. In 2012, he performed his one-man show Confessions and Conversation at La MaMa, as directed by Rosemary Quinn. His 2016 book, Tea with Demons – Games of Transformation , includes memoir and forty-nine self-development games for

945-624: The National Endowment for the Arts and the Theatre Communications Group , encouraged the partnerships of professional theatre companies and emerging playwrights. Playwrights will often have a cold reading of a script in an informal sitdown setting, which allows them to evaluate their own plays and the actors performing them. Cold reading means that the actors haven't rehearsed the work, or may be seeing it for

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990-449: The 4th century BCE, Aristotle wrote his Poetics , in which he analyzed the principle of action or praxis as the basis for tragedy. He then considered elements of drama: plot ( μύθος mythos ), character ( ἔθος ethos ), thought ( dianoia ), diction ( lexis ), music ( melodia ), and spectacle ( opsis ). Since the myths on which Greek tragedy were based were widely known, plot had to do with

1035-543: The 5th century it was institutionalised in competitions ( agon ) held as part of festivities celebrating Dionysos (the god of wine and fertility ). As contestants in the City Dionysia's competition (the most prestigious of the festivals to stage drama), playwrights were required to present a tetralogy of plays (though the individual works were not necessarily connected by story or theme), which usually consisted of three tragedies and one satyr play. For

1080-561: The Middle Ages, the earliest of which is The Play of the Greenwood by Adam de la Halle in 1276. It contains satirical scenes and folk material such as faeries and other supernatural occurrences. Farces also rose dramatically in popularity after the 13th century. The majority of these plays come from France and Germany and are similar in tone and form, emphasizing sex and bodily excretions. The best known playwright of farces

1125-646: The NET collection, and as part of an on-going preservation effort with the Library of Congress , over 10,000 digitized television programs from the non-commercial TV stations and producers spanning 20 years from 1952 to 1972 have been contributed to the American Archive of Public Broadcasting . The network was founded as the Educational Television and Radio Center ( ETRC ) in November 1952 by

1170-764: The New York Open Center, Rowe Conference Center, and Easton Mountain, among other universities and retreat centers. He lived on a farm in western Massachusetts , where he taught and directed the Shantigar Foundation for theatre and meditation , and in Greenwich Village and NoHo . His papers are held in Kent State University Special Collections . The papers cover van Itallie's full career, and he would regularly deposit additional items to

1215-602: The Pocket Theater Off-Broadway and at the Royal Court Theater in London . Two of the one-acts were first presented at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club in 1964 and 1965. Interview was directed by Peter Feldman, and Motel was directed by Michael Kahn . Motel was revived at La MaMa in 1981, again directed by Kahn, for the theater's 20th anniversary. In 1972, he wrote the script for

1260-611: The Restoration of the monarchy in 1660 and the end of the 17th century, classical ideas were in vogue. As a result, critics of the time mostly rated Shakespeare below John Fletcher and Ben Jonson. This period saw the first professional woman playwright, Aphra Behn . As a reaction to the decadence of Charles II era productions, sentimental comedy grew in popularity. Playwrights like Colley Cibber and Richard Steele believed that humans were inherently good but capable of being led astray. The Italian Renaissance brought about

1305-669: The USSR, France, Italy, and West Germany. Starting from 1962, the federal government took over the FAE's grants-in-aid program through the Education Television Facilities Act. In November 1963 NETRC changed its name to National Educational Television , and spun off its radio assets. Under the centerpiece program NET Journal , which began airing in the fall of 1966, NET began to air controversial, hard-hitting documentaries that explored numerous social issues of

1350-420: The ancient Greeks, playwriting involved poïesis , "the act of making". This is the source of the English word poet . Despite Chinese Theatre having performers dated back to the 6th century BC with You Meng , their perspective of theatre was such that plays had no other role than "performer" or "actor", but given that the performers were also the ones who invented their performances, they could be considered

1395-404: The arrangement and selection of existing material. Character was determined by choice and by action. Tragedy is mimesis —"the imitation of an action that is serious". He developed his notion of hamartia , or tragic flaw, an error in judgment by the main character or protagonist , which provides the basis for the "conflict-driven" play. There were also a number of secular performances staged in

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1440-483: The collection. Translations: Playwright The earliest playwrights in Western literature with surviving works are the Ancient Greeks . William Shakespeare is amongst the most famous playwrights in literature, both in England and across the world. The word "play" is from Middle English pleye , from Old English plæġ, pleġa, plæġa ("play, exercise; sport, game; drama, applause"). The word wright

1485-456: The day such as poverty and racism . While praised by critics, some affiliates, especially those in politically and culturally conservative markets, objected to the perceived liberal slant of the programming. Another NET produced program begun in 1967, Public Broadcast Laboratory , produced similar complaints. In 1966, NET's position as a combined network and production center came into question when President Lyndon Johnson arranged for

1530-531: The first time, and usually, the technical requirements are minimal. The O'Neill Festival offers summer retreats for young playwrights to develop their work with directors and actors. Playwriting collectives like 13P and Orbiter 3 gather members together to produce, rather than develop, new works. The idea of the playwriting collective is in response to plays being stuck in the development process and never advancing to production. National Educational Television National Educational Television ( NET )

1575-490: The latter part of the 16th century. The plays of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing , Johann Wolfgang von Goethe , Friedrich Schiller , and other Sturm und Drang playwrights inspired a growing faith in feeling and instinct as guides to moral behavior and were part of the German romanticism movement. Aleksandr Ostrovsky was Russia's first professional playwright). Author and playwright Agatha Christie wrote The Moustrap ,

1620-462: The main source of the controversies surrounding NET. Instead, local stations and outside suppliers would provide programming for the system, a model that endures to this day with PBS. In early 1970, both Ford and the CPB threatened to cut NET's funding unless NET merged its operations with New York City-area affiliate WNDT . NET agreed to do so. WNDT's call sign was changed to WNET on October 1, 1970, as

1665-406: The name of the network. NET's production of NET Journal and Public Broadcast Laboratory continued to be liabilities amid accusations of partisanship funded by the government. Eventually, Ford and the CPB decided to shut NET down, to be replaced by PBS as the network distributing programming to stations, but, unlike NET, it was not directly involved in production matters, which had been perceived as

1710-407: The period typically collaborated with others at some point, as critics agree Shakespeare did, mostly early and late in his career. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. In England, after the interregnum , and Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, there was a move toward neoclassical dramaturgy. Between

1755-654: The reader to play. He taught writing and performance workshops, and has taught at Princeton University , New York University , Harvard University , Yale University , Amherst College , Columbia University , Middlebury College , the University of Colorado , Smith College , the New School for Social Research , Naropa University , the Esalen Institute , the Omega Institute for Holistic Studies ,

1800-627: The same day, they boarded the S.S. Hakozaki Maru headed for New York City, arriving on 10 October. Van Itallie grew up in Great Neck, New York , studied at Great Neck High School and Deerfield Academy in Deerfield, Massachusetts , and graduated from Harvard College in 1958. He has one sibling, his brother Michael van Itallie. After graduating from Harvard, van Itallie moved to Greenwich Village , studied acting at The Neighborhood Playhouse and film editing at New York University , and wrote for

1845-557: The subject matter significantly. For example, verisimilitude limits of the unities. Decorum fitted proper protocols for behavior and language on stage. In France, contained too many events and actions, thus, violating the 24-hour restriction of the unity of time. Neoclassicism never had as much traction in England, and Shakespeare 's plays are directly opposed to these models, while in Italy, improvised and bawdy commedia dell'arte and opera were more popular forms. One structural unit that

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1890-487: The television industry as "bicycling"). The center's headquarters moved from Ann Arbor to New York City in 1958, and the organization became known as the National Educational Television and Radio Center ( NETRC ). The center became more aggressive at this time, aiming to ascend to the role of the U.S.' fourth television network . Among its efforts, the network began importing programs from

1935-527: Was also noted for being dry and academic, with little consideration given to entertainment value, a marked contrast to commercial television . Many of the shows were designed as adult education, and ETRC was nicknamed the "University of the Air" (or, less kindly, "The Bicycle Network", both for its low budget and for the way NET supposedly sent programs to its affiliates, by distributing its program films and videotapes via non-electronic means such as by mail, termed in

1980-793: Was born in Brussels , Belgium on May 25, 1936, to Hugo Ferdinand van Itallie (an investment banker ) and Marthe Mathilde Caroline Levy van Itallie. His family was Jewish. In 1940, when the Nazis invaded Brussels, he fled with his family to France, where they received visas to Portugal from the Portuguese consul Aristides de Sousa Mendes . They stayed in Estoril , at the Pensão Royal, between 8 July and 28 September 1940. On

2025-529: Was broadcast along with Sam Shepard 's Fourteen Hundred Thousand and Paul Foster 's The Recluse as "La MaMa Playwrights" on NET Playhouse . The program was re-broadcast on NET in 1969 along with footage from the opening of La MaMa's new theater space. Van Itallie's translation of Chekhov's The Seagull was first produced at the McCarter Theater in Princeton in 1973. It then premiered at

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